How the Pentagon Punished NSA Whistleblowers (theguardian.com)

10 years before Edward Snowden's leak, an earlier whistle-blower on NSA spying "was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally," according to a new article in The Guardian. "The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today... The supreme irony? In their zeal to punish Drake, these Pentagon officials unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches when the 29-year-old NSA contract employee blew the whistle himself."

But today The Guardian reveals a new story about John Crane, a senior official at the Department of Defense "who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake -- until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well..." Crane told me how senior Defense Department officials repeatedly broke the law to persecute whistleblower Thomas Drake. First, he alleged, they revealed Drake's identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge...

Crane's failed battle to protect earlier whistleblowers should now make it very clear that Snowden had good reasons to go public with his revelations... if [Crane's] allegations are confirmed in court, they could put current and former senior Pentagon officials in jail. (Official investigations are quietly under way.)
Meanwhile, George Maschke writes: In a presentation to a group of Texas law students, a polygraph examiner for the U.S. Department of Defense revealed that in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations, the number of polygraphs conducted annually by the department tripled (to over 120,000). Morris also conceded that mental countermeasures to the polygraph are a "tough thing."

Comments

Who will watch the watchers?

[_Sharp'r_]

Official investigations are quietly under way.

But who will watch (or protect) the watchers? Crane started blowing the whistle in 2002, so if there was an effective process for investigating his reports, you'd think it'd have concluded 14 years later...

If the assistant inspector general supervising the whistleblower unit can't figure out how to safely be a whistleblower without getting hammered, then who can? Ironically, the image of a whistleblower is that the whistle immediately alerts everyone to an issue. How's that worked out for folks?

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[Grishnakh]

The NSA, CIA, and FBI aren't intended to be criminal organizations. They were built to help the people of the US. The hope of the public at large is that this draws honorable people to those organizations, and that at worst, only a few bad apples will exist.

I really wish people would stop using this expression.

Have you ever left a bad apple in a bunch of apples? If you had, you'd know exactly what happens: the whole bunch turns bad very quickly. That's where the expression came from, and that's why it's invalid to say "only a few bad apples": there is no such thing as a few bad apples!!! When you have a bad apple, whether it's an apple or a cop in a police department, unless it's removed quickly, pretty soon they're all bad. Which is why the expression is apt for police, except that everyone keeps forgetting about what really happens with bad apples. Does no one keep bunches of apples any more?

Not to mention astroturfing their propaganda

[Taco Cowboy]

When TPTB strikes, they make sure they cover everything

Not only they throw the book on the whistleblowers, they also make sure that those patriotic whistleblowers get their reputation totally ruined by releasing their 'wu mao' teams astroturfing their propaganda at online forum, such as this one on /. calling the whistleblowers 'traitors' and such

What TPTB of the United States of America is doing is getting closer and closer to that of the Chinese Communist regime

I came from China, I know how terrible fascism is, and unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happens here, more and more

They brought Snowden on themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what a lot of people don't get. Snowden had only two real choices: Go outside the system to reveal injustice, or keep his mouth shut.

The whole whistle-blower problem was brought to our attention decades ago. The powers that be promised "whistle blower protection". Some people accepted that... and still got screwed.

Snowden had to have know the history of all that. He knew he had two choices. Be a mobster, or turn "states evidence" to the only state that won't screw him: The public at large.

The U.S government is CORRUPT and VIOLENT.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I came from China, I know how terrible fascism is, and unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happens here, more and more"

The U.S. government has killed an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. Often contractor companies do the violence, or arrange more violence so that they can make more money and so the managers can get promotions. It's killing for profit.

Why the Vietnam war? The CIA and Vietnam. "... from June, 1954 to June, 1963, that is, until two years after Dulles left office (August, 1961) the CIA was absolutely and exclusively dominant in creating and carrying out the policies which led eventually to the Vietnam War."

"To the CIA too must go the credit for the creation of the secret police forces of Diemâ(TM)s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu which prevented dissent within Vietnam until it was too late to change things."

The intention of the U.S. financial community to profit from corrupt practices was well known long before the crash in 2008. In the Berkshire Hathaway 2002 Annual Report (PDF), Warren Buffett said this on page 14: "I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive 'earnings' (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham."

The Iraq war made huge amounts of money for the Bush family and Dick Cheney: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. That destruction will continue for decades: The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.