Dear Francisco, This month, former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling will go on trial for giving classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen about a CIA operation that provided flawed nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran in 2000. The charges in the case are unproven. But no one disputes that Sterling told Senate Intelligence Committee staffers about the plan, dubbed Operation Merlin. As Risen demonstrated in his book, the operation was ill conceived and dangerous; rather than slow down nuclear proliferation, the CIA risked making it worse. We’ve teamed up with RootsAction, The Progressive, Reporters Without Borders and a host of other organizations to call on the Justice Department to drop the charges against Sterling. Will you join us? As Normon Solomon and Marcy Wheeler argue in a piece for The Nation, the prosecution of Sterling is emblematic of the Obama administration’s approach to whistleblowing. Despite promises of transparency, the administration has pressured federal employees to report colleagues who may be leaking information, aggressively pursued potential leaks and charged more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all other administrations combined. Furthermore, the legal pursuit of Sterling smacks of selective prosecution. When it suits their purposes, top officials often leak information that is classified. As the New York Times wrote: The government hates leaks of classified information. Except when it doesnt. Without whistleblowers, journalists would be unable to do their jobs and the public would be left in the dark. Join us in calling on the Justice Department to drop all charges against Jeffrey Sterling. All the best, Sarah Arnold
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 13:00:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015