Silent State

“Silent State
The Campaign Against Whistleblowers in Washington
By Peter Van Buren

“On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.

“Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.”

This is part of an agenda, embraced by both Republicans and Democrats, to insulate the government from examination, critical examination. It includes a decades long project of rendering the impeachment provisions of the Constitution null and void. The latest piece of this project was the joke – the joke is on us, the people – of the Clinton impeachment which, of course, the Republicans never wanted to win [as if they wanted Al Gore to be able to run as an incumbent president!] and which has neutered the impeachment provisions by virtue of its clear abuse of those powers. These guys, these oligarchs are shrewd and one victim has been the Constitution.

P. Schultz

February 10, 2012