News Release Archive - 2010

JESSELYN RADACK
Radack is homeland security and human rights director of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest group based in Washington, D.C. She is a whistleblower herself and is closely following the cases of whistleblowers whom the Obama administration is prosecuting.

She said today: “Daniel Ellsberg, famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers, in the New York Times recently said that the criminal investigations under Obama of three Americans (Bradley Manning [the alleged source of the WikiLeaks documents], Thomas Drake, and Shamai Leibowitz) accused of leaking government secrets represented a new low. In both the Manning and Drake cases, America is projecting its sins onto the men who brought American crimes to light. The government has expressed its intent to prosecute both men under the Espionage Act — a law meant to go after spies, not whistleblowers.

“In the Drake case, he went through all the ‘proper’ internal whistleblowing channels — the NSA Inspector General, the Defense Department Inspector General and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees — about a failed billion-dollar NSA domestic surveillance program. The Defense Department Inspector General issued a report that substantiated Drake’s claims — but it was never made public. Eventually, Drake went to the media — as did Ellsberg, Manning, and Thomas Tamm (who, like Drake, blew the whistle on NSA crimes).

“The whistleblowers allegedly divulged information that the government claims was classified. But the information was more embarrassing to the administration than a boon to our enemies. These brave men placed their oath to uphold the Constitution — which Drake took four times during his lengthy military and government service — above various non-disclosure agreements (what the government likes to call ‘secrecy’ or ‘loyalty’ agreements). And Drake never gave classified information to a reporter — nor is he accused of doing so; rather, he is charged with ‘willful retention for the purpose of disclosure.’ That’s not even a real crime. It’s the perversion of selected phrases from various laws collapsed together to manufacture a crime under which the government could go after Drake. For attempting to stop waste, abuse and illegality, Drake faces 35 years in jail. So, I have to ask, why is the government using your taxpayer dollars to support illegalities, as well as for selective, malicious prosecutions of people who are trying to get the truth out?”

Background: See Jesselyn Radack’s Los Angeles Times op-ed piece “Obama’s Record-Setting Leak Prosecutions”

Also see Government Accountablity Project statement: “WikiLeaks Release Underscores Need for Whistleblower Protections, Effective Channels”

The Project has set up a petition for Drake’s case

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Several media outlets have released information based on documents from WikiLeaks about the Iraq war this afternoon. See WikiLeaks Twitter feed

PRATAP CHATTERJEE
Chatterjee is a regular columnist for the British Guardian, which has had access to the WikiLeaks documents.

He is the author of three forthcoming articles, which will appear in Comment is Free in the Guardian. The articles will focus on civilian casualties in Iraq, the role of private contractors and the use of drones. He said: “In times of war, truth has always been the first casualty. Many failures, many mistakes have been hidden from public view or swept under the rug. These documents shed enormous light on what our tax dollars have wrought.”
Chatterjee is author of Iraq, Inc: A Profitable Occupation (2004) and Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War (2009). He recently joined the Center for American Progress as a fellow.

NIR ROSEN
Just back from Iraq, Rosen is author of the new book Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World. His previous book is In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. Rosen is a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security.

RAED JARRAR
The Guardian reports: “U.S. and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.”

Jarrar, also recently back from Iraq, is an Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst and architect. He was in Iraq during the 2003 invasion where he established and directed the first door-to-door civilian casualties survey in Iraq. He said today: “For seven years, the U.S. government has denied the extent of Iraqi civilian casualties. Today’s release shows that they were not only aware of a great number of Iraqi casualties, but they were actually keeping a secret tally of them. We should keep in mind that the number of killings recorded by the U.S. does not necessarily provide an accurate reflection of how many Iraqis have been killed. According to various reputable sources, there may be other hundreds of thousands of undocumented cases of Iraq deaths. In addition, we can’t take the U.S. government’s word about who is a civilian and who is a so-called insurgent or terrorist. There are many documented cases where the U.S. mislabeled unarmed Iraqi civilians. Wikileaks has also provided evidence proving that the U.S. authorities turned a blind eye to abuses in U.S. and Iraqi prisons and to crimes committed by military personnel and private contractors.”

JOSH STIEBER
Stieber is a veteran of in the Bravo Company documented in the video “Collateral Murder,” released earlier this year by WikiLeaks. He just wrote the piece “Iraq Vet to Congress: Don’t Cover Up Wikileaks’ Iraq Revelations.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

WikiLeaks has posted on its Twitter feed that it will be holding a news conference shortly.

The program Democracy Now reported this morning that “WikiLeaks is preparing to release up to 400,000 U.S. intelligence reports on the Iraq war. The disclosure would comprise the biggest leak in U.S. history, far more than the … Afghanistan war logs WikiLeaks released this summer.” The program interviewed Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the Vietnam war. Ellsberg (who will reportedly be participating in the WikiLeaks news conference) stated his support for Bradley Manning, who is being detained by the military, allegedly in connection with the WikiLeaks documents. See interview with Ellsberg

COLEEN ROWLEY
Rowley, whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time magazine’s people of the year in 2002. She recently co-wrote a Los Angeles Times oped titled “WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if? Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.”

RAY McGOVERN
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed on July 29, following the release of the Afghan war logs, that WikiLeaks “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

McGovern recently wrote the piece “How Truth Can Save Lives,” which states: “If independent-minded websites, like WikiLeaks or, say, Consortiumnews.com, existed 43 years ago, I might have risen to the occasion and helped save the lives of some 25,000 U.S. soldiers, and a million Vietnamese, by exposing the lies contained in just one SECRET/EYES ONLY cable from Saigon.”

McGovern was for two years an Army infantry/intelligence officer, then a CIA analyst for 27 years. He now serves on the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence nominating committee, which is giving this year’s award to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Rowley, McGovern and Ellsberg released a statement on Wikileaks in June.

Background: Pentagon head Robert Gates claimed on July 29 that as a result of the leak of the Afghan war logs, “intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries.” However, in a letter dated Aug. 16, Gates wrote that “the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure.” See Glenn Greenwald’s piece: “How propaganda is disseminated: WikiLeaks Edition — On the eve of a new leak, widely trumpeted Pentagon accusations about the whistleblowing site have proven false“.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

RICHARD WOLFF
Recently back from Europe, Wolff is author of the book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. He said today: “For many weeks now, a stunning and historical shift has accelerated across France. An alliance of trade unions, left political parties and sections of parties, students and young people from organizations and as individuals, and many others has recomposed a powerful left force in French society. Having mobilized millions, it is challenging the French establishment in ways and with an intensity not seen for decades. The French fight against government ‘austerity’ — the globally common term for making the mass of people pay for fixing the economic collapse wrought by contemporary capitalism — is influencing parallel struggles everywhere.”

Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In June and July he gave a series of talks in Europe, including at the University of Athens and University of Paris, meeting with many of the people organizing the protests.

He is currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program for International Affairs at the New School University in New York City. Video of his talk “Capitalism Hits the Fan” is available at: CapitalismHitsTheFan.com.

DANIEL CIRERA
Cirera, a researcher with the Gabriel Peri Foundation, in France, said today: “[French President Nicolas] Sarkozy’s refusal to listen deepens public anger. The mass movement continues because beyond the issue of the age of retirement are questions that concern everyone: women and men, young people, wage-earners as well as retired people. The crisis has raised the question of work (how and what to produce and for whose benefit). The crisis also poses real social choices: the demand for social justice (versus politicians in the service of money and the rich) and for a different distribution of wealth.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Politico is reporting: “More than 200 Democrats have signed onto a pledge to protect Social Security from any interference, amid some Republican calls for partial privatization of the entitlement program.”

DOUG HENWOOD
Editor of Left Business Observer, Henwood said today: “It’s cheering to see 200 Congressional Democrats sign a pledge to protect Social Security from the sinister ambitions of the deficit hawks – no benefit cuts, no raising the retirement age, and no privatization of the system. Let’s hope that they’re still around after the election, because that’s when the austerity party’s campaign to hack away is going to begin in earnest – when Obama’s deficit commission issues its presumably dire report. (The lame duck Congress probably won’t be able to pass anything, which would mean that the real fight will begin in January.) It would be nice if we were actually talking about all this during the campaign. It would also be nice if someone brought up the fact that predictions of Social Security’s imminent bankruptcy are based on official forecasts of 75 years of near-Depression rates of economic growth. Because if that’s what we’re in for, we’re facing lots of serious troubles that we should also be talking about. And if we’re not in for that, then Social Security faces no problems at all.”

Henwood writes regularly at http://doughenwood.wordpress.com — and his books include Wall Street.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

AARON GLANTZ
Available for a limited number of interviews, Glantz just wrote the investigative piece “After Service, Veteran Deaths Surge: Suicides, vehicle accidents and drug overdoses take lives,” simultaneously published in the Bay Citizen and by the New York Times.

The piece states: “In the six years after Reuben Paul Santos returned to Daly City from a combat tour in Iraq, he battled depression with poetry, violent video games and, finally, psychiatric treatment. His struggle ended last October, when he hung himself from a stairwell. He was 27.

“The high suicide rate among veterans has already emerged as a major issue for the military and the families and loved ones of military personnel. But Santos’ death is part of a larger trend that has remained hidden: a surge in the number of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have died not just as a result of suicide, but also because of vehicle accidents, motorcycle crashes, drug overdoses or other causes after being discharged from the military.

“An analysis of official death certificates on file at the State Department of Public Health reveals that more than 1,000 California veterans under 35 died between 2005 and 2008. That figure is three times higher than the number of California service members who were killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts over the same period. The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs said they do not count the number of veterans who have died after leaving the military.”

Glantz is a reporter at the Bay Citizen and author of The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans. He has spent over seven years covering the war in Iraq and the treatment veterans receive when they come home.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

California’s Proposition 23 seeks to suspend a 2006 law (AB 32) intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

DAVID CHENG
Available for a limited number of interviews, Cheng is a senior manager at the Cleantech Group a research and advisory company focused on clean tech innovation. He is also a member of E2 (Environmental Entrepreneurs), a national community of individual business leaders who advocate for good environmental policy while building economic prosperity.

He said today: “At the Cleantech Group, we work with the investment community, large corporates, and governments in identifying opportunities in the large and growing clean technology market. I believe that the passage of Proposition 23 could be a significant deterrent for clean technology advancement in California. Recently, the Cleantech Group released a study on this matter, and while we identified California as currently the leading destination of clean technology venture investments, we also noted that many other states were not far behind in capturing investments in the space because of their progressive clean energy policies. In order to maintain California’s lead in clean technology, we must keep policies like AB 32 consistent.”

See the Cleantech study: “California Leads Nation in Clean Energy Policies, Captures 40 percent of Clean Technology Venture Investments Since 2006.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

GREG MITCHELL
Mitchell wrote the book The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics. A new edition has just been released. Excerpts of the book and relevant videos are available

Mitchell, who writes the Media Fix blog for TheNation.com, just wrote the piece “Upton Sinclair’s EPIC Campaign: His 1934 California gubernatorial run helped push the New Deal to the left,” which states: “Nearly two years after a Democrat promising hope and change entered the White House, amid an economic crisis left behind by an unpopular Republican, unemployment remained at century-high levels. Despite vast expenditures on new stimulus programs, recovery seemed far off. Opponents in the GOP (and even some in the president’s own party) called for cutting spending to reduce an exploding budget deficit. Democrats were split: was the president acting as boldly as possible — or was he not nearly bold enough? Pundits on the left who once gave him more than a fair break now accused him of dithering or caving in to ‘big business.’ Yet as a midterm election approached — one that might decide whether the president and his programs had much of a future — right-wing demagogues on the stump and in the media accused the White House of imposing socialism on America.

“The year was 1934; the president was Franklin Roosevelt. The economic crisis FDR faced was far worse than what President Obama confronts today, but many similarities exist. Among the major differences: the grassroots activism getting all the attention this year comes from the right, not the left. And that’s one reason the outcome of the 2010 midterms will be quite different from the 1934 results, when Democrats gained seats in Congress, emboldening Roosevelt to propose landmark legislation establishing Social Security and other safety nets.

“Of all the left-wing mass movements that year, Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (EPIC) crusade proved most influential, and not just in helping to push the New Deal to the left. The Sinclair threat — after he easily won the Democratic gubernatorial primary — so profoundly alarmed conservatives that it sparked the creation of the modern political campaign, with its reliance on hired guns, advertising and media tricks, national fundraising, attack ads on the screen and more. Profiling two of the creators of the anti-Sinclair campaign, Carey McWilliams would later call this (in The Nation) ‘a new era in American politics — government by public relations.’ …

“Nearly three decades after his classic novel The Jungle (1906) exposed dangerous and abusive conditions in the meatpacking industry, Sinclair decided, ‘You have written enough. What the world needs is a deed.’ Sinclair, who had moved to California in 1916, had written dozens of influential books while finding time to spark numerous civil liberties and literary controversies, get arrested and become perhaps the best-known American leftist abroad.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

ROBERT WEISSMAN, via Angela Bradbery
KEVIN ZEESE
President of Public Citizen, Weissman said today: “American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS [created by Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie] are this year’s poster children for everything wrong with our campaign finance system in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision paved the way for unlimited corporate spending on elections, and more generally signaled that Wild West rules now prevail for elections. Yet Crossroads GPS manages to transgress the modest rules still in place, failing to register with the Federal Election Commission as a political committee. We need the FEC to act to redress this apparently wrongful activity. More than that, we need Congress to pass the DISCLOSE Act, so we know which corporations and billionaires are behind the attack ads now polluting our airwaves. We need Congress to pass the Fair Elections Now Act, to replace the private election financing system now poisoning our democracy. And we need a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision and get corporate money out of elections.”

Zeese, attorney and spokesperson for Protect Our Elections, added: “This is the first election since Citizens United allowed unlimited spending by corporations on elections. They have abused this already too broad power by misusing the tax laws and avoiding campaign finance laws. It is a violation of federal election laws to launder anonymous donations for electioneering activity through nonprofit groups that are allowed to receive anonymous contributions only if their primary purpose is non-electoral activity.” See full statement: Citizen.org

ERIC HENSAL
WILLIAM KLEIN
Earlier this year, Murray Hill Inc. became the first corporation to run for Congress. Klein is Murray Hill’s campaign manager; Hensal is its “designated human” representative. Their campaign announcement video was widely covered in the media.

Now, Murray Hill is running ads for other candidates. See news release

Ads are available online

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

California’s Proposition 23 seeks to suspend a 2006 law intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As of October 8, oil company Valero has donated more than $4 million to the effort to suspend the law.

JAMIE COURT
Court is author of the new book The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell: How To Win Grassroots Campaigns and president of Consumer Watchdog, which just released the report “Valero Energy and its California Profit Pipeline.” He said today: “Environmentalists have been fighting Proposition 23 on the basis that oil companies want to keep polluting in the state. The bigger truth is that oil companies want to keep price gouging the state’s motorists, and suspending the law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a tool to allow the refiners to continue to charge too much for gasoline and make too much profit per gallon. It’s all about dollars and cents per gallon.

“The report shows Californians have endured higher gasoline prices than the rest of the nation while Texas-based Valero has averaged 37 percent higher margins on each barrel of oil it refined in California. The result — $4.5 billion in profits for Valero.

“Valero’s high profitability in California depends on regaining and keeping high refining margins in the state, which requires weak regulation of the industry and steadily increasing gasoline consumption by California drivers. As the public hears more from Valero through its political campaigns, it is important to understand this company’s role in California’s long struggle with unbearably high fuel prices, and its history of squeezing big profits by gouging California motorists.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167