National Bird follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs issues of our time: the secret U.S. drone war.
At the center of the film are three U.S. military veterans. Plagued by guilt over participating in the killing of faceless people in foreign countries, they decide to speak out publicly, despite the possible consequences.
In December 1998, Michael Riconosciuto was serving out a 26-year prison sentence at Allenwood Penitentiary in Pennsylvania on drug charges when he was given information by a rabbi close to his family about an al-Qaeda plot to hijack airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center,...
Richard D. Robinson was forced to flee South Korea and destroy the first draft of a manuscript he wrote, Betrayal of a Nation.
Richard D. Robinson (1921-2009) founded the study of international business management at the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), authored 16 books...
Julian Assange has been held in isolation (23 hours per day) at Belmarsh high-security prison since he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on April 11, 2019.
The United States government claims he violated its Espionage Act of 1917 and committed illegal computer hacking. U.S. authorities requested...
John Stockwell is a former CIA officer who became a whistleblower and outspoken critic of the Agency, the U.S. intelligence community and the imperialist policies of the U.S. government. He left the CIA in 1976 after serving there for 12 years following service in the U.S. Marine Corps...
The Intelligence Community lost a bona fide hero last month with the death of David C. MacMichael, 93, a former contract CIA analyst who resigned from the Agency in 1983 to go public with information that the Reagan Administration was planning a coup d’état against the Nicaraguan government of...
"I came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keeps us safe... I began to speak out, believing my participation in the drone program to have been deeply wrong."
John Stockwell, a CIA operative in Africa and Asia who resigned from the Agency in December 1976 and wrote a tell-all memoir, In Search of Enemies (1978), died in June 2026.
With Philip Agee, Stockwell was among the most important national security and CIA whistleblowers of the Cold War era.
Both...
The smearing of Gaston Means has continued into the 21st century
In the upside-down world in which we live, corrupt government officials are celebrated in the media and given prizes and awards, while whistleblowers who expose their malfeasance face smear attacks and persecution and can be framed for crimes...
Like so many Americans, I was heartbroken to learn of the death of my friend, mentor, and personal hero Daniel Ellsberg. Dan was a giant of modern American history. He was the godfather of national security whistleblowers. And he was a patriot who wanted nothing more than to ensure...
