Why Don’t More People Support Whistleblowers? ...Legislatures Should Provide the Protections They Deserve The term whistleblower is thought to originate from Victorian England, where, when a crime was committed, the policemen would blow a whistle while chasing the criminals to alert the public of the crime. Today, much like those...
Dr. Whitney Louis is a prison psychologist with more than 15 years of experience working in prisons and jails across the U.S. In 2018 she decided to take up a new position in her home state at Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center (EWCC), a minimum-security facility located in Taft,...
Former CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou says that “the deck has been stacked against whistleblowers” because of their prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, which defines them as national traitors...
In a new CovertAction webinar famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg slams the author of new book alleging that Agee was a traitor when, ironically, everything in the book virtually screams out the opposite.
Being an FBI agent was Stephen Friend’s dream job. For eight and a half years working there, the Notre Dame graduate and Iraq War veteran investigated around 200 violent crimes, including human and sex-trafficking cases, and served five years as part of an FBI SWAT team. Friend did his job...
Resignations from the U.S. war on Vietnam, to the U.S. war on Iraq, to the U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza In the November 21, 2024, weekly newsletter of the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training  (ADST), the editors included a 1995 oral history interview with William Watts, White...
Bradley Birkenfeld, who exposed one of the largest tax scams in U.S. history, should also be pardoned On February 20, 2025, Donald Trump created the new position of the “Pardon Czar” to recommend “executive clemency” candidates, naming Alice Marie Johnson to that role. Johnson had been sentenced to life imprisonment without...
I have made more than several trips to Iceland over the past several months. I genuinely love the place. The population is small, highly educated, friendly, and welcoming to outsiders. I have been consistently surprised at the number of Syrian, Kurdish and Ukrainian refugees that I have met, all...
In this special episode of CovertAction Bulletin, we spend the entire hour with former CIA analyst and field agent John Kiriakou. Kiriakou became a whistleblower when he exposed the CIA’s official torture program—and then became the only person jailed for it. We discuss how the ongoing campaign against Julian Assange should inform us about how to view and support the work of other whistleblowers. While Assange remains in prison and under threat of extradition and trial in the U.S., the threat to journalists, publishers and activists continues to grow.
Laura Martinez was living an idyllic life in an upscale San Antonio suburb with her common-law husband Charlie Thrash, 78, when, on March 6, 2019, Charlie was taken by police from their home and placed in an assisted living facility. Charlie was declared to be incapacitated and placed under guardianship...