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...
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...
CovertAction Magazine co-founder Philip Agee was one of the best known whistleblowers of the 1970s, writing a tell-all book exposing CIA crimes and the influence of multi-national corporations in driving illegal covert operations.
After the book’s publication, Agee was retaliated against by the CIA, which forced him to live the...
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...
Whistleblowers past and present, who fought against injustices and exposed the truth about government malpractice, were honored at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on July 30 featuring a tribute to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
The event was part of the 11th Annual...
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...
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...
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.
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...
Daniel Ellsberg, the former RAND Corporation and Pentagon employee who, in June 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers exposing U.S. government duplicity in the Vietnam War, was honored at a whistleblowers summit on July 30 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Ellsberg died in June at the age of...
