Ulfkotte’s political awakening about the corruption of the media industry came when he was sent to cover the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and was instructed to present Iraq as the good guys A former editor for the German main daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Dr. Udo Ulfkotte became...
Nearly 13 years after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released the video Collateral Murder exposing the brutal and intentional killing of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists, over 150 people packed the same room in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. for the Belmarsh Tribunal. January 20th’s sitting was...
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.
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...