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...
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...
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,...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
