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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
