In Case You Missed This... This Is What Happens When You Take Your Concerns "Through Channels"

[WillyT]

Last edited Sun Jul 13, 2014, 08:27 PM - Edit history (1)

Just heard him interviewed on NPR just a bit ago...

CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’
By Greg Miller - WaPo
7/4/2014

<snip>

His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

It was there that Scudder discovered a stack of articles, hundreds of histories of long-dormant conflicts and operations that he concluded were still being stored in secret years after they should have been shared with the public.

To get them released, Scudder submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act — a step that any citizen can take, but one that is highly unusual for a CIA employee. Four years later, the CIA has released some of those articles and withheld others. It also has forced Scudder out.

His request set in motion a harrowing sequence. He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension.

In an interview, Scudder, 51, cast his ordeal as a struggle against “mindless” bureaucracy, but acknowledged that it was hard to see any winners in a case that derailed his CIA career, produced no criminal charges from the FBI, and ended with no guarantee that many of the articles he sought will be in the public domain anytime soon.

“I submitted a FOIA and it basically destroyed my entire career,” Scudder said. “What was this whole exercise for?”

<snip>

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-employees-quest-to-release-information-destroyed-my-entire-career/2014/07/04/e95f7802-0209-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, WillyT.

[WillyT]

2. Anytime... Uncle Joe, Anytime...

[Uncle Joe]

4. It's ironic to hear "Why didn't Snowden, et al go through channels?" considering the track record

of what happened to those people that did.

[WillyT]

6. EXACTLY !!!

And NOT the only one that folks are quiet on.

What’s more, these are documents that government officials have repeatedly insisted Edward Snowden would never have been able to access.

Regardless of the government’s denials, Snowden did have these documents, and now we know at least some of what they contained. So does Congress.

DULink: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025232515

Funny about that silence, no ???

[Uncle Joe]

8. This thread needs a theme song.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

13. Greenwald on Bill Maher: systematic attack on whistle blowers

GLENN GREENWALD: Right, except there is this thing the Constitution that does say that there's a guaranteed a free press. The reason for that is because the founders knew and I think anybody who pays minimal attention to any politics anywhere knows that when people in power can operate in the dark, inevitably they have abuse that power. So you need outside forces to bring light and transparency to what they’re doing and one of the ways you do that is through journalism and through guaranteeing a free press. That is its purpose to provide a check on their power.

<>

Why would Edward Snowden want to come back to the United States? A country that has a systematic attack on whistle blowers--

<>

There is no whistle blower where people in government don’t say that. Daniel Ellsberg is considered a hero by everybody. You just said “he’s no Ellsberg.” Go look what the Nixon administration said in 1971 when he wasn’t a hero. He's helping the Russians. He's probably a Russian spy. He's putting men and women in harm's way. People in the national security establishment, like Richard Clarke, even if they’re well intentioned, hate transparency, they want to work in secrecy. They say this in every instance that somebody brings transparency to them, you are helping the terrorists.

http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/laura-flint/2014/06/23/glenn-greenwald-calls-bulls-snowden-doubters-real-time

[sabrina 1]

16. Greenwald needs to stop being right about these things, this is why they contracted a smear

campaign against him! Some democracy we live in when journalists can be targeted for smear campaigns by 'private security corporations' for telling the truth.

Thanks for the link. Greenwald has always been good at ripping apart the right wing lies and deceptions.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

18. an aside: it took some searching to find this...

...I watched the episode and *this* was the salient point. But Greenwald called "bullshit" on Maher and a vet, so article after article was about GG saying "bullshit" not why he said it.

[ReRe]

26. I remember it...

... the Vet was way over the top. He protested WAY too much. I sat in my den shouting to him to STFU!

[Babel_17]

3. I've seen It, and I remember being struck by the seriousness of it: K&R (nt)

[Stuart G]

5. k and r...nt

[wildbilln864]

7. big k & r! n/t

[Enthusiast]

9. Kicked and recommended!

Unreal.

[cantbeserious]

10. Yes - Working Through Channels - The Process For Officially Being Ignored And Ostracized

Thank You For Sharing

[bvar22]

15. ---and worse.... much, much worse.

*

[Aerows]

11. K & R n/t

[LuvNewcastle]

12. People know that doesn't work, they're just trying to find

a way to justify being authoritarians. We have people on this board who are just fine with all the spying and violation of privacy that our government does, they just can't freely admit that because they'll be outed as fascists.

[MannyGoldstein]

14. Glenn Greenwald is the most dangerous man on the planet

Can we focus on that instead of these ephemera?

Regards,

TWM

[rhett o rick]

23. Ah, you're just sayin that to piss off Darth Cheney.

I hope it works.

[nashville_brook]

17. k and r

[JDPriestly]

19. K&R. What idiocy.

[JoeyT]

20. I thought that was the whole point of official channels.

To act as a firewall between shit being done to the peasantry and the peasantry finding out about it.

Absolutely no one believes the "official channels" line. As much as I disagree with some people on this subject, they're not stupid people. They know official channels don't do anything just as well as we do, so proof official channels are useless isn't going to matter a bit.

[TheKentuckian]

22. Yup, it is all a game of silence the heretics and distract the audience.

[Art_from_Ark]

33. It's like the naval commander in the Monty Python sketch about Lake Pahoe

"If anyone wakes up in the morning and finds any toothmarks at all, anywhere on their body, they are to tell me immediately, so that I can immediately take every measure... to hush the whole thing up".

[Rex]

21. JFK was right in wanting to get rid of the CIA, they've been out of control

for half a century.

[TheKentuckian]

24. Yup, which is why my position is radical, clandestine services should be burned.

Expose all operatives, practices, methods, and revenue streams.

There is far too much bathwater to worry about any hypothetical baby, our spook organizations are a bigger threat than any and all they supposedly protect us from.

[Rex]

25. That is why when a fellow "DUer" comes in to defend such clandestine organizations

I have to wonder as to their motive. Like when a fellow "DUer" laughs off the term BFEE...wow, I guess on DU1 and DU2 they supported the Bush family but didn't talk about it much...

[freebrew]

30. And now...

he's dead. Thanks CIA, wonder what kind of nation this would be without you.

[rhett o rick]

27. Those that think that problems like can be solved by "taking it thru channels" are either ignorant

or ....... (sorry, I am stuck on ignorant). In fact I'd go so far as saying "willfully ignorant", not that the ignorant will understand the difference. Seriously, look up the definition of "taking it thru channels". 1. Method used to discourage complaints. 2. Method used to provide the organization leaders plausible deniability. For example, when Tailhook hit the fan, the Admirals claimed they didn't know a thing about it. Apparently those complaints that "went thru channels" never made it to the Admirals. Tailhook was common knowledge throughout the Navy, but the Admirals pleaded ignorance. (I think a few got court martialed anywayz).

[Demeter]

31. The word you were looking for is "evil"

and I am more than willing to put it out there. It's the only alternative to "ignorant" in this situation.

[90-percent]

34. to riff off mr. rick's post

Those that think that problems like can be solved by "taking it thru channels" are either ignorant

or ....... (sorry, I am stuck on ignorant).

or Secretary of State John Kerry.


-90& Jimmy

[Sunlei]

28. Past time to get rid of the CIA, what do we need that weird 'club' for ?

[rhett o rick]

32. I think it's way past time where we might have a chance to "get rid of" or even controlling the NSA/

CIA. IMO they run the country.

[Sunlei]

35. probably something placed in our files just for posting the words!

I wonder if we can FOI act request our own files ?

[rhett o rick]

39. They must have a point system. Bad mouth the NSA and your points go up. Reach

150 and bingo-bango you are on the no fly list.

[2banon]

29. He's lucky..

that he didn't get charged and prosecuted for disclosing "State Secrets" and was able to walk away with his pension. I sort of expected that kind of outcome in the OP. Happy it didn't out that way for him.

[90-percent]

36. Don't know if John tried to go through channels or not?

But, this is what usually happens to American whistle blowers that expose egregious wrong doing by our government these days.

https://www.facebook.com/DefendJohnKiriakou



-90% Jimmy

[WillyT]

37. Have You Seen These:

JOHN KIRIAKOU’S LETTERS FROM LORETTO

Go Here: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/

Scroll down... right-hand side.

[90-percent]

38. Thanks

It's been in the back of my mind for a while, but WTF, I'm gonna write John a letter. It is a travesty when my own government imprisons people with the honor and integrity of Kiriakou. Frequently. And our entire prison-industrial-complex is base and inhumane and is the sort of thing one would expect from predatory animals. Worse, actually, animals only do it to survive. We do it to be cruel and ruin lives and make money in the process for private corporations. We incarcerate more than the most bad ass fascist police state totalitarian anti-democracy countries on the planet. A lot more!

In the legalize pot debate, my talking point has always been that the most dangerous and unhealthy aspect of pot by logarithmic orders of magnitude is exposure to our criminal justice system!

This is the 21st Century, not the 12th, fer chrissakes!

-90% Jimmy

[woo me with science]

40. kick