MEDIA ROOTS- What happened to all that talk about transparency, Mr. President? Oh right, it was all just empty rhetoric. One of the first things Obama did once he elected was promise an “unprecedented level of transparency” in government. He was even given a transparency award which was ironically delivered to him in a private Oval Office ceremony off the public record. However, his administration has exacerbated some of the most egregious policies regarding secrecy and censorship.

The Obama administration has not only prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president combined. Officials in this administration are also responsible for classifying 77 million documents in 2010—a shocking one-year jump of 40 percent. Furthermore, this cabinet has misguidedly used the Espionage Act in five cases of news media disclosures, when previously there were no more than four in all of White House history.

Abby

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NEW YORK TIMES– A former top official in charge of ensuring that real secrets are kept secret has delivered a stunning repudiation of the Obama administration’s decision to use the Espionage Act against a whistle-blower attempting to expose government waste and abuse.

J. William Leonard, who directed the Information Security Oversight Office during the George W. Bush administration, filed a formal complaint about the prosecution with the Justice Department and the National Security Agency, and urged punishment of officials who needlessly classify documents that contain no actual secrets.

In the case in question, Thomas Drake, an N.S.A. employee, faced 35 years in prison for espionage after he leaked information to a reporter about a potential billion-dollar computer boondoggle. The case collapsed last month with Mr. Drake walking away after a token misdemeanor plea to providing information to an unauthorized person. The government was deservedly berated by Judge Richard Bennett of Federal District Court in Maryland for an “unconscionable” pursuit of the accused across “four years of hell.”

Prosecutors dropped the felony charges at the 11th hour after Judge Bennett ordered them to show allegedly classified material to the jury. But Mr. Leonard said he was willing to testify for Mr. Drake that there were no secrets at issue and that he had never seen “a more deliberate and willful example of government officials improperly classifying a document.”

The Obama administration has misguidedly used the Espionage Act in five such cases of news media disclosures; previously there were no more than four in all of White House history. This comes as officials classified nearly 77 million documents last year — a one-year jump of 40 percent. The government claim that this was because of improved reporting is not reassuring.

Two years ago, President Obama ordered all agencies to review secret material by June 2012 with a goal of promoting more declassification. Unfortunately, the administration’s emphasis since then has all been in the opposite direction. Treating potentially embarrassing information as a state secret is the antithesis of healthy government.

Read more about Why Is That A Secret?

© 2011 The New York Times

Photo by Flickr user Animation Concept

MEDIA ROOTS- Perhaps one of the most abhorrent aspects of US foreign policy in the 21st century is the privatization of the US military and the government’s outsourcing of military jobs to corrupt war contractors.

Despite Obama’s early campaign rhetoric about scaling down the use of contractors, he has increased their presence– they now make up approximately 50% of the total military force in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  

Military contractors are murderous thugs-for-hire who act above the law and hold zero allegiance to any constitutional body. Blackwater’s sordid slew of contemptuous behavior and criminal actions during the Iraq war might have cast a negative light upon them, but it didn’t stop the Obama administration from awarding their criminality with a quarter billion dollar contract to continue working in US war zones.

This unaccountability for criminal acts is not unique to Blackwater. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) is a private security company that employs more US private contractors and holds larger contracts with the US government than any other firm in Iraq.

In 2007, a KBR employee named Jamie Leigh Jones claimed that she was gang raped by multiple KBR workers at a camp in Iraq’s Green Zone. After she reported the rape, she was reportedly locked in a shipping container and threatened with her job if she took further action. Appallingly, KBR has turned the case around and is now suing Jones for making “frivolous claims”, demanding $2 million in damages.

“They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us,” her lawyer, Todd Kelly, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them.”

It’s shameful that these corporations have essentially no oversight from the US government– the Crime Victims Office at the Department of Justice was unable to investigate the incident because of a lack of jurisdiction over private contractors in Iraq.

Now it’s Jones’s word against KBR, and it doesn’t look like she has much of a chance to win against the monolithic corporation. Let’s just hope she can walk away without having given them a dime.

Written by Abby Martin

Photo by flickr user wenews

MEDIA ROOTS- One of the most bizarre aspects of 9/11 is undoubtedly the mysterious “collapse” of World Trade Center Building Seven, a 47 story steel skyscraper that was never hit by an airplane, yet fell into its own footprint on 5:20 pm that fateful day.

The corporate media, the federal government and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the arm of the government that eventually investigated the collapse) all maintain that Building Seven fell due to fires alone, despite a plethora of contradictory evidence pointing to controlled demolition.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a non profit organization consisting of over 1500 building professionals who have put their careers on the line to call for a new investigation into the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings. Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 is a new AE911Truth documentary that decimates the government’s official account of Building Seven’s destruction. The fifteen minute film features excellent interviews from building professionals and AE911Truth signatories. 

Abby Martin

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Solving the Mystery of WTC 7

http://AE911Truth.org

http://RememberBuilding7.org

AMG– Award winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores the human and political consequences of one of the most bitter scandals of the war in Iraq in this feature. In the 1960’s, a prison was built in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city west of Baghdad, and during the regime of Saddam Hussein it became a center of torture and abuse where political dissidents were subjected to agonizing punishment or death.

Following the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, the prison was taken over by American military authorities, and was used as a holding facility for prisoners of war and suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces. The prison’s reputation as a site of widespread abuse rose again when journalists discovered photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and humiliated in an ugly variety of ways by American soldiers, a scandal which had a major impact on international thinking about the war. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib offers an in-depth look at the story behind the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, featuring interviews with observers on both sides of the national divide.

HBO Film, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

© 2007 HBO

MEDIA ROOTS- Fighting wars with robots is becoming an increasingly popular way for the US government to engage in combat. With the lack of US troop presence in the country, people might hardly consider America to be at war with Pakistan. However, US drone strikes in the region have dramatically escalated under the Obama administration, destroying thousands of families and further devastating the land that is still recovering from last year’s devastating floods.

Despite the government and corporate media’s propagandistic talking point about only alleged “militants” being the targets and victims of US drone strikes, the evidence compiled by independent researchers paints a more realistic picture: 90% of casualties from drone strikes are innocent civilians. Glenn Greenwald further analyzes the discrepancy between the government’s official line and the perception of Pakistanis.

Abby

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SALON– Two weeks ago, President Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, excoriated the White House for its reliance on drones in multiple Muslim nations, pointing out, as Politico put it, that those attacks “are fueling anti-American sentiment and undercutting reform efforts in those countries.” Blair said: “we’re alienating the countries concerned, because we’re treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us.” Blair has an Op-Ed … in The New York Times making a similar argument with a focus on Pakistan, though he uses a conspicuously strange point to make his case:

Qaeda officials who are killed by drones will be replaced. The group’s structure will survive and it will still be able to inspire, finance and train individuals and teams to kill Americans. Drone strikes hinder Qaeda fighters while they move and hide, but they can endure the attacks and continue to function.

Moreover, as the drone campaign wears on, hatred of America is increasing in Pakistan. American officials may praise the precision of the drone attacks. But in Pakistan, news media accounts of heavy civilian casualties are widely believed. Our reliance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our soldiers is bitterly resented in a country that cannot duplicate such feats of warfare without cost to its own troops.

Though he obviously knows the answer, Blair does not say whether this widespread Pakistani perception about civilian casualties is based in fact; if anything, he insinuates that this “belief” is grounded in the much-discussed affection which Pakistanis allegedly harbor for fabricated anti-American conspiracy theories. While the Pakistani perception is significant unto itself regardless of whether it’s accurate — the belief about drones is what fuels anti-American hatred — it’s nonetheless bizarre to mount an anti-drone argument while relegating the impact of civilian deaths to mere “belief,” all while avoiding informing readers what the actual reality is. Discussions of the innocent victims of American military violence is one of the great taboos in establishment circles; that Blair goes so far out of his way to avoid discussing it highlights how potent that taboo is.

Read the full commentary about Pakistani Belief About Drones: Perceptive or Paranoid?

Written by Glen Greenwald

© 2011 Salon

Photo by Flickr user JimNTexas