Primary Sources

When whistleblowers have been tried under the Espionage Act, the US government has successfully barred them telling the jury about what it is they are on trial for exposing. It’s clear the US government is afraid of juries hearing about the realities of drone strikes, mass surveillance, torture, and other abuses of power. 

When war crimes are exposed, the government puts the truth teller in jail. The Belmarsh Tribunal, named for the notorious British prison where Julian Assange is being held, puts the real criminals on the docket. 

On February 25, 2022,  the latest session of the Belmarsh Tribunal was held in New York City and featured Primary Sources host & DRAD policy director, Chip Gibbons, as well as Margaret Kunstler, Srecko Horvat, Jeffrey Sterling, Deborah Hrbek, Nancy Hollander & Mohamed Ould Slahi as speakers, among others. The event was sponsored by Defending Rights & Dissent, Progressive International, the Courage Foundation, The Intercept, and other organizations.

In this bonus episode of the Primary Sources Podcast, hear the powerful voices of the Belmarsh Tribunal. To learn more about the Belmarsh Tribunal, visit https://progressive.international

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"A prosecution is when you use court proceedings to prosecute a crime. When you misuse judicial institutions to persecute, to silence a dissident who has committed no crime  and you're using the judicial machinery to silence him and to punish him, that's persecution."

This is how UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer describes to host Chip Gibbons the legal proceedings against Assange. Melzer was initially skeptical and reluctant to become involved in the Assange case. Yet, after he led a medical team to visit Assange in Belmarsh Prison he concluded Assange was a victim of psychological torture. As he continued to investigate the actions of multiple governments against Assange, his own initially negative views of the WikiLeaks publisher were dramatically altered.

As Melzer warns in his book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution, "We must not allow Assange's persecutors to dictate his story, for those who suppress their own crimes and misconduct are unlikely to tell us the truth about a man who lifted the veil and exposed their corruption."

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This is the story of one of the largest leaks of classified information in US history, leaks which exposed US war crimes and other abuses of power. From 2010 to 2011, WikiLeaks worked with media the world over, to publish the Collateral Murder Video, Iraq and Afghan War Logs, State Department Cables, and Guantanamo Bay Detainee Assessments.

 It is also the story of the US national security state's ruthless relation against those involved, including the source, whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and the publisher, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Journalist Kevin Gosztola, who covered both the Chelsea Manning court martial and Julian Assange extradition trial joins host Chip Gibbons to recount the legal and extra legal war on WikiLeaks.

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The prosecution of Julian Assange marks the first time a publisher of truthful information has been indicted under the Espionage Act. In the first of a series of episodes exploring what WikiLeaks exposed and the lengths the US government went to silence them, Primary Sources looks at WikiLeaks' role in exposing human rights abuses at the notorious US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Nearly ⅓ of the charges against WikiLeaks publisher Assange pertain to Guantanamo Bay Detainee Assessment files released by WikiLeaks. Yet these files remain under discussed by the media.

To help understand what they are and why they matter, host Chip Gibbons is joined by Andy Worthington, a leading expert on Guantanamo Bay who worked with Wikileaks on the release of the Guantanamo Files, and Clive Stafford Smith, a pioneering human rights attorney who, in the aftermath of 9/11, was one of the first lawyers willing to represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Both men testified on behalf of Assange at his extradition hearing.

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Those in the drone program have witnessed first hand the serious human costs of the US's global assassinations program. For years, veterans of the drone program have worked to alert the public to the realities of the drone warfare.

The Kabul Strike, which killed 10 civilians, including 7 children, shocks the conscience of all thinking people. But as drone whistleblowers, have tried to warn, it was hardly an unusual event.

Host Chip Gibbons is joined by drone whistleblowers Lisa Ling, Keagan Miller, Cian Westmoreland, and Christopher Aaron for a timely and troubling conversation. 

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"There's been one systemic process of lying throughout the Afghan War. From the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration it has just been systemic lying from the American government about the war."

This is what Matthew Hoh says about the US war in Afghanistan during this episode of Primary Sources. Hoh would know. After already completing two assignments in Iraq, Hoh joined the US State Department in Afghanistan. In 2009, he made headlines when he resigned in protest of President Obama's plans to escalate the Afghan War. Hoh joins host Chip Gibbons to discuss the four decade history of US intervention in Afghanistan, his own journey as a whistleblower, and how the Pentagon hired a PR firm to discredit him when he spoke out against the war.  

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After September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency, with the approval of President George W. Bush, began a highly classified program of renditions and torture. While torture violates both US and international law, President Obama declined to hold any one accountable for the program, saying he was looking forwards, not backwards.

That policy, however, did not apply to whistleblowers. The Obama Administration prosecuted former CIA analyst and case officer John Kiriakou for revealing information about the US torture program. Kiriakou first confirmed the CIA had used waterboarding while Bush was still in office. In spite of the CIA filing a crimes report, they declined prosecution. But the Obama Administration, at the request of CIA Director John Brennan, revived the case and sent Kiriakou to prison.

To date, he remains the only person to be held accountable in connection to the torture program.

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Thomas Drake swore an oath to defend the US Constitution on multiple occasions. His fidelity to that oath put him on a collision course with his employer, the National Security Agency. Drake assisted in an inspector general complaint concerning a costly intelligence boondoggle and aided Congressional investigations into intelligence failures in the lead-up to 9/11. 

And as the national security state expanded post 9/11, Drake's oath forbade him to remain silent when the government undertook surveillance that violated the rights of Americans. Drake's good deeds put a target on his back. As a result, he became the signature Espionage Act case in an emerging War on Whistleblowers.

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Jeffrey Sterling has described himself as an unwanted spy. 

In the early 2000s, he attempted to take the CIA on over its racial discrimination against him. Citing the state secrets doctrine, his case was never considered on its merits. Later, he would go to the Senate Intelligence Committee to alert them about Operation Merlin, a plan to give Iran faulty nuclear plans. After being fired from the CIA, Sterling thought his ordeal was over. Then in 2006, the FBI raided his home and in 2011 brought an indictment against him under the Espionage Act. 

Sterling joins host Chip Gibbons to talk about life inside the CIA, his controversial trial, and his path to becoming a whistleblower.

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Attorney Jesselyn Radack has been at the forefront of opposing the government's War on Whistleblowers. She has represented numerous clients indicted under the Espionage Act, including Edward Snowden, Daniel Hale, Thomas Drake, and John Kiriakou. Jesselyn knows first hand the perils of being a whistleblower. 

Before becoming one of the leading attorneys defending the rights of national security whistleblowers, she was a Department of Justice employee who blew the whistle on FBI ethics violations during the interrogation of so-called American Taliban John Walker Lindh. Jesselyn joins host Chip Gibbons to discuss her journey and what it's like being on the front lines of the War on Whistleblowers

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