The only way to combat corruption says Stephen Levitt is to change rules to undo corrupt incentives. Unleash more investigative reporters and develop strong protections for whistleblowers. Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics, Sky Atlantic, caption; viz also novel
They were paid so much to look the other way ... Those feeder funds were incentivised not to ask the questions. To be wilfully blind, if you will. And not to get too intrusive into the [Bernie] Madoff scheme. Harry Markopolos, whistleblower, evidence to congressional inquiry
In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as the Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and ‘security’ agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal ...
Snowden’s revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone, is further evidence of modern form of fascism – that is the ‘abyss’. Having nurtured old-fashioned fascists around the world – from Latin America to Africa and Indonesia – the genie has risen at home. Understanding this is as important as understanding the criminal abuse of technology ...
The power of truth-tellers like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media. WikiLeaks is especially dangerous because it provides truth-tellers with a means to get the truth out. This was achieved by ‘Collatoral Murder’, the cockpit video of an US Apache helicopter allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning. The impact of this one video marked Manning and Assange for state vengeance. Here were US airmen murdering journalists and maiming children in a Baghdad street, clearly enjoying it, and describing their atrocity as ‘nice’. Yet, in one vital sense, they did not get away with it; we are witnesses now, and the rest is up to us. John Pilger, article June 2013, ‘Understanding the Latest Leaks is Understanding the Rise of a New Fascism’
The critical moment in the political trial of the century was on 28 February when Bradley Manning stood and explained why he had risked his life to leak tens of thousands of official files. It was a statement of morality, conscience and truth: the very qualities that distinguish human beings. This was not deemed mainstream news in America; and were it not for Alexa O’Brien, an independent freelance journalist, Manning’s voice would have been silenced. John Pilger, article August 2013, ‘The Courage of Bradley Manning Will Inspire Others to Seize Their Moment of Truth’
The Siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His ‘crime’ is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From August 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having just published top secret US intercepts – US spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs. John Pilger, article ‘Assange: The Untold Story of an Epic Stuggle for Justice’
It’s [Julian Assange] a warning from history … that can happen to anybody … It’s an assault on citizenship … John Pilger, interview Going Underground, ‘Julian Assange Exposed US ‘Kill Them All’ Mentality’
He [Julian Assange] can’t see his defence documents … It belonged in a show trial in the 1950s: Moscow, Prague, you name it … Do they know what has happened to justice here? John Pilger, interview RT channel 2019
16 of the 17 at least charges against Assange in the United States are unlawful, are political. ibid.
Under President Obama it became OK to imprison whistleblowers more than all previous presidents combined; he used drone strikes to bomb civilian populations; and he deported a record number of immigrants and refugees: what Flint needed was for President Obama to dig up the toxic pipes and have them replaced, but instead of sending in the army corps of engineers, he just sent in the army. Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 11/9, 2018
A system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not. Citizen Four, HBO 2014
The NSA has built the largest repository for intercepted communications in Bluffdale, Utah. I started filming the site in 2011 when construction began. ibid.
In 2006 technician Mark Klein revealed that the NSA was tapping into the AT&T Network in San Francisco. ibid.
State power as against the people’s ability to meaningfully oppose that power. ibid. Snowden
GCHQ has probably the most invasive network-intercept program anywhere in the world. ibid. Snowden
Six hours later Glenn Greenwald publishes his first story. ibid.
It’s collecting the phone records of every single customer … It’s indiscriminate. ibid. Greenwald
I just disappeared when she was on vacation. ibid. Snowden
The NSA and FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading internet companies. ibid. CNN news
Snowden applies for refugee status through the UN and goes underground. I stay in Hong Kong hoping to continue filming but realize I am being followed. Six days later I return to Berlin. ibid.
After 40 days spent in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden receives political asylum in Russia for one year. ibid.
Few acts are as universally lauded or as manifestly laudable as the act of whistleblowing. The Corbett Report, Podcast 119 Lesson in Resistance: Whistleblowing, James Corbett online 2010
9/11 Whistleblowers have stepped forward to deny the tissue of lies that is the 9/11 Commission Report in spades. ibid.
Sibel Edmonds learned … gross negligence and criminal conspiracy in the FBI and State Department. ibid.
Things are not unfolding to the advantage of the whistleblower. ibid.
Obama’s presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers. The Corbett Report: Obama’s Hypocrisy, James Corbett online 2011
The gulf that exists between the Obama of the campaign trail and Obama’s actions since taking office has been glaringly obvious … There have been no shortage of examples of Obama’s duplicity. The Corbett Report: Obama’s War on Whistleblowers, Corbett Report online 2013
The war on whistleblowers his administration has been waging since the moment he took office … more prosecutions on whistleblowers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined. ibid.
‘But someone would have talked’ say the self-styled sceptics that believe the government’s official conspiracy theory of 9/11. The Corbett Report: 9/11 Whistleblowers, James Corbett online 2019
Someone did talk. In fact numerous people have come up to blow the whistle on the events of September 11th 2001 and the cover-up that surrounds those events. ibid.
‘My feeling is that metallurgical tests are the crux of the crux of the crux.’ ibid. Kevin Ryan email to Frank Gayle of NIST
Of the many many lies told by government officials in the days following the attacks, few have been as blatant or as clearly documents as that of the safety of that dust. ibid.
‘Officials claim EPA misled public about safety of air quality at Ground Zero.’ ibid. NBC news 2003
‘[Dr Cate] Jenkins disseminated these disclosures and complaints to her supervisors and others at the EPA …’ ibid. US department of labor administrative review board
Barry Jennings: ‘Big explosion, blew us back on to the eighth floor …’ Jennings’ testimony was one of the few eye-witness accounts of one of the deepest mysteries of that day – the destruction of WTC7. ibid.
Muslim terrorists: Information began to come out that created problems for this narrative: reports of these devout Muslim fundamentalists drinking alcohol and partying in strip clubs; revelations that two of the suspects had been allowed into the US after being identified as al Qaeda agents; confirmation that these same agents lived with an FBI asset while in the US … ibid.
14 of the alleged hijackers’ visas to enter the United States had been issued at the same office … The Jeddah consulate … has a history of issuing visas to terrorists at the request of the CIA. ibid.