NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake speaks at National Press Club - March 15, 2013

good afternoon and welcome to the National Press Club my name is Angela grayling keen I'm a reporter for Bloomberg News and I'm the hundred and sixth president of the National Press Club we are the world's leading professional organization for journalists committed to our professions future through our programming with the events such as this while fostering a Free Press worldwide for more information about the National Press Club please visit our website at WWF to programs offered through the National Press Club journalism Institute please visit www.azpbs.org/horizonte our attending so it is not necessarily evidence of a lack of journalistic activity I'd also like to welcome our c-span and public radio audiences our luncheons are also featured on our member produced weekly podcast from the National Press Club available on iTunes you can follow the action today on twitter using the hashtag npc lunch after our guest speech concludes we'll have Q&A and i'll ask as many questions as time permits now it's time to introduce our head table guess I'd ask each of you to stand up briefly as your name is announced from your right Tim Shaw Rock a freelance writer for publications including the nation Rachel Oswald staff writer at national Journal's global security news wire and a vice-chair of the press clubs Press Freedom Committee REM writer the editor and senior vice president of the American Journalism Review and a columnist for USA Today Marilyn Thompson Washington bureau chief for Thomson Reuters Lewis Clark president of the Government Accountability Project skipping over the podium Allison Fitzgerald a freelance journalist and the speaker's committee chair and the organizer of today Thank You Alyson skipping over speaker for a moment John Donnelly senior writer at Congressional quarterly CQ roll call and chairman of the press clubs Press Freedom Committee Josh Rogin a senior staff writer at foreign policy magazine al Isley founding editor and editor at large at the hill newspaper and a Press Club member since 1965 Charles Lewis executive editor of the investigative reporting workshop and a professor at American University two years ago our guest today was accused by the US Justice Department of espionage the Air Force veteran and longtime senior executive at the National Security Agency was accused of giving classified documents to a news reporter Thomas Drake faced 35 years in prison a year later on the eve of his trial the government dropped all felony charges against mr. Drake he has since been honored as a whistleblower who helped to expose waste and fraud at the spy agency and to bring to light its massive effort to spy on Americans own citizens mr. Drake's ordeal began coincidentally on September 11th 2001 which happened to be his first day as a full-time employee of the NSA like all other US intelligence agencies the NSA had missed key pieces of information that might have tipped off the government that the terrorist attacks were imminent shortly after 9/11 mr. Drake came to believe that the agency could have predicted the attacks if it had made use of a surveillance system known as thinthread that could sift through massive amounts of data and detect patterns and key information instead NSA leaders turned to outside contractor SAIC to build a new data collection system called Trailblazer that cost more than 1 billion dollars 10 times the cost of thinthread at the same time mr. Drake learned that the agency was turning its surveillance capabilities on American citizens which he believed was a violation of the US Constitution he decided to speak up mr. Drake reported his concern turns about money wasted on trailblazer and about domestic surveillance to Congress and to the Defense Department's inspector general he became a material witness in to 9/11 congressional investigations even after the Inspector General found that the Trailblazer project was a massive waste and the program was killed little changed at the NSA mr. Drake then decided to go public he brought his information about the problems with Trailblazer to a Baltimore Sun reporter who wrote a series of articles exposing the waste mr. Drake insists he did not reveal any classified information yet when the New York Times in 2005 reported the stunning news that the u.s. government was tapping into its citizens telephone calls with no warrants mr. Drake became a target in one of the most aggressive leak investigations in history agents raided his home in 2007 took his computers and files and threatened that he could spend the rest of his life in prison in 2010 the Justice Department indicted mr. Drake for quote willful retention of classified documents it was only the fourth time in history that a citizen was charged with espionage for mishandling documents a conviction could have had a chilling effect on whistleblowers and under Nellis who often receive and keep defense documents Morton Halperin of the Open Society Institute said mr. Drake's prosecution quote poses a grave threat to the mechanism by which we learn what the government does instead the government's case fell apart when the government found no evidence that mr. Drake willfully leaked classified information mr. Drake sentencing judge said the prosecution was quote not proper it does not pass the smell test Thomas Drake now writes speaks and teaches about whistleblowing constitutional rights and abuse of government power he's the recipient of the 2011 Ridenhour truth-telling prize and the 2011 Sam Adams associates integrity and Excellence Award as we wrap up Sunshine Week here at the National Press Club please help me give a warm welcome to Thomas Drake [Applause] I'd like to thank the National Press Club for inviting me here I'm looking forward to the Q&A so I do have a few remarks kind of set the tone in the tenor and just reflect quite sub in a sobering manner on what happened to me and what's at stake for this country I've entitled my remarks in the Shadowlands of the secrecy state preying on the First Amendment I first want to announce however that I can neither confirm nor deny that a solar eclipse cast by the shadow government is at least partially blocking the view of sunshine week to do either might just reveal state secrets for reporters and journalists including those of you in the room unauthorized to receive them and I would not want you all to end up with allegedly class of information regarding the weather in Washington DC the White House blog on Wednesday said quote we celebrate sunshine week an appropriate time to discuss the importance of open government and freedom of information including a quote from President Obama saying quote openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness and government really just one rate Act the national security and human rights director at the Government Accountability Project remarked on Twitter just yesterday that after quote three years of shouting into the wilderness unquote she is relieved to see if the kool-aid crowd is finally realizing that the Obama ministration struck Oh nyan orgy of secrecy is finally reaching a boiling point Glenn Greenwald with The Guardian newspaper published a very powerful article yesterday titled quote Obama's secrecy fixation causing Sunshine Week implosion I like to remind everybody that President John F Kennedy said that the very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society I like to think that we have reached a critical event horizon and whether national security as a new state religion will further suck the dwindling light of the First Amendment into the black hole of classification and secrecy hidden from public view it seems that secrecy is actually strengthening the national security state in order to hide from accountability and oversight at the expense of informed public interest where it matters the most what is the price of keeping the public in the dark and having a government increasingly operating the dark through secret law or interpretations in secret of existing law after all this very event is part of Sunshine Week and I would like to highlight just one event that brings the message of sunshine week home regarding what's so at stake and our increasingly two-faced government the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings this week on addressing transparency in the federal bureaucracy moving toward a more open government the larger theme of the testimony before that committee centered on the inherent tension between the president's pledge for a new era of unprecedented openness and a record of invoking threats to national security to keep the public in a dark time and time again the written testimony and here I give a shout out to the project and government oversight and their pogo blog States quote there seems to be two obama administrations two american governments really one looks like a democracy in which an open government accountable to the people is an ideal and a priority and the other is a national security state where claims of national security often trump democratic principles such as a people's right to know civil liberties freedom of speech and whistleblower protections of course this is not an approach exclusive to this president but the unchecked secrecy of Obama's national security state is that cross-purposes with many of his administration's openness objectives and it raises doubts about the president's commit and declarations about transparency unquote so given where we are today at the National Press Club it seems to me that it's more than appropriate for us to discuss the long shadow of government secrecy obscuring the view of democracy in our constitutional republic or what's left of it threats to the First Amendment by the government is bullseye centered on a free and unfettered press designed to suppress and repress speech and political expression in America create fear through unilateral authority and privilege over what is fit or unfit for the First Amendment if speech becomes the instrument of crime when revealing government crime and wrongdoing we are under arbitrary authoritarian rule and not the rule of law our post 9/11 world the government is increasingly in the first unamended engage in a direct assault on free speech and the very foundation of our democracy because our very individual freedoms have now become fair game for the secrecy regime all in the name and under the mantle and cloak called national security in fact I can make an argument that government increasingly prefers to operate in the shadows and finds the First Amendment a constraint on its activities and yet taking off the veil of government secrecy has more often than not turned truth tellers and whistleblowers into turncoats and traitors who are then often criminally burned blacklisted and broken by the government on the stake of national security egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment many still occurring in secret far beyond the awareness and knowledge of most Americans are roading and chipping away the First Amendment for example the Patriot Act along with a number of other enabling acts including including the recently reauthorized FISA Amendments Act plus many more including massive abuse of Kolya ECPA and CFAA are now blunt and instruments of a homeland security and surveillance apparatus that legalizes government deception citizen monitoring and wrongdoing while those who reveal government wrongdoing illegality embarrassment are often prosecuted and increasingly indicted for spreaking speaking truth to power I know I knew too much truth and expose government illegalities fraud and abuse and was turned into a criminal for doing so I was charged on the espionage act faced many years in prison and became an enemy of the state it was five years of living under the boot of the surveillance state and yet and yet I was saved by the First Amendment and the court of public opinion and the Free Press including the strength and growing resiliency of the alternative media the very cornerstone of all of our liberties and freedoms the one on which all the rest rely the active voice and conscience of the Constitution of the United States of America freedom means everything to me and especially when I face the prospect of having all my freedoms taken away from me and place under all kinds of restrictions in movement and monitored activity for several years so for the sake of our common future and the country we want to keep we must ask of ourselves some very hard questions is the First Amendment becoming a casualty in an indefinite undeclared war where notions of free of a Free Press public interest an informed scissor II get in the way of national security interests defined in secret in our wired and wireless world what happens to anonymous speech and the press on the internet when the government has a persistent dragnet surveillance system in place the emergence of a virtual Orwellian state do we really want the government listening in on and tracking the lives of so many others have our constitutional freedoms become the latest victims of 9/11 is the intolerance shown by the secret federal government for the magnificent of our precious First Amendment freedoms a foreboding of things to come will national security replace our individual rights will fear take priority over freedom will government censorship and propaganda triumph over personal choice and disclosure whose suppression and repression the instrument for stamping out dissent will government embarrassment extinguish exposure is the tree of liberty becoming an endangered species and if we starve Liberty for the increasingly myopic sake of security what will we have left to defend what happens when the acid of secrecy and suppression erode the very bedrock of the First Amendment what happens when the sources of what Ria's really happening in government increasingly choose not to speak to the press what happens when we increasingly self censor ourselves and the news is not fit to print because it invites undue government attention how else will the press report the real news when their sources dry up and the government becomes a primary purveyor of its own news it is our freedom of choice that is at stake as citizens and not the government's to just take away from us in secret under the guise of keeping us safe from ourselves we must now rescue the constitution from our very own government before it becomes a hollow shell of its former self the rights we have the rights not privileges the rights we have under the First Amendment are the living blueprint and beacon for our personal freedoms and power of choice George Orwell said quote if Liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not to here unquote when there is no transparency openness or public accountability for the deeds of government including secret surveillance torture kill lists the cover the AUMF used to justify our foreign policy abandonment of due process FOIA redactions and delays prosecutor overreach and misconduct only invites further abuse secret rule and unchecked power by the government what happens to our country what happens to our country when laws are secretly reinterpreted behind closed doors by government officials who prefer to operate in the shadows without public debate but promote and support laws that violate the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution for the sake of national security so are we willing to forsake our liberties for the sake of security when in fact it is our very liberties which define the heart and core of our national security what is more pernicious in terms of a freedom of the press and an informed citizenry for the various when the very sources are threatened with life in prison for simply telling the truth about the government you see the First Amendment the First Amendment of all the amendments is an invaluable protection for public freedom against govern overreach and intrusion into our lives our fortunes on our very futures do we want to let the First Amendment join the list of endangered-species where the remaining descendants end up in a zoo somewhere behind a cage for people to come and gawk as Kevin gas stole a remarkable investigative reporter with Firedoglake said just yesterday and his article quote what is worse a powerful person telling citizens they have no right to know because they fervently believe that all hell will break loose if they allow any transparency or a powerful person who purports to favor transparency and openness telling citizens they do not have a right to know because he or she is not that powerful person who has contempt for open government unquote in an open and transparent society the Sisson areare supposed to know the truth of its own government so if the First Amendment is the sunshine of our Liberty how else are we to remain free if the government cast its shadows over you and me after your experience would you advise someone else in your position to blow the whistle on government wrongdoing yes but make sure you understand what you're getting yourself into do not speak to the FBI and make sure you have a lawyer right from the start if my case is any example they'll do everything they can to take anything you say and anything they find and use it to justify charges that in my case were actually framed see I told the truth to the FBI agents they didn't believe me in fact four of the ten felony counts were for making false statements one of them was for obstructing justice you know why because a chief prosecutor said that unless I cooperated with the investigation they were going to pursue prosecution so the answer is yes we nee actually need more having spoken to Daniel Ellsberg he actually thought in the early 70s with all the publicity that surround the Pentagon Papers that more people would actually step forward and other than some close colleague no associates guess what hardly anybody else stepped forward regarding the travesty of Vietnam under what circumstances do you think that classified information should be leaked that's a loaded question classified is see what's happening now is the government is increasing wants to classify as much as possible because what that allows them to do is create a larger ambit in which they can charge you for having either retained disclosed or leaked classified information but the answer it directly if it involves war crimes it involves wrongdoing if it as violations of statute then yes there's very little in government that actually truly ever needs to be classified and always needs to be placed under constant review the problem is that the oversight mechanisms and the very executive orders and laws and statutes that govern the classification system are just objective Ropin and so when everything is increasingly classified nothing is classified and if everything is increasingly classified what remains a secret you mentioned that former colleagues said to you that they believe talking to reporters is a crime do you believe that that attitude is pervasive among government employees and maybe you could address it inside and outside of the intelligence community it is true that in the intelligence community which I was a part for many many years both as a government employee and as a contractor and even in the military that you are you do sign secrecy agreements and these vary based on the agency the secrecy agreement that I signed was to Burt was to protect the agreement what they call protected information which by definition was classified truly classified or under classification review it was actually carefully articulated in terms of executive statutes and rules in this particular case when you're referencing I just want to be very careful here in my wording okay because we're referencing former colleagues there was this misunderstanding that if you happen to speak to a reporter that by definition anything that you might say to them could be characterized as classified because you unless it was authorized then you were in an unauthorized status and therefore you were liable under administrative rules like I said there are distinctions between agencies although increasing their centralizing is through the DNI you may have heard very recently that James clapper the Director of National Intelligence is now directing adding a question questions to the polygraph polygraph mechanism in which individuals that either they're going to be obtaining a clearance or retaining in existing clearance really asked about unauthorized contact with the press and so yes I had individuals that I used to work with who assumed that it was criminal under the US law to have any contact whatsoever with a reporter in fact I was even asked that question by Scott Pelley on 60 minutes a couple years ago it's not a crime to speak with a reporter there are certain administrative rules governing what that looks like I was on an administrative rule that said if I were to have unauthorized contact reporter that was liable to certain administrative sanctions at that time the worst that would could occur is they no longer trusted me and they would remove my security clearance which would be a condition of continued employment after 2005 when I knew that there was a strong likelihood that I would get caught up by mere association in the criminal nash security leak investigation regarding the rise in Lichtblau article which revealed publicly the first time the existence a so-called warrantless wiretapping program I knew that they were now criminalized in contact with the press and not only was it going back to the Watergate era and the Pentagon Papers but it was now the full force the Department of Justice was going to come after anybody especially if you were allegedly retaining or disclosed information related in our security that they didn't take too kindly to this questioner says you don't acknowledge that there are sometimes legitimate government secrets isn't this more about balance don't we need to keep some secrets I think I partially address I earlier however are the legitimate government secrets remember I lived in the secrecy regime for many many years when it came to true comes a troop movements nuclear secrets and those kinds of things right certain sources and methods then there are legitimate reasons to keep those secret for that time so it's not like I'm standing up here saying there are no secrets at all but this is where it gets conflated meaning if you say anything then you automatically come under the boot of the secret rules governing the classification system that's not true at all the secrecy system and I'm gonna be very very clear here is not to be used to cover government illegality wrongdoing hiding administrative in efficacy in effectiveness or or in fact the garment where the government's actually threatening public safe and and it's an health and safety fraud waste and abuse in my experience the secrecy system has become so corrupted that it's now being used routinely to do precisely that under the color and cover of law and when the color and cover of love is no longer sufficient then we'll just make up the rules it's one reason the defense experts and my own criminal case were so outraged by the government prosecution both mort Halpern as well as bill leonard the very individual who used to head up the information security oversight office the office responsible for the classification system and the integrity of that system within the US government but obviously what I had allegedly retained or had allegedly retain for the purpose of disclosure to others not authorized receive it under the Espionage Act of all things was in fact revealing the very kinds of activities that are actually not permitted by the secrecy system so you have a real conundrum that under the blanket or Nash security you reveal anything guess what you're liable and if it's about the things we don't want you to know because in fact it is in violation of law and statute then guess what we're going to come after you even stronger I mean it's it's unprecedented it really is unprecedented that this administration has used the Espionage Act as a means and mechanism to prosecute seven Americans for non spy activities non spy when you're painting with the Espionage Act it's the worst thing because you're immediately put into the same category historically as the Aldrich Ames of the world or the Hansons of the world the real spies to say it that way because that's what how that were what one statute was originally designed as troubled as it is in terms of the Constitution he was designed to go after spies not truth-tellers not whistleblowers and not people having contact with the press it was not designed for that but that's what it's turned into if we can't count on the government to design a classification of information system that is tenable for whistleblowers and for journalists who should devise that system and how can it be rolled back now personally I mean I it's private drafters just throw the whole thing out start over it's really become a Rube Goldberg I mean it's it's now using a hammer it's used a cover it's got various layers it's gone far beyond its intended purpose there's any number of people that I could cite right here and I won't in the interest of time who have flat out said the classification system is broken period he has a system to continue to use I got caught up in that if I remember what happened in my case has happened in too many other cases is the government ends up using other means to act gain access to either what you know or what you have or what you hold or what you've allegedly exposed or disclosed and then they decide what level of classification it violated and then they charge you so it needs to be redone I mean I spent too many I mean one of the interesting dynamics in terms of bureaucracy it's just one of the dynamics of arach recei when there was any doubt about what that what the classification was you just said hey stamped at the highest level that way there's there's no doubt as to what it is would it stamp at the highest level that was pretty routine part of the reason initially not there's actually very few people in government it's actually quite a small number who actually have formal authority to say what is classified or isn't this is one of the things that people don't fully appreciate the number of people that actually have what's called original classification Authority is very very small and it normally in the system it was designed for when you were doing public releases or you were actually formalizing a report to send out within the government or for other types of releases that's when it would come under the review there were the rules but a lot of the systems allowed you where you were just to say hey I'm not if I'm not sure about what this is I'll just stamp it at the highest level the NSA still has a program to conduct surveillance on people within our borders do you see that as a defeat after all that you and other whistleblowers have gone through a defeat interesting oh there's a defeat that that means that they've won to say it that way you know this is an area the subject of secret surveillance is something that I live with every day because that's to my horror I discovered that that's precisely what the government was doing shortly after 9/11 and that program has only grown and it's gone through various iterations to say this defeat I think would defeat the purpose for which those of us who stood up because we took an oath to support and found the Constitution it would do a disservice to who we are as Americans see myself and others who did have the courage to stand up in spite of the risks and in my case facing many many decades in prison for having done so we knew that none of this was necessary we knew there was no need to ever go to the dark side we knew that the American exceptionalism was not getting away with and breaking the law because we're Americans the exceptionalism is that the fundamental basis for Nash security were our liberties and freedoms I'm just telling you and I've I've said this to in many other audiences there was never any need despite what happened on 9/11 to have ever gone to the dark side there was never any need at that time to violate in such a vast an egregious manner the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and turned the United States of America and the equivalent of foreign nation for the purposes of secret surveillance why because they would tell me the following Tom you don't understand we live in extraordinary times we live in exigent this is a word exigent conditions that requires extraordinary means and exigent means by which we will deal with the threat every means are gonna violate the rights of you know some Americans hey they have nothing to worry about if they've done nothing wrong the problem is we don't get to decide what it is that we've done wrong I'm a perfect case example of that even in my own criminal case both sides have to acknowledge in the end and it's for the public record not just what's still sealed in my case that nothing that I ever retained but in particular what was allegedly allegedly disclosed was classified none of it the irony in my case is that what they said I had retained was unclassified information that in whole or in part was given to official government investigations both to 911 congressional investigations and a department defense inspector general audit investigation how ironic but I knew in the first week in October when I had and it still gives me shivers to this day when the senior attorney and the Office of General Counsel for the now steer agency said Tom the White House has approved the program it's all legal you don't want to ask any more questions mr. Drake I knew that we had crossed the Rubicon and I was it was not clear then because I remembered their ringing words a frank church from the 1970s when I was a very young teenager when he actually talked about what would happen in the future if the technology it means existed which you would have blanket surveillance in this country what would the government do it and could we pull it back I'm telling you when you have secret power and secret access to that amount of data on individuals it goes to people's heads you get to know an awful lot you also ought to remember it's for me this is really personal I became an expert during the cold ladder years the cold war in East Germany listening in on a fascist surveillance state the Stasi were the secret police they became monstrously efficient getting to know everything there was to know about their own citizens because all the citizens were potential threats so they didn't trust any of them any and all activity was suspicious even if you're on engaged in suspicious activity and they became monsley at fishing in terms of their record-keeping in files in fact their motto was to know everything I can only imagine those who used to be in that state and still live drooling at the prospect of what they could do with a technology that now exists in the hands of the nastier agency and other government agencies only can imagine to know everything my life was turned upside down I know for a fact that everything you could find out or anything you could possibly imagine in your life any transaction all your emails any and all subscriber information with any concern including telecommunications concerns was all exposed to the government because they were looking for what was necessary to indict me and they finally found something the Espionage Act so this questioner asks what motivates the Obama administration for going to what you say is the dark side you know Lord Acton's said that power tends to corrupt doesn't mean it will I was saying this in terms of at the reception but absolute power clearly corrupts absolutely if history is any guide even though history would say that it's a temporary condition that freedom ultimately prevails we've had some very dark chapters in human history particularly in the 20th century it's really you know when you're in those positions of power up to and including the President and you're being given secret information there is a seductiveness that comes with that knowledge because it's secret what can I do with it how can I use it and I'm holding this and then I get to say who I can share it with or not I get to say who's authorizer has access the privilege of access but I'm holiness in secret and if history is any guide particularly since world war ii the establishing the national security apparatus in 1947 then a Security Act subsequent administrations have been not just reluctant to give up any powers given by a previous administration they've extended it they want more you can never get enough this whole latest those of you with the 12 hour filibuster or Rand Paul for all the theater that a filibuster especially one were you standing there in the in the well of the Senate and harking back to mr. Smith goes to Washington right you just get beyond that what's really at stake yeah there's some serious questions that need to be asked what does it mean in this country to have the executive branch with what has been a largely compliant and even complicit Congress you know that my material evidence my material witness evidence is a whistleblower with to 9/11 commercial investigations never made the light of day you know why there's this thing called redaction within the system where the agency of record that was under investigation gets to review the findings and recommendations and guess what let's just say it was expunged as if that history never existed it's unfortunate what does it mean when you have that much power if we don't check it if there aren't proper oversights and controls the executive branch and under the environment of a post 9/11 threat landscape there's always going to be more threats you're gonna always gonna manufacture more enemies and he goes far beyond the original purpose for which it was created far beyond and so you know I was told Tom hey so I said you know there is a legal means in this country by which you change law you go to Congress you know what they told me now this is in October first week because I'm asking those hard questions I realized the Pandora's böck is being opened up he said you don't understand tom if we go to Congress and ask them for what we what we really want to do they're gonna say no they're gonna say no in those weeks after 9/11 Congress would have signed off on just about anything and did so why would NSA tell me that week actually can't change the law and instead we're just going to violate it and we'll just make it legal later which is precisely what happened when it's true eventually this came out and they used it is a violation of our system of justice they use the ex post facto law to make legal what was illegal as cover give the telecommunication companies are cooperating at extraordinarily deep level with NSA provide them immunity and then expand that in 2008 with a FISA Amendments Act which just becomes a rubber-stamp read section 702 it's the barn door we have several questions on WikiLeaks well take this one what are your thoughts on the Bradley Manning case what do you think of the information he released and what do you think of the methods he used to release them I'll say it again here I've said it before Bradley Manning is a whistleblower it took extraordinary courage to do what he did there's all kinds of other mischaracterizations the what I call the characterization of the messenger because the government has to avoid the message people have discussed differences of opinion based on a mount and how classified or unclassified it was the fact remains that he's a whistleblower he was witness to evidence of war crimes that's a fact he was witnessed evidence of abject corruption Iraq he was witness to what I call the dark side of our foreign policy he was witness to where he was even asked the other way even though he brought it to the attention of superiors and this is all based on what's already been published yeah he's being he's being charged not just for the Espionage Act but with aiding the enemy which is a capital offense you have to remember what's my connection here during the course of my own criminal proceedings the chief prosecutor William Welsh actually said in the final motions hearing before the judge and with the public he said that what I did and I'm paraphrasing endangered the lives of American soldiers but I did so separate from all the mischaracterizations and what I call misdirection you have to focus on what was actually released he had access to far higher levels of classification including top-secret s CI all that was released I'll say it that way was in the very low-level systems but the Agora that provides a very disturbing picture of who we are in terms of our American exceptionalism and I say that unapologetically because you think about the extraordinary loss of blood of American taxpayer treasure the extraordinary loss of lives and and in overseas for what for what and he's he's having to bear an incredibly high price because of a choice he made in his own conscience about was right and he wasn't going to remain silent so here's your choice and it because it turns out in his own words which were recently leaked from inside the courtroom which is actually a more drug beam in more controlled in terms of historic own Ian's restrictions then even what's going on at Guantanamo it's very clear in his own words why he did what he did and it turns out he had gone he actually had made the attempt to connect with us press us media mainstream media and guess what and so even the prosecution was asked by the judge judge Lin what if he had gone senior at times poss you said be treated the same way mean he didn't matter it didn't matter whether he actually ended up being disclosed it didn't matter WikiLeaks disclosures same thing if it been disclosed to the New York Times what does that say in terms of the First Amendment that's a direct threat if you burn the sources you fry the sources what message are you sending and so where do you left with you're gonna be left with government mouthpieces and spokespersons saying what's authorizing isn't and yet you're using this as cover I mean the reports that are coming out about Iraq just one small example ok the umpteen tens and tens of billions of dollars uh Turley wasted on reconstruction efforts what was that just just a sham and a fraud apparently it was read Peter Van Buren's book we meant well you get the inside story on what he discovered as an eyewitness this is what's happening in this country that's not American exceptionalism it's a contou de lijn version of what we're supposed to be his people that's not the oath I didn't that those activities I didn't take an oath support and defend those I didn't neither did he and under article 92 the Uniform Court of Military Justice he has a right to question any orders to ensure that it's lawful and if he and he's asked to engage in unlawful or he's eyewitness to unlawful illegal orders guess what he doesn't have to follow them but he made a conscious choice and he's willing to accept whatever consequences came his way and it turns out the only mechanism that was available the time for him the choice he made was to go to WikiLeaks well I find it ironic incredibly ironic that the disclosures he made were so extraordinary for the time period of those disclosures that other mainstream media had it on their front pages over many many weeks and months what does that tell you I guess it must have been fit for news there's a lot more I could say about that I stand with Bradley Manning we're here at the National Press Club so we have several variations of this question as well is the government spying on reporters right now I hear you laughing see here's the dark side because there's a whole lot I have still have not shared fully publicly okay although I've shared this with 9/11 congressional investigators I've shared it with others in Congress when I was still in the government as a senior executive I've made allusions to it in other public fora I've written about it I remember what happened you know in the 5016 70s right where instruments of national power were used against reporters news from snatch power use against activists or protestors those that became quote-unquote designated as enemies of the state remember at one point Daniel Ellsberg himself was declared to be the most dangerous man in America okay I became an enemy of the state I will tell you without equivocation that the surveillance system that was the illegal surveillance system that was put into place after 9/11 and grew from there and came to a huge head in 2004 when James Comey remember that incident and if you follow what's going on right now with this documentary and Dick Cheney very interesting what Cheney is now saying unapologetically and also what really was going on because he kept the truth apparently from his own president regarding very senior officials and very senior lawyers who are about to resign over the secret domestic surveillance program why because it was illegal I will simply tell you that an aspect of that secret surveillance program called stellar wind at the time I believe has gone through some name changes since included surveilling reporters and journalists remember if you're wired if you wired the electronic system it makes it very very difficult unless you engage in other means to get information to a reporter or a journalist and obviously if you're concerned about disclosures that they call leaks that are unauthorized Wow you just keep tap on any and all connections that are made to certain reporters and journalists and that net just widens and so I know for a fact that that it factually took place in secret this is no different but on a much larger scale that what happened during the 60s and 70s where there are wiretapping reporters and journalists to ensure to find out who their sources were if you know who the sources are guess what I don't really have to go out there journalists directly I'll just go after the source so here's really where it gets extremely troubling for me and most disturbing as a result of my own case many men I had contact and this is one another paradox of what happened to me I went from having gone to one reporter to having interactions with any number of reporters on and off the record any number of them have told me privately and it's chilling that even longtime deep sources in government are increasingly reluctant to speak even off the record even on deep background guess why they're afraid you know what means become afraid of your own government because of just the possibility that they may get ticked off if you happen to have contact with a reporter I never imagined that that would truly happen on such a large scale in this country and yet some of the best very best reporters in this country investigative reporters are experiencing precisely that they're being frozen out from their own sources because of fears of the sources have of their own government Rison himself is part of a criminal case with Jeffrey sterling because of things that were shared in his book called state of war he's caught up in subpoenaed three times and the allegations are he's the only all only eyewitness to the crime crime are you concerned that young Americans are growing up with little sense of privacy especially electronic privacy and the implications for privacy rights in the future from that I have a son who's 17 extraordinary son and we've had long conversations about what happened to me and what's happening his country he's only known this world we now inhabit post-911 he knows no other world most of us in this room actually remember a pre 9/11 world at a minimum I'd like to return to 910 the price is way too high way too high our younger generation will inherit what we leave behind they're the future leaders of tomorrow today what legacy will we have them take what legacy will we leave behind so one of the fundamental principles of who you are as a human being which is short enshrined in the Constitution is in the fourth amendment that you are secure and as much I've talked to not just my son but other young people and people I work with in their 20s and early 30s some things I've asked him point-blank where do you draw the line one of them told me recently I draw the line at the shades of my window anything that I do behind those shades is private that includes the use of his cell phone that includes any other electronic media he chooses what he will share that's public and just because he's private does not give the government license to violate that privacy without due process which includes probable cause through an affidavit that you have to bring forward in front of someone in an article 3 court that the article 2 powers do not extend to simply subverting what is properly given to the article 3 in the Constitution privacy does matter it's the essence of who you are as human beings we don't have that guess what and so there's something a stake for all of us in terms of the Commons there's something at stake for all of us in terms of fundamentally what it means it's not their choice and it's not their right to then turn what is a right of ours into a privilege that they sanction they control that they monitor and they dispense that's precisely what's happening and that's precisely a world that I do not want to leave behind for my seventeen year old or any any other body in the younger generation or any body of us that's not what I took a note that is a support and defend and I say that I say that with about as strong a conviction as you can possibly use in terms of the language it's that important it really is that important to who we are there's this this idea that and I've heard this internally I heard this when I was at NSA if you're doing something in private then you might you might be up to no good and we need to have expose we need to have access to that did you know there is a plan right now in the Obama administration to provide the intelligence community which is a misnomer by the way the intelligence establishment access to any and all financial records any and all what's the heck kids are left to defend I mean if you end up taking away the kind of the essence of everything there is about you because there might just be a 1% or a point Oh 1% chance that you're doing something wrong what's happening we're gonna put this pre-crime space where anything is suspicious at any and all data I'm telling you in my case I was utterly framed not only was information mischaracterized it was misrepresented and at times even doctored what does that tell you because it's all done in secret they're the ones holding it you become a target of the government right remember I've been living this I've lived this for five years you become a target the government it's not a life I want any of you in this room to live except for those you have in part lived it what people another thing to share with you everybody I have not said this directly in this type of a form but I'm gonna say it here everybody that was associated with me either because they used to work for me or had links to me or had ties to me by mere association assembly that freedom to do sort of the First Amendment were investigated were interrogated and some of those same people lost their jobs and their livelihood because of their association with me mere association meant they were guilty and they were gonna be punished punished because that association there's other things I can't even talk about because they're so personal how far the government went to destroy my lives and others yet I stand here is a free free person free you know what freedom really means when you're about to lose everything there is of who you are that's when you realize what's most important that's the oath I took and the president's to preserve protect and defend there's a special oath he takes written in the Constitution you don't use the color and cover of that to engage in secret law and interpretation of law and withhold what you say is legal from Congress Congress is the only body that actually gets to legislate right yeah the president gets a sign in the law and you have the Supreme Court we forget the foundations of our own country I have some Gil Tom constitutions out is outmoded you don't understand we live in a very different era you know founding fathers they had their own contradictions yes they did civil wars built into it I know I understand all of that I've heard all those arguments I usually hear the one I went through sere training the very program that was reverse engineered became the torture program state-sponsored torture by this country 54 countries minimum cooperated what does that tell you about who we are I was flat-out told we're different we're never gonna do this because we're Americans we're Americans oh okay we're Americans we are almost at a time but before asking the last question I'd like to remind you about our upcoming speakers on March 18th we'll have a speakers breakfast with Reince Priebus the chairman of the Republican National Committee who will discuss the forward strategy of the Republican Party on March 20th Kathy Calvin the president and CEO of the United Nations Foundation will discuss the public charities work in supporting the mission and programs of the United Nations and on March 26th Robert L Johnson chairman of the RLJ companies will be our speaker second I'd like to present our guests with the traditional National Press Club coffee mug I'll pour a little truth in and share with you all and for the final question you were profiled on 60 minutes and on the daily show two very different formats who would you say did a better job on your story Scott Pelley or Jon Stewart both how about a round of applause for our speaker thank you for coming today we are adjourned [Applause]

Channel: The National Press Club

Views: 114,067

Rating: 4.8992181 out of 5

Keywords: NPC, National Press Club, National Press Club (USA), Thomas Drake, NSA, National Security Agency, Sunshine Week

Id: 3Wp2BGLMqDM

Length: 62min 55sec (3775 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2013