US Whistleblowers 2021 — Test Your Spy Knowledge With Our Quiz!
“It is Snowden who decided, at great risk, to honor his oath to defend the Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and domestic – and NOT the timid politicians whose cowardice Snowden exposed. Naïve souls still inclined to give credence to congressional “overseers” (“overlookers” is a better word) and to a constitutional-lawyer-in-chief who lies outright about his sweeping power to pardon, are now asked to believe that Snowden was/is a Russian spy. At long last, have you no sense of decency?”
Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern
March 1 2021 — How much do you know about spy agencies? Take this quiz to find out your knowledge of American whistleblowers. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today
“Only 13 people have been charged under the Espionage Act, but eight of these cases occurred during President Barack Obama’s two terms. None of those cases involved double agents or wartime security concerns.”
All the President’s Whistleblowers — Brittany Gibson (Oct. 18 2019)
Here are ten quotes from/or about these people. Can you identify them? [HINT: Each person is only quoted once!] Click on the right answer and it will appear in GREEN. If your choice pops up in RED, try again… Good luck!
The Espionage Act of 1917 makes it a crime to disclose information “relating to the national defense.”
Prior to the Obama administration, there had been only three known cases resulting in indictments in which the Espionage Act was used to prosecute government officials for leaks. (Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo 1971, Samuel Morison 1985 and Lawrence Franklin 2005. There is a similar case dating from 1945.)
The Obama Administration added eight cases to the list: Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Chelsea manning, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou, Edward Snowden and Reality Winner.
1. “For an American to be patriotic is to be loyal to the principles of our Constitution, and the First Amendment. The truth is that the policies of the government is sometimes in conflict with that. In our country, patriotism should not be defined as obedience to an authority. ”
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2. “Well, my first day on the job was 9/11. And it was shortly after 9/11 that I was exposed to the Pandora’s box of illegality and government wrongdoing on a very significant scale. So, you had the twin fraud, waste—you know, the twin specters of fraud, waste and abuse being committed on a vast scale through a program called Trailblazer, a multi-billion-dollar program, when in fact there was alternatives that already existed and fulfilled the requirements of Trailblazer, even prior to 9/11.”
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3. “I see him as an American patriot and a whistle-blower, and I’d like his actions to be seen in that context. What really concerned him at the time was the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, which he thought would be damaging to both Israel and the United States.”
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4. “There are just too many opportunities – and an increasing number of them – to hide systemic, institutional wrongdoing behind legal veils, legal theories, and arbitrary exemptions. I hope that we can start to chip away at this, but it sure looks like society is still sliding in the opposite direction. ”
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5. “I cannot seemingly affect change from within … and so perhaps it is best to do it from the outside. Call me idealistic or radical but I refuse to play this game that deeply undermines our national security. I am confident enough to call these people out as idiots who know nothing about Korea or Asia. If there is an opportunity, I will leave. …”
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6. “I reached out to the Senate Intelligence Committee. I gave them my concerns about an operation I was involved in, and I thought it could have an impact, a negative impact, on our soldiers going into Iraq.”
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7. “Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated — not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. I may have found myself on the wrong side of government on torture. But I’m on the right side of history. There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security. One of them, I now firmly believe, is torture.”
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8. “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.”
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9. President Clinton pardoned him on January 20, 2001, the last day of his presidency, despite the CIA’s opposition to the pardon.
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10. “My objective was to halt the rush to war in Iraq—at least long enough to adopt a realistic policy toward an Iran bent on doing us ill, not to leak secrets to a foreign government.”
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