Monday, September 22, 2014
“War, Whistleblowing, and Independent Journalism”
American University -- Butler Board Room (located on the 6th floor above the Bender arena sports complex)
"War, Whistleblowing, and Independent Journalism" will feature NSA whistleblowers William Binney, Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, EPA whistleblower Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, leading whistleblower attorney Jesselyn Radack, historian Peter Kuznick, author/activist Norman Solomon, and TV journalism trailblazer Phil Donahue. Come join us for a showing of Donahue's impactful documentary Body of War and critical discussion of perpetual war, the surveillance state, and news media.
6:30 pm: Body of War film screening
8 pm: Q&A with Phil Donahue
8:15 pm: Panel
* William Binney, NSA whistleblower
* Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, EPA whistleblower
* Phil Donahue, journalist
* Thomas Drake, NSA whistleblower
* Peter Kuznick, professor of history
* Jesselyn Radack, DOJ whistleblower
* Kirk Wiebe, NSA whistleblower
Moderator: Norman Solomon
Optional: You can sign up on FaceBook here.
This event is sponsored by RootsAction.org and the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, and co-sponsored by ExposeFacts.org.
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BIO BACKGROUND:
William Binney is a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement after 30 years, blew the whistle on NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 to 20 trillion communications. The Snowden disclosures confirmed many of the surveillance dangers Binney — without the benefit of documents — had been warning about under both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, as senior policy analyst for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, became a whistleblower when the EPA ignored her complaints about a U.S. company harming the environment and human health in its vanadium mining in South Africa. Denied promotion, she sued and won a jury verdict finding EPA guilty of discrimination. Coleman-Adebayo is a founder of the No FEAR Coalition and EPA Employees Against Racism. Under her leadership No FEAR organized a grassroots campaign that won passage of the “Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act.” Coleman-Adebayo serves on the board of directors of the National Whistleblower Center and was inducted into the Project on Government Oversight’s Hall of Fame. She is an editor and columnist for the Black Agenda Report.
Phil Donahue changed the face of daytime television, pioneering the audience-participation talk format as the host of the Donahue show, a 29-year run which stands as the longest of its kind in U.S. television history. His TV journalism earned him 20 Emmy Awards -- nine as host and 11 for the show -- as well as the George Foster Peabody Award; the President’s Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus; the Media Person of the Year Award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance; and induction into the Academy of Television’s Hall of Fame. TV Guide named Donahue one of the Greatest Television Shows of All Time. Phil Donahue has frequently been lauded for his groundbreaking interviews with world leaders and newsmakers. In 1985, he introduced satellite “spacebridge” telecasts between the United States and the Soviet Union, and then brought his talk show to Russia for a week of programs. He was the first Western journalist to visit Chernobyl after the nuclear accident there. Donahue has also headlined numerous network and public television specials, including the Emmy Award-winning children’s special, Donahue and Kids, the landmark Ryan White Talks to Kids about AIDS, and The Human Animal, an exploration of human behavior which was also a five-part, prime-time series that aired on the NBC television network. In 2006, Donahue co-produced and co-directed Body of War, a documentary film about a young Iraq War veteran left in a wheelchair by enemy gunfire who begins questioning America’s involvement in the war. Universally hailed by critics (“almost unbearably moving,” wrote Time magazine), Body of War captured, among others, the Best Documentary award from the National Board of Review; the Grand Jury Prize at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival; and a People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival.
Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency where he blew the whistle on massive multi-billion dollar fraud, waste and the widespread violations of the rights of citizens through secret mass surveillance programs after 9/11. As retaliation and reprisal, the Obama Administration indicted Drake in 2010 as the first whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg charged with espionage, and Drake faced 35 years in prison, turning him into an Enemy of the State for his oath to defend the Constitution. In 2011, the government’s case against him collapsed and he went free in a plea deal. He is the recipient of the 2011 Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize, and a joint recipient with Jesselyn Radack of the 2011 Sam Adams Associates Integrity in Intelligence Award and the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award. He is now dedicated to the defense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America, co-author with Akira Kimura of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives, co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Genpatsu to Hiroshima - genshiryoku heiwa riyo no shinso (Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power), and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture. A New York native, he received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1984. He was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and remains active in antiwar and nuclear abolition efforts. In 1995, he founded American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. That year, on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings, his Institute co-hosted a major exhibit with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which displayed many of the artifacts that were originally supposed to be part of the Smithsonian’s ill-fated Enola Gay exhibit. Every summer, since 1995, he has taken Institute students on a study-abroad class in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The Institute was named the most creative and innovative summer program in North America by the North American Association of Summer Sessions. In 2003, Kuznick organized a group of scholars, writers, artists, clergy, and activists to protest the Smithsonian's celebratory display of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum annex and cofounded the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy and the Nuclear Education Project He and Oliver Stone co-authored the 10 part Showtime documentary film series and The Untold History of the United States. The Concise Untold History of the United States (based on the documentary scripts), a young readers edition of Untold History (for middle school students), and a graphic novel will all be out shortly. He regularly provides commentary for all the major U.S. and international media and has begun his fourth three-year term as Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.
Jesselyn Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project (GAP), the nation’s leading whistleblower organization. Her program focuses specifically on secrecy, surveillance, torture, and discrimination. She has been at the forefront of defending against the government’s unprecedented “war on whistleblowers,” which has also implicated journalists. Among her clients, she represents seven national security and intelligence community employees who have been investigated, charged or prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information, including Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and John Kiriakou. She also represents clients bringing whistleblower retaliation complaints in federal court and various administrative bodies. Previously, she served on the DC Bar Legal Ethics Committee and worked at the Justice Department for seven years, first as a trial attorney and later as a legal ethics advisor. Radack is author of TRAITOR: The Whistleblower & the “American Taliban”. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and numerous academic law reviews. Radack received the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award in 2011. She was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s “Leading Global Thinkers of 2013,” and is a 2014 Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsActions.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where he coordinates ExposeFacts. He is the author of a dozen books on media and public policy, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Solomon is a former associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting. He wrote the weekly “Media Beat” column for Creators Syndicate for 17 years. His op-ed articles about news media and politics have appeared in most of the major newspapers in the United States. Solomon is a longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). He received the Annual Ruben Salazar Journalism Award and is a recipient of the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
J. Kirk Wiebe is a retired National Security Agency whistleblower who worked at the agency for 36 years. Wiebe’s colleague William Binney developed the ThinThread information processing system that, arguably, could have detected and prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks. NSA officials, though, ignored the program in favor of Trailblazer, a program that ended in total failure with costs of billions of dollars. Wiebe and Binney blew the whistle internally on Trailblazer, but to no avail. Post 9/11, the NSA used ThinThread to illegally spy on U.S. citizens’ communications. Unable to stay at NSA any longer in good conscience, Wiebe retired in October 2001. Since retiring, Wiebe and Binney made several key public disclosures regarding NSA’s massive surveillance program.
