Stand Up For Truth

War, Journalism and Whistleblowers: 15 years after Katharine Gun's truth telling on the verge of the Iraq War

Fri 2 March 2018

18:00 – 20:00 GMT

Birkbeck, University of London

Malet Street, London, WC1A 7HX, United Kingdom

15 years ago, Katharine Gun leaked a GCHQ memo revealing US spying operations on UN security council members. This simple act of bravery helped to galvanise the mass movement of opposition to the Iraq War. It also served as a telling reminder of the essential role played by the press in speaking truth to power and upholding the fabric of democratic life. A generation on, the legacy of that leak is writ large in a resurgent politics of resistance to the warfare and surveillance state on both sides of the Atlantic. This unique event brings together a panel, including Katharine herself, to discuss the lessons of that leak, and ask: What can and should we be doing - journalists, scholars, activists, citizens, policymakers - to do justice to the immeasurable public service performed by whistleblowers?

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/war-journalism-and-whistleblowers-15-years-after-katharine-guns-truth-telling-on-the-verge-of-the-tickets-42350362073

Speakers include:

Katharine Gun (former GCHQ translator responsible for the 2003 leak); Thomas Drake (former senior executive of the US National Security Agency); Duncan Campbell (award winning journalist, author and TV producer); Matthew Hoh (former US Marine and State Department official serving in Afghanistan and Iraq); Jesselyn Radack (national security and human rights attorney representing Ed Snowden among other whistleblowers); Silkie Carlo (Director of Big Brother Watch and leading voice in the campaign against the UK's repressive surveillance and official secrecy laws).

Hanne Kjöller: Ord som räddar människoliv

Daniel Ellsberg, en av världens mest kända visselblåsare, på besök i Stockholm. - Foto: Nicklas Thegerström

Fyra prominenta visselblåsare deltog på torsdagen vid ett rundabordssamtal i riksdagen. Jag fick möjlighet att lyssna.

Henry Kissinger har kallat honom ”Amerikas farligaste man”. För andra är Daniel Ellsberg en hjälte. Det var han som 1971 läckte topphemliga dokument från Pentagon till New York Times. De 7.000 sidorna visade hur president Lyndon B Johnson grundlurat den amerikanska allmänheten, medierna och även kongressen om Vietnamkriget. I papperssamlingen fanns analyserna som visade att kriget riskerade att bli ändlöst, att det sannolikt inte kunde vinnas och att det skulle kräva långt fler amerikanska liv än de offentliggjorda beräkningarna visade.

Läs mer

Wir haben die Infrastruktur eines Polizeistaates geschaffen

Daniel Ellsberg veröffentlichte 1971 die Pentagon Papers. Der Whistleblower fordert Asyl für Snowden und warnt vor geheimer Massenüberwachung, die alle rechtlos mache.

Von Yassin Musharbash - Zeit Online

ZEIT ONLINE: Herr Ellsberg, 1971, vor fast 45 Jahren, gaben Sie die sogenannten Pentagon Papers an Journalisten weiter, weil sie Lügen der US-Regierung über den Vietnamkrieg offenbarten. Waren Sie sich bewusst, dass Sie eine lange Haftstrafe riskierten, als Sie zum Whistleblower wurden?

Daniel Ellsberg: Ja. Ich ging davon aus, dass ich für den Rest meines Lebens ins Gefängnis kommen würde. Mit guter Führung wäre ich wohl nach 35 Jahren rausgekommen. Aber ich bin nicht sicher, wie ich mich geführt hätte...

Weiterlesen

Standing Up in the Spirit of America's First Whistleblower Benjamin Franklin!

By Coleen Rowley - Huffington Post

Our recent "Stand Up for Truth" whirlwind speaking tour through London, Oslo (see here and here), Stockholm and Berlin last week as well as webinars, visual presentations and speaking events in U.S. cities was exhausting but quite successful. Truth has always been a difficult and often frustrating business, especially when that old story line tends to repeat of the naked Emperor continuing to ignorantly march forward, even after the little boy has yelled the truth. But someone has to do it!

Whistleblower group HuffPo
(Daniel Ellsberg, Norman Solomon, Jesselyn Radack, Coleen Rowley and Thomas Drake on June 7, 2015, in front of Benjamin Franklin dedication of Kongresshalle in Berlin, Germany, photo taken by Johanna Hullar)

NSA whistleblower warns of surveillance state

By James Eli Shiffer Star Tribune

William Binney spent more than 30 years at the National Security Agency designing programs that enabled mass surveillance of foreign terrorists.

Weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Binney retired in disgust when he saw the agency using that technology to spy on every American.

Since then, he has agitated for reining in unconstitutional invasions of privacy. At first he worked behind the scenes. Binney decided to go public after his actions resulted not in reform but retaliation, including being accosted at gunpoint by an FBI agent raiding his Maryland house. He began telling his story to journalists in 2011, two years before the stunning revelations of NSA contractor Edward Snowden.