The Leak Nobody's Noticed

By digby

This McClatchy piece (written by some of the same people who got the Iraq war run-up story so right while everyone else got it wrong) is as chilling to me as anything we've heard over the past few weeks about the NSA spying. In fact, it may be worse:

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.

Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.

“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

When the free free press, explicitly protected in the bill of rights becomes equivalent to an "enemy of the United States" something very, very bad is happening. 

The administration says it's doing this to protect national security and that it is willing to protect those who blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse. But that is not how the effect of this sort of program is going to be felt. After all, it's being implemented across the federal government, not just in national security:

The program could make it easier for the government to stifle the flow of unclassified and potentially vital information to the public, while creating toxic work environments poisoned by unfounded suspicions and spurious investigations of loyal Americans, according to these current and former officials and experts. Some non-intelligence agencies already are urging employees to watch their co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.
“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”

The Defense Department anti-leak strategy obtained by McClatchy spells out a zero-tolerance policy. Security managers, it says, “must” reprimand or revoke the security clearances – a career-killing penalty – of workers who commit a single severe infraction or multiple lesser breaches “as an unavoidable negative personnel action.”

Employees must turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches. “Penalize clearly identifiable failures to report security infractions and violations, including any lack of self-reporting,” the strategic plan says.

The Obama administration already was pursuing an unprecedented number of leak prosecutions, and some in Congress – long one of the most prolific spillers of secrets – favor tightening restrictions on reporters’ access to federal agencies, making many U.S. officials reluctant to even disclose unclassified matters to the public.

The policy, which partly relies on behavior profiles, also could discourage creative thinking and fuel conformist “group think” of the kind that was blamed for the CIA’s erroneous assessment that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, a judgment that underpinned the 2003 U.S. invasion.

I don't know about you, but that does not sound like freedom. In fact,it sounds like something else entirely to me. 

This government paranoia and informant culture is about as corrosive to the idea of freedom as it gets. The workplace is already rife with petty jealousies, and singular ambition--- it's a human organization after all. Adding in this sort of incentive structure is pretty much setting up a system for intimidation and abuse. 

And, as with all informant systems, especially ones that "profile" for certain behaviors deemed to be a threat to the state, only the most conformist will thrive. It's a recipe for disaster if one is looking for any kind of dynamic, creative thinking. Clearly, that is the last these creepy bureaucrats want.

This is the direct result of a culture of secrecy that seems to be pervading the federal government under president Obama.  He is not the first president to expand the national security state , nor is he responsible for the bipartisan consensus on national security or the ongoing influence of the Military Industrial Complex.This, however, is different. And he should be individually held to account for this policy.:

Administration officials say the program could help ensure that agencies catch a wide array of threats, especially if employees are properly trained in recognizing behavior that identifies potential security risks.

“If this is done correctly, an organization can get to a person who is having personal issues or problems that if not addressed by a variety of social means may lead that individual to violence, theft or espionage before it even gets to that point,” said a senior Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
[...]
“If the folks who are watching within an organization for that insider threat – the lawyers, security officials and psychologists – can figure out that an individual is having money problems or decreased work performance and that person may be starting to come into the window of being an insider threat, superiors can then approach them and try to remove that stress before they become a threat to the organization,” the Pentagon official said.

The program, however, gives agencies such wide latitude in crafting their responses to insider threats that someone deemed a risk in one agency could be characterized as harmless in another. Even inside an agency, one manager’s disgruntled employee might become another’s threat to national security.

Obama in November approved “minimum standards” giving departments and agencies considerable leeway in developing their insider threat programs, leading to a potential hodgepodge of interpretations. He instructed them to not only root out leakers but people who might be prone to “violent acts against the government or the nation” and “potential espionage.”

The Pentagon established its own sweeping definition of an insider threat as an employee with a clearance who “wittingly or unwittingly” harms “national security interests” through “unauthorized disclosure, data modification, espionage, terrorism, or kinetic actions resulting in loss or degradation of resources or capabilities.”

“An argument can be made that the rape of military personnel represents an insider threat. Nobody has a model of what this insider threat stuff is supposed to look like,” said the senior Pentagon official, explaining that inside the Defense Department “there are a lot of chiefs with their own agendas but no leadership.”

The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”

An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.
A Defense Security Service online pamphlet lists a wide range of “reportable” suspicious behaviors, including working outside of normal duty hours. While conceding that not every behavior “represents a spy in our midst,” the pamphlet adds that “every situation needs to be examined to determine whether our nation’s secrets are at risk.”

The Defense Department, traditionally a leading source of media leaks, is still setting up its program, but it has taken numerous steps. They include creating a unit that reviews news reports every day for leaks of classified defense information and implementing new training courses to teach employees how to recognize security risks, including “high-risk” and “disruptive” behaviors among co-workers, according to Defense Department documents reviewed by McClatchy.

“It’s about people’s profiles, their approach to work, how they interact with management. Are they cheery? Are they looking at Salon.com or The Onion during their lunch break? This is about ‘The Stepford Wives,’” said a second senior Pentagon official, referring to online publications and a 1975 movie about robotically docile housewives. The official said he wanted to remain anonymous to avoid being punished for criticizing the program.

The emphasis on certain behaviors reminded Greenstein of her employee orientation with the CIA, when she was told to be suspicious of unhappy co-workers.

“If someone was having a bad day, the message was watch out for them,” she said.

Some federal agencies also are using the effort to protect a broader range of information. The Army orders its personnel to report unauthorized disclosures of unclassified information, including details concerning military facilities, activities and personnel.

The Peace Corps, which is in the midst of implementing its program, “takes very seriously the obligation to protect sensitive information,” said an email from a Peace Corps official who insisted on anonymity but gave no reason for doing so.

Granting wide discretion is dangerous, some experts and officials warned, when federal agencies are already prone to overreach in their efforts to control information flow.

The Bush administration allegedly tried to silence two former government climate change experts from speaking publicly on the dangers of global warming. More recently, the FDA justified the monitoring of the personal email of its scientists and doctors as a way to detect leaks of unclassified information.

Maybe this is just another way of reducing the federal workforce. Nobody normal should want to work there. 

When the Department of Education is searching for "insider threats" something's gone very wrong.

High v. Low-Level Leaking

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011, after a military hearing that will determine if he should face court-martial for his alleged role in the WikiLeaks classified leaks case went on recess for the day. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)(Credit: AP)

Glenn Greenwald writes,

The Obama administration’s war on whistlebowers continues unabated this week on two fronts. First, several hearings were held in the court-martial prosecution of Bradley Manning, during which military prosecutors argued that evidence that Manning’s alleged leaks did no harm to national security, as well as evidence of his inhumane pre-trial detention conditions, should both be completely suppressed (in contrast to most American media outlets, which have ignored the proceedings entirely, Firedoglake’s superb young writer, Kevin Gosztola, is providing typically comprehensive coverage). Meanwhile, in a federal court in Virginia this morning, former CIA official John Kiriakou is seeking dismissal of most of the criminal charges brought against him by the DOJ for allegedly leaking details of the Bush era torture program; Kiriakou is claiming he is the victim of vindictive prosecution (as former NSA official Thomas Drake, who himself was prosecuted (unsuccessfully) by the Obama DOJ for whistleblowing, put it this morning: “Commit torture: receive exec branch/DoJ protection. Whistleblow on torture w/lawful disclosures: become criminal defendant like John Kiriakou” [Twitter typos corrected]).

But the worst part of this whistleblower war, beyond the obvious threats it poses to transparency and a free press, is how purely selective it is. Just as Lynndie England went to prison for her detainee abuse while Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and John Yoo went on lucrative book tours for theirs, it is only low- to mid-level leakers who are punished by the Obama DOJ, and then only for the crime of embarrassing the U.S. Government rather than glorifying it. High-level Obama administration leakers disclose classified information at will, without the slightest fear of punishment. One can pick up a newspaper or listen to a television news broadcast almost every day and find examples of leaks from Obama’s high-level officials far more serious than those allegedly committed by the Bradley Mannings and Thomas Drakes of the world. From today’s New York Times article on Syria:

In Washington, a senior American official who is tracking Syria closely said Thursday that American intelligence reports had concluded that Syrian forces were moving some parts of their chemical weapons arsenal to safeguard it from falling into rebel hands, not to use it. “They’re moving it to defend it in some of the most contested areas,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified intelligence reports.

Quoting classified American intelligence reports on Syria to The New York Times is a more serious leak than any of those serving as the basis for the multiple espionage prosecutions brought by the Obama DOJ. The difference is that this is a “senior official” rather than a low-level one, and it’s not done with the intent to expose high-level corruption, deceit or illegality. Therefore, like all the other high-level crimes shielded from accountability by the Obama administration, it will be protected. Therein lies the clear lesson about the real purpose of the Obama war on whistleblowers.

* * * * *

New York Times columnist David Brooks carefully cultivates a centrist demeanor on domestic political questions, but on foreign policy, the former Weekly Standard writer and full-fledged Iraq War advocate is as neoconservative as it gets. Today, following in thefootsteps of the progressive Center for American Progress, Brooks devotes his column to hailing the grand success of President Obama’s foreign policy. Entitled “Where Obama Shines,” the column argues: “it should be noted that Barack Obama has been a good foreign policy president.” Deeming this record “impressive,” he gushes: “Obama has moved more aggressively both to defeat enemies and to champion democracy. He has demonstrated that talk of American decline is hooey. The U.S. is still responsible for maintaining global order, for keeping people, goods and ideas moving freely.” Brooks concludes:

And, partly as a result of his efforts, the world of foreign affairs isrelatively uncontentious right now. Foreign policy is not a hot campaign issue. Mitt Romney is having a great deal of trouble identifying profound disagreements. If that’s not a sign of success, I don’t know what is.

Again we see a prime legacy of the Obama presidency: the transformation of what had been contentious disputes into harmonious bipartisan consensus. And we also see again that one of the biggest myths of American political discourse is that bipartisanship is so terribly and tragically rare.

Via: "Salon"

Obama Targets Journalists

BY GLENN GREENWALD
MONDAY, APR 9, 2012 9:55 PM UTC
Courtesy Of "Salon Magazine"

[Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him]

By Jesselyn Radack

[UPDATED BELOW]

(updated below – Update II)

For two years I have been writing about the criminalization of whistleblowing, or as Glenn Greenwald has put it more aptly, the “war on whistleblowers.”  I’m an attorney with the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization.

How did I get into this line of work?  Because I myself was a whistleblower when I worked as a Legal Advisor at the Justice Department and blew the whistle when my advice not to interrogate “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh without an attorney (and, parenthetically, not to torture him) was ignored and then “disappeared” from the file in contravention of a federal court discovery order. After I blew the whistle, the Justice Department retaliated against me by, among other things, placing me under criminal investigation, referring me to the state bars in which I’m licensed as a lawyer based on a secret report to which I did not have access, and putting me on the “No-Fly” List. (The D.C. Bar charges are still pending 8½ years later.) I write about the experience in my new book TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the American Taliban. Glenn Greenwald, for whom I am substituting here, wrote an eloquent foreword for the book.

While the Bush administration treated whistleblowers unmercifully, the Obama administration has been far worse. It is actually prosecuting them, and doing so under the Espionage Act — one of the most serious charges that can be leveled against an American. The Espionage Act is an archaic World War I-era law meant to go after spies, not whistleblowers. Strangely, using it to target the media and sources is the brainchild of neo-conservative Gabriel Schoenfeld, who would have sources who disclose information to reporters, journalists who then write about it for newspapers, the newspapers that publish the information and the publisher itself all be held criminally liable.

Everyone wants to know why Obama, with his pledge to “protect whistleblowers,” would do this.  After all, Obama’s transition agenda recognized that “[o]ften the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.”  That’s not just a broken promise, it’s a complete reversal.

At first I thought Obama’s war on whistleblowers was meant to appease the intelligence establishment, which saw him as weak. I soon recognized this assault as a devious way to create bad precedent for going after journalists. All the Espionage Act cases involve allegations that the government employee “leaked” information (or retained information for the purpose of leaking it) to journalists.

The government’s spectacularly failed case against NSA whistleblower Tom Drake claimed that he allegedly retained allegedly classified information for the purpose of leaking it to Siobhan Gorman, then with the Baltimore Sun. It turned out that he disclosed unclassified information about a failed and wasteful (multi-billion dollar) NSA spy program that compromised Americans’ privacy. FBI translator Shamai Liebowitz pleaded guilty to leaking information to a blogger. Leibowitz made his disclosure because of an all-too-real fear that Israel might strike nuclear facilities in Iran, a move he saw as potentially disastrous. State Department arms expert Steven Kim is accused of leaking to Fox News that North Korea was planning to respond to a U.N. Security Council resolution by setting off another nuclear test — surely of public interest to China and South Korea. And, of course, Army Private Bradley Manning is accused of leaking to WikiLeaks.

In the most extreme proof yet that the war on whistleblowers is also a war on journalists, Glenn Greenwald’s explosive piece last night detailed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) repeatedly detaining and interrogating Oscar- and Emmy-nominated documentarian Laura Poitras, who has filmed three of my NSA clients for the third installment of herWar on Terror trilogy. Not surprisingly, her latest film will be about the government’s ever-expanding secret domestic surveillance, NSA treating our nation like a foreign country for spying purposes, and the war on whistleblowers.

In yet other examples, for the Espionage Act prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, the government has subpoenaed New York Times journalist James Risen three times to testify about whether Sterling was his source. The issue is on appeal in the 4^th Circuit from a lower court ruling that Risen had a “qualified reporter’s privilege” not to do so. Going after the media is also evidenced by last week’s Indictment of CIA officer John Kiriakou, which is laced with thinly-veiled references to “Journalist A” (Matthew Cole of ABC News) and “Journalist B” (Scott Shane of the New York Times). “Journalist C” (Richard Esposito of ABC News), mentioned in the charges, mysteriously disappeared from the indictment.

Kiriakou is charged with identifying a covert agent, three Espionage Act counts, and making a false statement, for which he faces 50 years in prison. In the government’s own words: “The charges result from an investigation that was triggered by a classified defense filing [by attorneys representing Guantánamo detainees], which contained classified information the defense had not been given through official government channels, and in part, by the discovery . . . of photographs of certain government employees and contractors in the materials of high-value detainees.” In other words, instead of investigating the government’s withholding of exculpatory information from Gitmo detainees’ lawyers, the government investigated how the lawyers obtained the information. And instead of investigating the approximately 70 names and 25 photos of the detainees’ alleged torturers, the government investigated how the prisoners found them out.

Count I accuses Kiriakou of allegedly confirming the name of an allegedly covert agent — even though the covert agent’s name has never been made public. Count II alleges that Kiriakou violated the Espionage Act by affirming the allegedly covert agent’s (the same one whose name has never been made public) involvement with the “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program.” Counts III and IV stem from Kiriakou’s alleged communications with New York Times reporter Scott Shane, for a story he wrote in 2008 and for which Shane had some 23 other sources.  Count V alleges that Kiriakou tried to trick the CIA, but failed, during the pre-publication review process for his book, “The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.” The Indictment leaves out that Kiriakou took the “trick” information out of his book, and that the CIA cleared Kiriakou’s book in its entirety. More likely, the government is actually upset that Kiriakou’s book sharply criticizes the CIA’s torture program and reveals embarrassing information about the FBI – namely that the FBI shelved potentially-actionable intelligence in the aftermath of 9/11.

The indictment of John Kiriakou, like that of Tom Drake, is meant to chill whistleblowers and the journalists who report their stories.  After the Justice Department’s case collapsed, Drake’s prosecutor requested at sentencing that the judge impose a steep fine of $50,000 “to send a message” to intelligence community employees “who live by these non-disclosure agreements.” (“Non-disclosure agreements” are not to be confused with Omertà-style loyalty oaths. Federal employees do take an oath: to the Constitution, not to the President, an Agency, a boss, or a broken classification system.) The judge gave Drake no fine, but the government’s desired message is especially odious because Drake and Kiriakou are the only people to be prosecuted in relation to two of the Bush administration’s biggest scandals—warrantless surveillance and torture. After being put through what a federal judge called “four years of hell,” Drake is out a career, a federal retirement package, and almost a hundred thousand dollars in attorneys’ fees. Kiriakou himself has also spent tens of thousands in attorneys’ fees and is struggling to raise the million dollars his defense is expected to cost. Intelligence community employees with mortgages and mouths to feed no doubt get the message.

Kiriakou’s Indictment fails to mention that Kiriakou served the CIA and the United States at great personal peril – he survived at least one assassination attempt — for almost 15 years and was trusted with the country’s most sensitive secrets and counter-terrorism operations. It also fails to mention that he was the first CIA officer to call waterboarding “torture” and that he revealed that the CIA’s torture program was policy rather than aberrant playtime.  The law-breaking telecoms who received retroactive immunity from Congress, the interrogators who tortured prisoners, the officials who gave the orders, the attorneys who authored the torture memos, and the CIA agents who destroyed the interrogation tapes have not been held professionally accountable, much less been charged with crimes. National security and intelligence whistleblowers have become the glaring exception to the Obama administration’s mantra of “looking forward, not backward.”  If you committed crimes under the guise of national security and the war on terrorism, you will not be held criminally liable, but if you blow the whistle on crimes, you risk criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act.

As I keep saying, John Kiriakou is the new Tom Drake — an assessment with which Drake himself agrees. And the government’s latest dirty little secret?  For these heavy-handed, oh-so-serious, America-harming, foreign nation-benefitting Espionage Act charges, the government was willing to let Kiriakou plead guilty to a single felony with no jail time.  Desperate.

UPDATE: Journalist Jane Mayer (who won the prestigious George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for her New Yorker story on NSA whistleblower Tom Drake) just e-mailed me that during the awards ceremony, “I pointed out that when our sources are prosecuted, the news-gathering process is criminalized, so it’s incumbent upon all journalists to speak up.  I thanked the Polk judges especially for picking Tom’s story, for that reason.” She’s paraphrasing, of course, because the transcript of the awards ceremony is not yet available, but her point is clear.

UPDATE II: “Journalist A” in the Kiriakou indictment, Matthew Cole (who allegedly received illegal leaks from Kiriakou), is turning out to be a mercurial character.  As Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported, Cole “worked until earlier this year as a producer for ABC News’s investigative unit … Cole’s alleged role also raises questions about whether Cole, whose website indicates he was working on a book at the time, was straddling the line between traditional journalism and information-gathering for lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees. … Public court papers don’t offer much in the way of context for Cole’s interaction with the defense investigator.” Nor does Cole’s website, which was taken down after Gerstein’s article on Monday but can be seen here, elucidate the matter.

Cole’s removed website also says that Cole is “currently under contract to write a book for Simon & Schuster,” but as Jason Leopold—lead investigative reporter for Truthout.org – told me, Cole’s Simon & Schuster contract was cancelled.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

Posted by guest blogger "Sayf Maslul"


"At last, it seems that one person has been able to make disunited governments unite in search of a common goal:

To fuck him and his organisation up as much as they can!"

[Unknown Author] 

The Crime Of Truth

Obama's Persecution Of The Peacemaker 

THURSDAY, 08 MARCH 2012 00:50 
Courtesy Of "Chris Floyd"

If any one person can be said to have ended the direct involvement of the United States military in Iraq, it is not the man whose champions claim this deed as one of his glorious accomplishments: Barack Obama. As we all know (and 99 percent of us have forgotten), Obama fought doggedly to extend the murderous occupation of Iraq into the indefinite future.

No, if you had to choose one person whose actions were the most instrumental in ending the overt phase of the war, it would not the commander-in-chief of the most powerful war machine in world history, but a lowly foot-soldier -- mocked, shackled, tortured, defenseless: Bradley Manning

William Blum points this out in his latest "Anti-Empire Report," as he recaps the impact of the revelations made by Manning and Wikileaks. He begins by noting a painful irony: Manning's own defense team is playing down the heroic nature of this act and instead insisting that such a "sexually troubled" young man should never have been sent to the homophobic environment of the American occupation force in the first place. He was under too much stress, acting irrationally, they say, and thus should not be held accountable for his actions. As Blum notes, this defense -- though doubtless well-intentioned, a desperate bid to keep Obama's massive war machine from crushing Manning completely under its wheels -- partakes of the same deceitful twisting of reality that has characterized the entire war crime from the beginning. Blum:

It's unfortunate and disturbing that Bradley Manning's attorneys have chosen to consistently base his legal defense upon the premise that personal problems and shortcomings are what motivated the young man to turn over hundreds of thousands of classified government files to Wikileaks. They should not be presenting him that way any more than Bradley should be tried as a criminal or traitor. He should be hailed as a national hero. Yes, even when the lawyers are talking to the military mind. May as well try to penetrate that mind and find the freest and best person living there. Bradley also wears a military uniform.

Here are Manning's own words from an online chat: "If you had free reign over classified networks ... and you saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you do? ... God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. ... I want people to see the truth ... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."

Is the world to believe that these are the words of a disturbed and irrational person? Do not the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Geneva Conventions speak of a higher duty than blind loyalty to one's government, a duty to report the war crimes of that government?

Every scrap of evidence presented about Manning's alleged crimes makes it clear that he was acting from rational, well-considered motives, based on the highest ideals. Indeed, wasn't Manning simply following the words of Jesus Christ -- words carved in stone, with the most bitter irony, in the entranceway of the original headquarters of the CIA: "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

In any case, as Blum points out, the effects of Manning's actions were far-reaching:

It was after seeing American war crimes such as those depicted in the video "Collateral Murder" and documented in the "Iraq War Logs," made public by Manning and Wikileaks, that the Iraqis refused to exempt US forces from prosecution for future crimes. The video depicts an American helicopter indiscriminately murdering several non-combatants in addition to two Reuters journalists, and the wounding of two little children, while the helicopter pilots cheer the attacks in a Baghdad suburb like it was the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

The insistence of the Iraqi government on legal jurisdiction over American soldiers for violations of Iraqi law — something the United States rarely, if ever, accepts in any of the many countries where its military is stationed — forced the Obama administration to pull the remaining American troops from the country.

If Manning had committed war crimes in Iraq instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today ...

But he is not a free man, of course. It is very likely that he will never be free again. He will spend the rest of his life in a federal prison for the unforgiveable crime of telling the truth to people who don't want to hear it.

NOTE: A tribute to Bradley and his fellow truth-tellers can be found here: The Good Corporal: To the Exposers of Power and the Troublers of Dreams.

'Our Lives Became Something We'd Never Dreamt'

The Former Israeli Soldiers Who Have Testified Against Army Abuses

Former Israeli soldiers who have testified against army abuses have for the first time given up their anonymity, to make their voices all the harder to ignore. Donald Macintyre gets an exclusive preview of a powerful new book

Sunday, 12 December 2010
Courtesy Of "The Independent"

• • NORMAL

QUIQUE KIERSZENBAUM

Avichay Stolar is a researcher of Breaking the Silence. He says: 'Young soldiers learn from their officers, they imitate their friends in the unit, and they learn to act in a brutal and insensitive way'

•  IN PICTURES: SOLDIERS' TESTIMONIES

For anyone who has covered Israel, the West Bank and Gaza over the past few years, reading Occupation of the Territories, the new book from the Israeli ex-soldiers organisation Breaking the Silence, can be an eerily evocative experience.

A conscript from the Givati Brigade, for example, describes how troops in the company operating next to his inside Gaza during 2008 had talked about an event earlier in the day. After knocking on the door of a Palestinian house and receiving no immediate answer, they had placed a "fox" – military slang for explosives used to break through doors and walls – outside the front door. At that very moment, the woman of the house had reached the door to open it. 

"Her limbs were smeared on the wall and it wasn't on purpose," the soldier recalls. 

"And then her kids came and saw her. I heard it during dinner after the operation, someone said it was funny, and they cracked up from the situation that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall..."

It was surely the same incident. You have to assume that the laughter alluded to by the conscript was a nervous reaction, a manifestation of delayed shock from the soldiers. They had, after all, had the presence of mind to cover Mrs al-Daghma's mutilated body with a carpet, and to keep the children confined to the bedroom for the five hours they had remained in the house. Samira said she had asked one of them, "Where is my mother?" but had not understood his reply in Hebrew. She explained how, when the soldiers finally left after nightfall, "There were still tanks outside our house... I tried to call my father on my mother's Jawwal [mobile phone] but there was no line. I lifted the carpet and saw a bit of my mother's clothes. She was not moving. I did not see her head."

The point of this is not just that the soldier's story is shocking, but that it is so apparently corroborated. Especially given that the conscript's short account – unlike many others in the book, some every bit as disquieting – is based on hearsay, it is powerfully suggestive of the testimonies' authenticity as a portrait of a 43-year-old occupation. These testimonies, checked and cross-checked, of young Israeli men and women struggling to come to terms, sometimes years after the event, with their military service in the West Bank and Gaza, add up to an unprecedented inside account, as the book's introduction puts it, of "the principles and consequences of Israeli policy in the [Palestinian] territories".

Breaking the Silence is a unique organisation. No other country – including those with recent and problematic military histories, such as the US and Britain – has anything comparable. Since it began in 2004, it has collected 700 testimonies from conscripts and reservists, spanning the decade since the beginning of the second intifada. In July last year, it made its greatest impact by publishing accounts from around 30 combat soldiers involved in the onslaught on Hamas-controlled Gaza only six months earlier, challenging the military's assertion that it had done "the utmost to avoid harming uninvolved civilians".

Breaking the Silence has since taken two more decisive steps. The Israeli military has long complained about the anonymity of its witnesses. In July, the IDF even questioned whether all the testimonies were genuine. Anonymity was understandable; the soldiers risked alienation and heavy criticism from their own communities as well as from the state itself, not to mention the possibility of proceedings brought by the military. Now, for the first time, 27 of those who had testified have allowed the Jerusalem-based photographer Quique Kierszenbaum to take their portraits, and use their names, along with summaries of why and what they testified.

The second step change, having in the past let the testimonies speak for themselves, is that Breaking the Silence has been emboldened by the sheer number of them to offer a broader analysis of what it believes they expose: in part that, while Israeli forces have indeed had to deal with "concrete threats in the past decade, including terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens", their operations, especially in the West Bank, extend beyond the solely defensive and "systematically" lead to the "de facto annexation" of occupied territory "through the dispossession of Palestinian residents".

In arguing that Israel exercises a measure of control over Palestinians that extends beyond its own security needs, the book (published in Hebrew on 21 December, with an English version to follow in the new year), takes four technical terms in frequent use by the Israeli military and tries to show in its introductions to the testimonies what Breaking the Silencesees as their real, as opposed to ostensible, meaning.

The first of these terms is "Prevention" [sikkul in Hebrew] which, it argues, has become a "code word" that allows almost every form of military action, offensive as well as defensive, to be classified as "prevention of terrorist activity". It says the principle, first enunciated by the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon of "searing it into the consciousness" of Palestinians that violence does not pay, translates into "intimidation... and indiscriminate punishment of the Palestinian population". The examples given include: sending a military truck into the village of Tubas at 3am in 2003 "with stun grenades and just throwing them in the street, for no reason, waking people up [to say] 'We are here. The IDF is here.'"; shooting ' a visibly unarmed man walking on a roof in Nablus in 2002 ("The company commander declared him a lookout, meaning that he understood there was no threat from the guy, and he gave the order to kill him"); and halting stone-throwing in Tekoa by using a "moving human shield" – a Palestinian man tied to the front of a vehicle – before driving round the village.

The second term is "Separation" [hafradah], meaning the separation of Palestinians not only from Israelis but from other Palestinians (within the West Bank and between Gaza and the West Bank) and their own land by using checkpoints, separation barriers, Israeli-only roads used by West Bank settlers, and a strict permit regime enforcing "isolation" of many communities. While much of this "separation" – including loss of land – is permanent, in the past two years, post-intifada, some obstacles have eased. But Breaking the Silence insists the "paradigm" is unchanged. "It's obvious Israel relaxes its grip when things are easier," says the organisation's Mikhael Manekin. "But it always has the grip. It can relax or tighten it as it chooses."

There was the "separation" of Nablus in 2003 from the surrounding villages: "You have to understand the proportionality. A person between the ages of 16 and 35, who lives in Nablus has not left Nablus in the past four years, even to go to a village next to Nablus." Another example was the Qalqilya area in 2002: "Someone whose fig grove they uprooted came in tears, and he said to me: 'I worked for 30 years to buy the land, I worked this grove for 10 years, I waited 10 years for it to bear fruit, I enjoyed it for one year and they [the IDF] are uprooting it.'"

Next is "Fabric of life" [mirkam hayyim], the term used by the IDF to underline that it does its best to ensure as normal a life as possible for Palestinians – a proposition strongly contested in the book. It claims that Israel controls the passage of civilians and goods into Israel and within the West Bank, the opening of private businesses, transport of school-children, university students and medical cases. "[Property] can all be taken at the discretion of a regional commander or a soldier in the field... troops will burst into the house in the dead of night and arrest one of the inhabitants, only to release him later – all in order to practise arrest procedures."

Among the examples is the story of a Palestinian truck driver trying to bring milk containers into Hebron from Yatta during a curfew in 2002, who was detained, handcuffed and blindfolded on a hot summer morning. He had some 2,000 litres of milk – all of which spoiled as he sat all day, restrained. "When I look at it [now]," says a former soldier, "I feel embarrassed... Did it contribute to the security of the state? No."

Another example concerns illegal workers and their families trying to get into the Wadi Ara of northern Israel from the West Bank. One former soldier recalls "Pouring out the kids' bags and playing with their toys... They cried and were afraid." The adults cried, too? "Of course. One of the goals was always: I got him to cry in front of his kids, I got him to crap in his pants... from being beaten for the most part."

Finally, in examining the term "Law enforcement" [akhifat hak], the book highlights the dual legal regime in the West Bank, whereby Palestinians are subject to military rule and courts while Israeli settlers are answerable to civilian courts. At the same time, it argues, Israeli settlers are effectively allies of the military – and they have a common enemy.

The book's stark – and inevitably highly political – conclusion is contrary to the view that "Israel is withdrawing from the Palestinian Territories slowly and with the appropriate caution and security". The IDF soldiers quoted "describe an indefatigable attempt to tighten Israel's hold on the territories, as well as on the Palestinian population".

Not surprisingly perhaps, Manekin acknowledges that those who have – as he deliberately puts it – "come out of the closet", by allowing themselves to be named and photographed, are among the more activist of the 500 individuals who have testified to the organisation. It is no coincidence that this parallel project has happened at a time when Breaking the Silencehas decided to promote its own analysis of the past decade of occupation. Manekin says it wasn't easy to be photographed. "We didn't do this to be heroes," he says. "Really, the political significance is the only reason for doing it."

Donald Macintyre is The Independent's Jerusalem correspondent. For more from Breaking the Silence: shovrimshtika.org

A second-hand story, of course; one without names, dates or supporting detail. Except that it stirred a memory I had of reporting the death of a Palestinian UN schoolteacher east of Khan Younis. Wafer Shaker al-Daghma was killed when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) commandeered her house during an incursion in May 2008. Her husband had been out at the time. When we came to the house five days later, another incursion was under way and we could hear, uncomfortably close, the gunfire from Israeli armoured military vehicles while Majdi al-Daghma described his wife's death at the age of 34. When she realised troops were nearby, she'd ordered ' the children, Samira, 13, Roba, four, and Qusay, two, into the bedroom, put on a headscarf and prepared to open the door. "Samira heard a loud explosion and there was a lot of smoke," he explained. "She looked for her mother but couldn't see her."