Obama's transparent opposition to whistleblowers

Project on Government Oversight - Last month, The New Yorker magazine reported on how POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian told President Obama to his face that "prosecuting whistleblowers would undermine his legacy." One of those whistleblowers being targeted is Tom Drake, a National Security Agency whistleblower who is less than a week away from his first day in court. Drake is being prosecuted not for sharing classified information with the media, but instead is being charged with having information—including unclassified materials—in his possession that he used in cooperation with a Defense Department Inspector General audit of a program that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and may have put your civil liberties at risk. As Danielle told the President, "Drake was exactly the kind of whistleblower who deserved protection."

Prosecuting whistleblowers for their cooperation with authorities will have a chilling effect throughout the federal government at a time when we need whistleblowers to identify waste, fraud, abuse, threats to our civil liberties, and other misconduct.

There is not (or there should not be) a national security exemption to accountability in a democratic society—yet going after a whistleblower like Drake is the antithesis of accountability. The White House should tell the Justice Department to exercise prosecutorial discretion and drop its case against Drake.

• The Government Accountability Project is representing Drake (although not as his criminal defense). Some of GAP’s efforts and other information on Drake can be viewed here.
• Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the non-profit Federation of American Scientists, has been diligently chronicling significant filings during the pre-trial phase of the case and presumably will continue to do so if the trial begins. 
• The New Yorker profiled Drake and explored the case last month, 60 Minutes featured Drake in a special episode, and The Washington Post editorialized earlier this week that his prosecution “smacks of overkill.”