HomeArticleTrump Continues Obama’s War On Whistleblowers, Arrests Another Alleged Intercept Source

Trump Continues Obama’s War On Whistleblowers, Arrests Another Alleged Intercept Source

“New drone whistleblower at The Intercept,” tweeted the outspoken CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou in October 2015. “For God’s sake don’t let @MatthewACole learn his identity.”

Intercept investigative reporter Matthew Cole has been tied both to Kiriakou’s discovery and prosecution and to that of Reality Winner, who leaked classified documents to The Intercept in 2017. Kiriakou’s comment came after the first in a series of articles was published in The Intercept titled “The Drone Papers” by Jeremy Scahill on October 15, 2015. Today, the alleged source of this report has been arrested, the third alleged Intercept source to have been prosecuted by the Trump administration.

Former US Air Force language analyst Daniel Hale has been arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act and other offenses related to leaking classified documents to the press. Court documents didn’t reveal the identity of the journalist who received the documents, but AP reports that “details in the indictment make clear that Jeremy Scahill, a founding editor of The Intercept, is the reporter who received the leaks.”

“The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government,” Scahill’s 2015 article reads, quoting his source as saying, “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong.”


Hale’s arrest has understandably brought harsh criticism against The Intercept for losing yet another source to federal prosecutors. In addition to Hale and Reality Winner, former FBI officer Terry James Albury was sentenced to four years in prison for leaking documents to The Intercept on the Hooveresque powers that the FBI has given itself in the wake of 9/11. It is absolutely right that people should be asking questions of a billionaire-funded outlet which keeps losing sources despite a solemn promise of source protection, and that discussion should continue to happen.

What in my opinion hasn’t received enough attention as of this writing, and what is far more dangerous than one moderate-sized outlet failing to protect its sources, is the fact that a US president is continuing and expanding on his predecessor’s  unprecedented war on whistleblowers.

“The Trump admin is on pace to shatter the record for the most prosecutions of journalistic sources,” reads a statement by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Hale is at least the sixth alleged journalistic source charged by the Trump administration in just over two years in office. The Justice Department has previously indicated dozens more leak investigations are ongoing.”

“Prosecuting journalistic sources chills investigative reporting and poses an enormous threat to whistleblowers, press freedom rights, and the public’s right to know,” explained Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm. “Whistleblowers should be lauded for their courage, not charged with felonies and imprisoned. The Trump administration is on pace to shatter the Obama administration’s record for the number of prosecutions of alleged sources, and everyone who cares about brave national security reporting should loudly condemn Hale’s arrest.”

“If the allegations are true, the U.S. government is prosecuting another whistleblower in its zeal to crackdown on leaks and control the flow of information, particularly on national security matters,” explains Kevin Gosztola in a very thorough article for Shadowproof. “They are also criminalizing another source, who provided information to The Intercept.”


You’d never know it from the debates in the mass media on both sides of America’s imaginary partisan divide, but the real story isn’t in the differences between Trump and his predecessors. It’s in the similarities.

Barack Obama made a promise to protect whistleblowers and have the most transparent administration in history, which was very well-received by the public after the frightening Orwellian advancements of George W Bush. People understood that in order for democracy to exist, the public needs to be able to see what its government is doing in all possible ways, and the prospect of a president who would give that to them made a lot of people feel hopeful. Obama then he went on to prosecute more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, and his successor, despite all the partisan chatter about how wildly different the two presidents are, is following right in his footsteps.

Information about targeted drone assassinations and distortions of civilian casualties are things the US government had no business keeping from its people in the first place. These are taxpayer-funded actions, and taxpayers have a right and a need to know that this sort of thing is being done with their money. The US government isn’t prosecuting someone who allegedly blew the whistle on this because he endangered national security in any way; clearly it did not. This was not a matter of national security, it was a matter of government embarrassment and inconvenience. That is not a legitimate reason to try to make an example of someone for revealing the truth about it. We should not accept that this is the kind of society that we’ll have to live in.

I mean, what do you do at this point if you’re someone who wants to blow the whistle on government malfeasance? Go to The Intercept, which keeps losing sources? Go to WikiLeaks, which the Trump administration has pledged to take down and whose founder is currently awaiting US extradition in Belmarsh Prison? A mainstream outlet like the New York Times, AP, Fox News, WikiLeaks, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, or the Washington Post, all of whom had sources prosecuted under Obama? The fact of the matter is that the deliberate intimidation of future whistleblowers will necessarily have its desired effect; many people who work with the US government will refrain from speaking out about atrocities they discover out of fear of spending years behind bars for doing the right thing.

At this point the only thing that will change this is the US populace rising up against its oppressive totalitarian rulers and ferociously demanding the transparency that it is entitled to from its government. This will continue to get worse until it’s forced to get better.



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Latest comments

  • Democracy Now! had a program on Hale’s arrest, but I would have to go back and listen to it again to see if they excused the Intercept or condemned it, as they broadcast at 5 AM and I was pretty tired. SECRET=LIES, TOP-SECRET=BIG FAT LIES + Skulduggery. Just like Government funded program= License to steal. Right now the little tin gods are working on the next “Tidy little War” probably Iran first, then Venezuela second. And the American Corporate Media will be all for it just like Mr. Bush’s Iraq boondoggle. And the Cannon fodder will be lined up to enlist, brainwashed that they are from birth. I wish I could afford billboards all over the country to put up a photo of my friend who went to Iraq and lost both arms and both legs to show people the “Glory of War.” When the bills for war come due who will pay them? You and I and the other small people, as Mr. Bezos will contribute a big fat Zero. US total debt as of 11/14/18=$71,545,812,087,411.09 Your share sir=$851,382.And rest assured when we do decide to put an end to this crap they will call out the army, navy, air force and marines to protect themselves, like any tin pot dictatorship. Wake up, and live simple folks, and try to be totally honest with each other…..



    Dear Sir/Madam,


    I write to ask if you will use the election campaign to speak up for Julian Assange, an unjustly imprisoned Australian journalist, who faces extradition from Britain to the United States. Through the Wikileaks news service, established in 2006, Julian revealed to the world war-crimes that United States’ rulers wanted to remain concealed. One of the most infamous of those incidents was the 12 July 2007 “Collateral murder” in Iraq by the US crew of an Apache helicopter.

  • Chelsea Manning, another war crimes whistleblower like Daniel Everette Hale, has been temporarily released from jail for one week:

    Chelsea Manning Released From Jail But Received Another Subpoena — Shadowproof

  • The World’s Dictatress by Jacob Hornberger:

    • the thing is, the road on which JQA and other founding fathers unleashed the USA has inevitably led to this Dictatress status of the USA.

      the libertarians may want to start the whole journey all over again, but the process and the end result will be the same.

      that’s what Marx predicted: give the capitalists enough rope, and they will hang themselves eventually.

      • So, Jungei, considering human nature and its contradictions, what is your preferred ideology? Which one, based on your experience, will unleash everlasting utopia?
        Anyone can quote Marx — I do too — but how about some insight into your deep understanding of human behavior and original ideas for making the world a better place?
        After all, it’s readily apparent you have a belief system upon which you base normative value judgments — right and wrong, good and bad — regarding various political and economic theories. So where do you fall in that continuum?
        You’ve written, about me, that “there have been more than enough alternatives proposed by now. you just do not like them, so you pretend you don’t know them.”
        But that is actually quite wrong — I’m ignorant of the alternatives to which you refer. So educate me…

    • Excellent article; thank you for sharing this with us.

  • America — the strange place that when key US-China trade talks break up after only a relatively short morning meeting, and where while the US-Trump appointees say only that they were ‘constructive’, the Chinese left with no comment at all. The fact that the Chinese publicly shook hands with the Americans as they left is promoted as a super-good sign, apparently on the strength of the logic that its better than having them punch the Americans in anger. All in all the propaganda blares that this is some sort of a good sign in the the trade talks, which were only doing good in the first place because the Americans thought it was perfectly natural that they dictate to the Chinese their laws and entire economic system and the Americans couldn’t believe that the Chinese might reject this. And yet, the stock markets go up on the supposedly good news from the trade talks. America is a strange place, apparently quite divorced from reality.

    • yet another proof that the stock price has nothing to do with the real economy on the ground. all the $$$$ that they freely printed and gave to themselves have no place else to go to other than the casino, aka the stock market.

      the good news for the people is, pay no attention, unless you self-defeatingly participated in the speculation game and stand to lose big time.

  • there are MANY more whistleblowers who, despite all this threat and intimidation from the
    Deep State criminals, have courageously stepped forward and blown the horn as loud as they could.

    but the rest of the world haven’t heard them, because the MSM and the internet-based corporates have cut them off and killed their voice. except when we actively pursue alternative channels like this one. yes, our enemy is powerful and absolutely shameless.

    what do we do under this circumstances? first, have some faith in the unwashed masses, who seem clueless. they may not have all the facts but they have a good hunch, as they have to live the reality day in and day out. half the voters never vote, and you know why now.

    BDS everything and everyone, including the election ritual itself, that serves and profits from the status quo. as long as it doesn’t kill you. and build alternatives. try to remember that it’s a very long game.

    • While I generally support BDS, in specific instances against clearly defined and deserving targets with specific and articulate goals, what you’re saying here doesn’t make much sense.
      “BDS everything and everyone, including the election ritual itself…” — Junghi
      This accomplishes nothing and is, again, no plan at all. While opposing the empire is, and has been, a “very long game” you advocate nothing but pretended opposition. Perhaps all this muddled virtue-signaling will get you into heaven, but it sure as hell won’t accomplish much here on Earth.
      If, as argued previously, deliberately not voting to oppose the empire is ineffective because it’s impossible to determine the reason and intent behind an absent vote, how will doing more of the same change that? How will allowing a smaller and smaller percentage of those who do vote choose and legitimize governance for us all force any change in that governance?
      All I advocate is opposing our governance by the elite, clearly and unambiguously, by tendering a blank ballot in the next election.
      And, yes, this idea rests upon a “faith in the unwashed masses”, that “they have a good hunch” because of their daily reality, and will act upon it when an opportunity presents itself.

      • general BDS makes no sense because you still believe that the problem is a few bad apples in a otherwise good system.

      • the general BDS makes no sense to you who still believe that the problem is a few bad apples in an otherwise good system.

        how does the evil empire change? if no one participate, it will disappear. what then? we should be building alternatives all along.

        • If you have something in mind, any alternative vision, propose it. Argue for it, make your best case and let the rest of us consider it on its merits.
          If not, all you’ve said is: “If you ignore the boogeyman he’ll go away.”


            • So you’ve got nothing… typical.

  • One could add Snowden, who risked his life to release documents, only to have the vast majority of those documents “disappeared” into MIC-connected Intercept.

  • As a U.S. Marine, I depended on my government to ensure I was doing the right thing, in the right place, and not committing war crimes. In two decades of service, I’m pretty sure I never killed anyone, and the closest I’ve been to “war crimes” has been sitting over the horizon, as an emergency dispatch force, in case the “operation landside, went sideways”.
    I happened to be pulled out of the first Iraq war because “I had too much deployed time, my peers needed to be caught up, and I needed a “B billet”, “Recruiting” was selected for me, rather than Drill Instructor. I openly and fully supported Specialist New, when he refused to serve as “a Mercenary” under NATO, with a foreign officer in charge. He was right to do so, it completely abrogates our “Oath of allegiance”, and makes us war criminals, if anyone chooses to charge in international court.
    I still had “too much overseas time”, after three years of recruiting, and was sent to instructor school, and to the “school house” at MCAS Cherry Point, and made a mess, stirring up the “sick, lame and lazy” who had used the school as a “retirement posting”, with little supervision, no discipline. That changed immediately, it took two years to fire me, and five “fitness reports signed” before they filled the form out correctly, and clearly showed I’d cleaned house.
    I began supporting “Judicial Watch” the moment they arrived on the scene, because they instituted FOIA lawsuits, and put top lawyers in place, forcing open government as no other organization has ever been able to.
    Having been taught to recruit, and professional sales skills, I became a top rated instructor, having at this point, more than fifty years in electronics, and having been beyond “engineer” level, as head instructor of Avionics. I was fired for calling out my Commanding Officer, for starting a drug investigation on one of my students, based illegally, on a “phone confirmation” of a urinalysis, a criminal act, it is a “courtesy call”, and only “an official Naval Message” is evidence allowing the opening of an investigation. Not even the least administrative action is authorized, prior, and I was waiting to be “counselled” for “embarrassing the Training Squadron” by my “attacks on a legitimate investigation”, when the actual “naval message” arrived, I signed off, as was my own duty, and carried it in for the captain to sign, after he read me my rights, and castigated me, head to foot, without a single actual chargeable offense.
    I was fired, I had a hail and farewell party thrown me by my fellow instructors, and was met at the door of said party, by my new boss, first in line, to “get me”.
    I was welcomed with open arms, told about the fiasco of the five or so fitness reports written, turned in, returned as improper, and the fact he, Master Sergeant Butler, had to fight to get me, made the two weeks of “war between me and the command” worth every minute of it.
    I got to serve my last almost three years, Head of the same shop that was my first permanent duty station, 22 years prior.
    I wrote to the President, about Edward Snowden, identifying him as the utmost Patriot, and castigating all charging, wrote congress dozens of times, and continue to this day, on Snowden’s behalf, as well as Specialist New, and have supported Mr. Assange from day one.
    In America today, the most one can do, is write letters, or, with a bit of luck, expose some real serious government malfeasance, the latter being the sole means of effecting real change. I no longer hope for our survival, I believe we’ve surpassed the “tipping point” socially, and culturally, and the sooner we fail, the sooner we can begin to fix all our problems.
    The worst problems always come out of minor problems with ‘bandaid’s’ put on them, until they leak like sieves, yet one can’t see the source, for the crusty plastic tape. By the time someone rips off the whole mess, it generally is seriously infected, requiring septic tissue removed, and major flooding of sepsis out of the wound.
    Our “fiscal wound” has festered after bandaid upon bandaid, until it’s festered out the other side, and there’s no “bandaid” big enough or useful at all, to deal with the failure to deal with the small cut that started it all.
    We began as a “Christian Nation”, one whose law was attached to Judaic principles, established in practical form, as “Christian”, and relying on “natural law”, reason, ratiocination, to establish our Constitution on first principles. At our inception, we had many willing to see the new country, replace the Brits, as empire, hoping to see both they and the French, bring each other down.
    From a personal perspective, I believe John Adams was right, in stating: “this form of government is suited only for a moral, and a religious people. Any other form, require a tyrant, to drive them to do their duty”. We were well educated as to Sovereign Citizen, the responsibilities of such, and that of Sovereign States of a Republic, having been taught these things for some fifty years by our protestant Churches, leading up to our rebellion, and demands for the full rights of common law.
    “A moral People” are a People who live on the belief their rule of law is from higher authority than man himself, and is accountable in the end for their own behavior vis a vis the rule of law.
    “A religious People” are a People who believe we are not the height of “a random and utterly unguided cosmos”, but the outcome of deliberate intent, and provided with laws, by our “Creator”, and such laws as we have, are perfectly reasonable, relative to that notion.
    Every good start “Man” has ever made, has ultimately broken down, fallen, because of greed, corruption, the simple fact, not everyone can hold to the notion, they must earn their daily bread, and some few always want to finagle theirs, rather than earn it.
    I, personally, put this as part and parcel to our being of a “fallen nature”, and prone to fail to fully meet reasonable “rule of law”, because greed is a part of our make-up. I’ve come to agree entirely with Mr. Adams, and ruefully acknowledge, “this American People” were not able to maintain our necessary fealty to honor, truth, and principle, to maintain control of our own government, and by this, the world should consider both the opportunity we had from our inception, and all the steps we took to evade that best possible outcome, choosing greed, following the same money lenders, and choosing the same outcome, as all people in the past have done.
    Semper Fidelis,
    John McClain
    GySgt, USMC, ret.
    Vanceboro, NC, USA

    • Gy McClain: Long read, but interesting nonetheless. I retired after 35 yrs (9 enl, the rest as a zero), so I understood you well. I’m guessing some of the discussion will be lost on other readers. Sounds like yours was a “tricky” career to navigate, given your proclivity to stand up for doing the right thing. I’m glad you survived long enough to retire. Hope things are going well for you in NC. s/f Joe

  • OK, so when we get all the facts about our next 2 candidates for POTUS, a never to happen occurrence, what do we do? Remember, these candidates are not there thanks to random events selecting them, to become a POTUS candidate you have to compromise yourself to many entities. You need tons of strings attached money. This is how influence originates. Shelly Adelson gave Drumph tons of money but lots was expected for this money. As in moving our embassy to Jerusalem and granting the Golan to Israel, a couple of bizarro, disgusting illegalities.You run for POTUS, expect to become a whore for many interests.Drumph is just that.Our choices at the ballot box consist of selecting either of 2 bought and paid for candidates. The one cardinal proof behind this is that things never change regardless of what party is in the WH. Our way of government is now and forever called a dollarocracy. It’s why we are doomed unless…..the American people will not rise up against this tyrannical whore, they are too busy texting on their thousand dollar gadgetry. Just another day in paradise, I guess.

    • Tender a blank ballot in the next election…

  • Whistleblowers in Saudi Arabia get their heads cut off. In the United States, a much more civilized country, we just throw them in prison.

  • It looks like at least some of Truump’s leak investigations relate to Comey-NYTimes-WashPost behaviors. NYTimes and WashPost have yet to fess up. Such investigations would be deserved in my opinion as part of a coup attempt on a duly elected President. LOCK HER UP!!! and DWSchultz and Comey and Strzok and Brennan and Clapper and Lynch and Obama and Rice and… Would this be draining the swamp or a dictator arresting political opponents? Are they political opponents or criminals?

  • You start by trying to tune in, which is more than most strugglers have time for. Don’t even bother with CNN or FOX; NPR and PBS sound credible. When you realize they aren’t bad at their jobs, they’re great at their jobs, it’s time to jack into the mainframe and learn some kung fu. With a name like “Mother Jones”, it must be progressive, right? EmptyWheeler and The Intercepted seem legit, surely they would never burn a source. Jim Risible was brave enough to help send a (likely innocent) person to prison. Glenn Greenbacks loves dogs, so he wouldn’t hoard the Snowjob archive. Laura Coitrus endured ICE harassment, so she wouldn’t smear Assange. Jeremy Isn’t Hungry hates mercenaries, so he couldn’t be a rat. Betsy Reed continues to retain Murtazza Al-Qaeda, Bob Mackey Suit, and Mehdical Waste, so they must deserve awards. If only I’d chosen the blue pill…

    • correction: Besty Reed
      sorry, I’m new to this

  • The irony of this once great nation–punch drunk and reeling–bleeding internally–while the rest of the world–who once cherished our presence–would now–just as soon see us laid out on the canvas–anything to stop the blundering destruction– ordered by our ill-chosen masters–waiting for the inevitable demise–while the progressive deplorables–gear up for another one of Esther’s deceptive massacres–and the bumping and the grinding goes without restraint–because after all– isn’t that what it’s all about–the right to fuck whomever or whatever–while the world burns in a funeral pyre–waiting patiently for the black void–so that earth can join it’s silent and dead brethren: The Horror, the Horror!

    Or we could stand-up and toss the Zionist occupiers out on their fat asses and start living like men again!

  • So why is it that absolutely no one or no group dares to bring any part of the United States government into any state or federal court to prosecute their illegal act at home and abroad???? Where are all of these so-called ” Constitutionalists ” that cite the United States Constitution every day and night but never ever use their law degrees to challenge our rogue government in any court of law???

    • Sovereign immunity — rex non potest peccare.

    • Why haven’t 1,000,000 lawyers joined together to sue the living daylights out of this government? We can wonder why but we all know the answers. As in families to raise, licenses to maintain, mortages to pay, etc etc etc. We all know America is merely gun fodder for the elites. We are getting slaughtered by good ol’ compound interest and we refuse to do anything about it.
      We know we are dying but we just don’t care……..

    The Phoenix Program gone wild… and global. Coming soon to a dissident near you.
    We agree Caitlin, but what’s your plan? How do we “force it to get better”?
    Just by telling American citizens to “… ris[e] up against its oppressive totalitarian rulers and ferociously demand… transparency”? How do they “rise up” and “ferociously demand” anything from an “oppressive totalitarian government”? Why would that “oppressive totalitarian government” listen to, even tolerate, any “ferocious demand” which might threaten their hold on power?
    What do you think the demonization and social media purges of dissident, independent and critical thinkers is all about? Whom do you think is pulling Zuckerberg and Dorsey’s strings?
    “The only reason such info is kept ‘secret’ is to thwart the very concept of democracy, because if voters don’t know what’s being done, then they only get to choose the hairstyle of the next assassin-in-chief.’ — Mata Hari
    Government secrecy makes a democratic republic impossible. Period. If citizens don’t have all the facts, they cannot make an informed choice at the ballot box. Period. Where secrecy exists, citizens must depend on the honesty and trustworthiness of the political elite and elected leaders… How’s that working out?
    This is why I’m writing here. To convince you we need a plan to set the empire’s demise in motion:
    A plan that requires no violence by U.S. citizens to challenge the legitimacy and authority of the empire.
    A plan which delegitimizes the elite’s use of police violence against those citizens.
    A plan wherein each citizen need only agree that the empire must end.
    A simple plan that every citizen can easily understand — tender a blank ballot in the next election.
    A plan which, if successful, precipitates a political and legal crisis for elite rule and which clearly delineates the stakes should they attempt to continue their rule…
    Why should you listen to me? Perhaps you should not — what I propose is dangerous and success is far from a foregone conclusion. It’s a desperation move, a Hail Mary, for a citizenry systematically disenfranchised by their rulers.
    But telling people to just “… ris[e] up against [their] oppressive totalitarian rulers …” is no plan at all, no matter how much I agree with the sentiment.

    • What we need to do is to clone hundreds of Thurgood Marshalls through law schools and use their skills to shackle our own government!!!

      • Do you have something useful to say? Or are you merely virtue-signaling?

  • I disagree with Caitlin that Trump’s prosecution of whistleblowers is far more dangerous than Intercept’s compromising its sources. We can expect the US government under any president since JFK to behave that way as their realpolitik constituency is the 1%.

    By contrast, we expect The Intercept’s constituency to be the 99% but with another whistleblower captured via Intercept, one is compelled to ask Ex-Intercept writer Ken Silverstein’s question: “Is ‘The Intercept’ an Intelligence Operation” March 30, 2019 https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/03/huge-former-intercept-writer-steps-forward-is-the-intercept-an-intelligence-operation/

    • including jfk, and surely ike with his benign neglect of mccarthy (also a kennedy favorite).

      • JFK was a traitor to his class. He was putting the US on a peace economy and got assassinated by those unelected, unaccountable forces behind the scenes who have ever since put our government on a war economy.

        National Security Action Memorandum 263 was kept classified for 30 years. NSAM 263 signed by JFK in October 1963 called for the withdrawal of all US presence in Vietnam by the end of December 1964. Two days after his murder, LBJ passed NSAM 273 which essentially nullified NSAM 263. The US has been on a war economy ever since.

  • Despite all of this oppression, Lee Camp reported in a recent article that there have been more then 95,000 whistleblowing reports at the pentagon in the past five years. Apparently, millennials are responsible for much of this.

    • What is the cumulative impact of those 95000 reports though? (Anything at all aside from attempts to find and destroy the whistleblowers?)

      • I don’t know. The sense I had from the article was that millennials are seen as a problem.

  • The thing about such secrets is that ‘The Enemy’ already knows the secret. ‘The Enemy’ already knows how many drone attacks occur, and how many civilians are killed, how many miss completely and hit a wedding or the wrong vehicle, how man actual militants are actually killed. ‘The Enemy’ already knows all of these things. The only reason such info is kept ‘secret’ is to thwart the very concept of democracy, because if voters don’t know what’s being done, then they only get to choose the hairstyle of the next assassin-in-chief.

    • Excellent observation.


      I had to read on to be sure I knew whether you were talking about the enemies in the Middle East, etc. or in D.C.
      I’ll bet most people would get the ratings backward regarding which of those groups is the greater danger to us.

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