Public Comment

With prosecutions of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou and others, Federal prosecutors have charged more public servants for leaking classified information to journalists than all previous administrations. However, leaking classified information to the Press to advance self-serving political agendas is fairly common.

It can be argued that many whistleblowers seem to have been motivated by genuine concerns of the unlawful actions of our government such as spying on its citizens and torture. The sinister activities of the National Security Agency and the abuses of the Patriot Act would not have been possible without the courageous revelations made by Snowden. 

Contrast these harsh prosecutions of low-level whistleblowers with the light sentence of General Petraeus who gave his biographer and lover, Paula Broadwell, access to notes containing highly classified information. He avoided jail time in exchange for a guilty plea of mishandling classified information. He has retained his position as a partner in a New York private equity firm and a consultant to the White House. The wide disparity in sentencing smacks of an unhealthy double standard. Reporters must have free, unimpeded access to their sources for a healthy democracy. If only whistleblowers could have pierced through the bogus official claims of Saddam’s WMD’s we could have avoided the Iraq debacle and the birth of ISIS, an opinion vigorously endorsed by President Obama.