……………..Van Buren documents other ways in which the Obama administration has lashed out at whistleblowers:
In Kiriakou’s case, the CIA found an excuse to fire his wife, also employed by the Agency, while she was on maternity leave. Whistleblower Bradley Manning, accused of leaking Army and State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks, spent more than a year in the worst of punitive conditions in a U.S. Marine prison and was denied the chance even to appear in court to defend himself until almost two years after his arrest. Former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Morris Davis lost his career as a researcher at the Library of Congress for writing a critical op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and a letter to the editor at the Washington Post on double standards at the infamous prison, as did Robert MacClean for blowing the whistle on the Transportation Security Administration.
Four employees of the Air Force Mortuary in Dover, Delaware, attempted to address shortcomings at the facility, which handles the remains of all American service members who die overseas. Retaliation against them included firings, the placing of employees on indefinite administrative leave, and the imposition of five-day suspensions. The story repeats itself in the context of whistleblowers now suing the Food and Drug Administration for electronically spying on them when they tried to alert Congress about misconduct at the agency. We are waiting to see the Army’s reaction to whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who documented publicly … that senior leaders of the Department of Defense intentionally and consistently misled the American people and Congress on the conduct and progress of the Afghan War.
In short, he says, the administration is conducting “an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.” This from a President who promised to operate “the most open and transparent [administration] in history.”
Of course, as the Times observes, Obama doesn’t have a problem with all leaks, just those that reflect badly on the government: “Reporters were immediately and endlessly briefed on the ‘secret’ operation that successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every time there is a successful mission.”
What gets under Obama’s skin iis the leaking of embarrassing information about the U.S. government. He loves when journalists report on foreign governments’ misdeeds — particularly when those reports can be used to drum up war fever — but not when they tattle on Washington’s abuses. As Tapper aptly summarized it, Obama’s opinion is that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.”