Hours before Tulsi Gabbard appeared for a combative hearing on her nomination as director of national intelligence on Thursday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave some public advice to the woman who once pushed for his pardon.
“Tulsi Gabbard will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation today. I encourage her to do so. Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that’s what passes for the pledge of allegiance,” Snowden said on X.
Even after facing more than a dozen questions about Snowden, however, Gabbard refused to back down.
Instead, Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Snowden broke the law and that she would no longer push for his pardon — but that he had revealed blatant violations of the Constitution.
Isn’t American law supposed to protect whistleblowers? I mean we all know it doesn’t but at least in public speaking defending whistleblowers should be considered a good thing no?
No it only pretends to. Because whistleblowers have to leak sensitive information to blow the whistle, the US goes after them for treachery.
These days whistleblowing against America or big companies leads to suicide with a bullet to the back of the head.
It doesn’t though - and that’s had an obvious chilling effect on whistle-blowers.
One of the key issues is that most politicians will express support for whistle-blowing in the abstract or when exposing flaws of opposing administrations. But the administration that is likely to be damaged by whistle-blowing is the one vested with the responsibility to protect it… and that abstract support evaporates pretty fucking quickly if it’s damaging your image.
Unless my memory is faulty the modern attacks on whistle-blowing mostly date back to Obama’s administration. During W Bush we had the Abu Ghraib torture revelations and the whistle-blower in that case ended up receiving high praise even while causing significant damage to both W Bush and Rumsfeld.