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Home , Bill Keller, Dana Priest, David Carr (journalist), Jesselyn Radack, John Kiriakou, Michael DeKort

War on : Free Press and the National Security State A New Film by and Brave New Foundation

Synopsis: War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State, the seventh full-length documentary from Robert Greenwald for Brave New Foundation, follows the stories of four courageous men compelled to expose acts of illegality and violations to the U.S. constitution during the explosion of the national security state under recent Presidential Administrations. Whistleblowers, Michael DeKort, Thomas Drake, Franz Gayl and Thomas Tamm share their stories of sacrifice and prosecution by the brought on by the very government they swore to protect. The film also showcases David Carr, Lucy Dalglish, , , Michael Issikoff, Bill Keller, Eric Lipton, , , Tom Vander Brook, and Sharon Weinberger who uncovered these stories, exposed the truth, and stood to defend the .

Trailer for film: Waronwhilstleblowers.com

Biography of Director and Producer Robert Greenwald:

Robert Greenwald, founder and president of (BNF), is an award- winning television, feature film and documentary filmmaker.

Notable credits include Steal This Movie, Breaking Up, Uncovered: The War on , : 's War on Journalism, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Rethink , and . His films have garnered 25 Emmy nominations.

He has produced and/or directed more than 50 TV movies and miniseries. He turned to documentary filmmaking in 2002, inspired by pervasive voter rights abuses in the 2000 presidential election. He found audiences eager for substantive investigations of social issues and chose to bypass the usual gatekeepers by devising creative means of distribution, first through house parties, and ultimately through the internet and social media. Brave New Films documentaries have been viewed over 70 million times and have streamed in every continent.

Greenwald is the recipient of a Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation, the Peacemaker Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility, the City of Justice award from LAANE, the Norman Felton and Denise Aubuchon Humanitarian Award, and Liberty Hill Foundation’s Upton Sinclair Award. He was honored by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California for his activism and also received the 2001 Peabody Award and the 2002 Producer of the Year award.

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Follow Robert Greenwald on : @robertgreenwald

Biographies of those featured in the film: Whistleblowers:

Michael DeKort: Senior Project Manager

Michael DeKort was a project manager who posted a whistleblowing video on Youtube.com after he objected to what he felt were failures to meet contractual requirements of C4ISR systems onboard Coast Guard’s 123 Coast Guard Cutter retrofitted and updated under the Deepwater program. The boats retrofitted by the contractors failed to meet performance requirements and were deemed dangerous to operate by the United States Coast Guard. Before speaking publicly through his YouTube video, DeKort brought these issues to the attention of his immediate management and then up his chain of command to the highest executives in the company, including the CEO of Lockheed Martin and the Board of Directors. He went public with his YouTube account in 2006. His video gained a wide amount of exposure and it eventually led to a congressional hearing on the entire Deepwater project. As a result, the United States Coast Guard rejected the boats and demanded a refund of $96 million. The boats were decommissioned, taken out of service and engineer changes were made throughout the project. On the eve of trial, a settlement was reached regarding the “topside” electronic equipment defects. The U.S. Coast Guard took the program management away from the contractors, subsequently initiated their own suit and has pursued some of the contractors responsible for the buckled hulls. In 2008, DeKort received the Carl Barus Award for Outstanding Service in the Public Interest at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.

Thomas Drake: Former Senior Executive of the

A former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake faced the gravest charges brought against an American citizen: prosecution under the Act of 1917 which targeted him for exposing waste, fraud and abuse and illegality within the government as a . He faced upwards of 35 years in prison. He was a key material witness for two 9/11 Congressional investigations and a Department of Defense Inspector General audit of NSA. Drake was one of several sources for articles written by Siobhan Gorman of the Baltimore Sun, which detailed a $1.2 billion boondoggle program called Trailblazer that the NSA wanted to create as a means of sifting through the vast electronic communications of the Digital Age for national security threats and an alternative program called Thinthread that not only provided superior intelligence, but also designed to fundamentally protect the 4th Amendment rights of US Persons under the Constitution. Drake said the Trailblazer program was inefficient, wasted billions in taxpayer dollars, was full of contractor pork and simply fraudulent compared to the highly innovative and ingenious Thinthread program that only cost $3 million to develop and was ready for use before 9/11. In addition,

www.bravenewfoundation.org Drake also exposed the program, a super-secret warrantless surveillance program approved by the White House that violated Americans’ privacy rights. Drake was never accused of spying but was accused of having allegedly classified documents in his basement for the purpose of disclosure. In a major embarrassment for the Department of Justice, the criminal case against him collapsed in June of 2011 on the eve of his public trial in a minor misdemeanor plea deal, where the government dropped all 10 felony counts against him. Drake was awarded the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize in 2011 and the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award with from the Government Accountability Project.

Daniel Ellsberg Former Official of the State and Defense Departments

Daniel Ellsberg worked as a United States military analyst and is most widely recognized for his role of releasing “The Pentagon Papers”, a highly confidential study of decisions made and carried out during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg began work on the Pentagon papers in 1967, aided by his open access from a high security clearance he gained after serving in Vietnam and having been employed by the RAND Corporation. The Pentagon Papers contained documents, including secretly photocopied items, which were strictly classified. These documents revealed that the Johnson Administration deceived the general public by grossly underestimating the ability to win the Vietnam War and the vast casualties that would result from it. In 1971, the Times began publishing the papers and even when he was restricted by the government, Ellsberg leaked the papers to other newspapers and media. Ellsberg remains politically active and stands by the notion that the President, and more largely the government, lies to the public on a daily basis. Today he is a member of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and appears regularly in the media public political forums.

Franz Gayl Deputy Branch Head for the Space and Information Operations Integration Branch

While working at the Pentagon as a science advisor for the Marine Corps, Gayl - himself a Marine - volunteered to deploy to Iraq. Upon his return he alerted the office of the Secretary of Defense, and later the Congress and the media, to critical equipment shortages. These included Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), ground and air battlefield surveillance systems, and 'directed energy' non-lethal weapons. Gayl’s public outcry exposed the fact that the Corps had failed to provide Marines in Iraq with live saving technologies. Most notable was the Corps' failure to fulfill a request for the mass fielding of MRAPs, that effectively protect troops against the improvised explosive devices that caused over 60% of causalities in Iraq. Gayl maintained that had MRAPs been available to troops when they were requested countless deaths and casualties could have prevented. In fact former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accredited MRAPs with saving "thousands of lives," and VP Biden has acknowledged Gayl’s central role in raising the visibility of their need through his whistleblowing. Yet, Gayl has been the target of years of retaliatory investigations and workplace harassment, including the elimination of meaningful duties and the extended suspension of his security clearances.

www.bravenewfoundation.org Thomas Tamm Criminal Defense Litigation Attorney

A former attorney to the United States Department of Justice, Tamm has been classified as a whistleblower when he uncovered warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency (NSA) under the Bush Administration. He was one of the anonymous sources for reporters, and in their 2005 article, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” which gained attention by the Bush administration and led to a criminal investigation. Tamm eventually told his full story to ’s, in 2008. For his whistleblowing, Tamm was awarded with the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling in 2009.

Experts:

Steven Aftergood Director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists Aftergood is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists as well as director of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. He works on confronting government secrecy in order to promote and reform the current secrecy practices. He has authored numerous papers in multiple magazines including Scientific American and Science. For his work, he has received multiple awards including the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer award in 2010.

Danielle Brian Executive Director at Project On Government Oversight (POGO)

Since 1993, Danielle Brian has been the Executive Director of the Project On Government Oversight. She frequently testifies before Congress and regularly meets with members of Congress, and officials at the White House and federal agencies to discuss how to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government. Danielle gives us the bigger picture of whistleblowers, and the most unprecedented number of prosecutions of national security whistleblowers by an administration in U.S. history. She understands the complexity the ethical dilemma whistleblowers face when they to go to press, and thus are retaliated against for following their convictions. Due to Danielle’s expertise in ethics, corruption, misconduct, she advocates for a more open, accountable and public government. Her desire to fight and expose government secrecy and increase accountability, make her a loud crusader in the whistleblower struggle.

Tom Devine Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP)

Devine is a GAP legal director involved in many campaigns to pass or defend whistleblower laws, including the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. He

www.bravenewfoundation.org has assisted over 5,000 whistleblowers and has also served as “Whistleblower Ambassador” in over a dozen nations on trip sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He is author and co-author of numerous books including The Corporate Whistleblowers Survival Guide and is the recipient of many awards such as the Defender of the Constitution award.

Ben Freeman National Security Investigator at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO)

At the Project On Government Oversight, Freeman specializes in Department of Defense personnel issues, weapons procurement and the impact of lobbying by foreign governments on U.S. foreign policy. His recently released book, The Foreign Policy Auction, is an exposé of the half billion dollar foreign influence industry in the U.S. Additionally; he has utilized his expertise testifying before the Senate and as an instructor in the School of Security and Global Studies at American Military University, where he teaches research methods and analytics.

William Hartung Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy

Hartung is a former senior research fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program. His area of expertise includes alternative approaches to national security strategy and weapons proliferation. He has authored numerous books and articles including Prophets of War. Hartung's current position as the director of the Arms and Security Project focuses on reforming U.S. Policies on military spending, arms trade and nuclear weapons.

J. William Leonard Former Director of the Information Security Oversight Office

Leonard was the “classification czar” during the Bush administration from 2002 to 2007. He was appointed the head of Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) and has worked in the areas of Information Security at the Department of Defense. Leonard has been involved with the government for over 34 years and worked with NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake’s defense team as an expert on classification. He has served as a professor of political science at St. Mary’s College of and resides in Leonardtown, Maryland.

Jesselyn Radack Director of National Security and Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project (GAP)

A former Justice Dept. ethics attorney, Jesselyn Radack blew the whistle when the FBI committed an ethics violation while interrogating back in 2001. After continued suppression of the truth by the DOJ,

www.bravenewfoundation.org Radack resigned from her job and leaked important emails regarding Lindh’s case to Newsweek. As a result, the FBI targeted her consistently and made her a victim of shame and government retaliation. She has written a memoir, Traitor: The Whistleblower and the “American ”, which details this time in her life. Radack is now a National Security and Human Rights director of the Government Accountability Project and is the attorney to whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake and . Radack is a blogger on , focusing on news stories regarding whistleblowers within the national security and intelligence communities.

Pete Sepp Executive Vice President for National Taxpayers Union

Sepp is currently the Executive Vice President for the National Taxpayers Union. He has written a number of policy papers and studies on multiple topics including Congressional perquisites and citizen-initiated tax revolts and has lectured on tax administration reform issues in both U.S. and abroad. Sepp has appeared on many major television networks such as CNN and MSNBC, and has contributed to The New York Times, and multiple other print media.

Pierre Sprey Defense Analyst and Weapons Designer

Sprey was a defense analyst and weapons designer for the Pentagon from 1966 to1986. He and a handful of DoD military reform dissidents conceived and launched the F-16 air-to-air fighter and the A-10 tank buster, the former the most widely used fighter in the Western world and the latter the most effective close support aircraft to date. In 1986, because he felt “it would be impossible to build another honest aircraft,” Sprey stopped working for the DoD. Instead, he turned to recording music, founding Mapleshade Records in order to create jazz, gospel, blues and roots CDs of uncompromising sound quality. And, in parallel, he has continued writing, speaking and campaigning for military reform and against the destructive effects of excessive defense spending on America’s security, on America’s prosperity and on America’s democracy.

Winslow T. Wheeler Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO)

Wheeler is the director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Project on Government Oversight. From 1971 to 2002, Wheeler worked on national security issues for members of the U.S. Senate and Government Accountability Office. He directed studies on the 1991 Gulf War air campaign, the US strategic nuclear triad, and weapons testing. In 2002 he wrote an essay under the pseudonym “Spartacus,” that discussed Congress’ reaction to the 9/11 attacks. After senators featured in the essay attempted to have Wheeler fired, he resigned his position. He continues to speak out about national security and military affairs. He is the author of The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages National Security and Military Reform: An Uneven History and an Uncertain Future and the editor of the anthology The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It.

www.bravenewfoundation.org Journalists: David Carr , The New York Times

Before coming to the New York Times as a media and culture columnist, Carr was an editor for the , in Washington D.C. Currently, he writes for the Media Equation column for the New York Times. He focuses on issues regarding media, print, digital, film, radio and television. He authored the book, ‘The Night of the Gun’, which is a memoir of his addiction and recovery.

Lucy Dalglish Dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland

Starting out as a reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1980 and then becoming a media lawyer for the law firm of Dorsey and Whitney, Lucy Dalglish then worked for twelve years as the Executive Director of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Dalglish was awarded the Kiplinger Award by the National Press Foundation in 2012 for her service to journalism as well as the Wells Memorial Key, given to her by the Society of Professional Journalists. She is now the Dean of University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill college of Journalism and is dedicated to protecting the First Amendment interests of the news media.

Glenn Greenwald Journalist,

Greenwald, a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator, is now a columnist at The Guardian, where he writes about civil liberties, national security and US political and media culture. He is the author of three New York Times Bestselling books: two on the Bush administration's executive power and foreign policy abuses, and his 2011 book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, an indictment of America's two-tiered system of justice.

Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation, and by Newsweek as one of the nation's top 10 opinion writers. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning. He was a finalist for the 2011 National Magazine Awards for online political writing.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow called Greenwald "the American Left’s most fearless political commentator". Filmmaker said: "The first thing I do when I turn on the computer in the morning is go to Glenn Greenwald’s blog to see what he said. He is truly one of our greatest writers right now." And Bill Moyers described him as "the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years."

www.bravenewfoundation.org Seymour M. Hersh Journalist

Hersh is an investigative journalist based in Washington, D.C., who has reported on military and security matters for The New York Times and magazine, along with writing eight books, including The Price of Power, a critical look at the role of Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration that won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 1983 and a Sidney Hillman prize. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his reporting, as a freelance writer, on the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam; he also has two National Magazine awards for his reporting in The New Yorker on the Iraqi war and the Abu Ghraib prison abuses there. Hersh has won more than a dozen other journalism awards, including five George Polk awards over his fifty-year journalism career.

Michael Isikoff National Investigative Correspondent for NBC News

Isikoff is an investigative journalist for NBC News, formerly with Newsweek. He joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in June, 1994, and has written extensively on the U.S. government’s War on , the Abu Ghraib and prisoner abuse, campaign finance and other national issues. He broke the story on whistleblower, Thomas Tamm, in the article "The Fed Who Blew The Whistle" featured in Newsweek.

Bill Keller Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times For eight years, Keller was the executive editor for The New York Times. In 2011, he stepped down and now writes an Op-Ed column for the newspaper as well as for the The New York Times Magazine. He has written on a wide range of topics including the collapse of the Communist rule that occurred from 1986 to 1991, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and the end of white rule in South Africa. He is the author of The Tree Shaker: The Story of .

Eric Lipton Investigative Reporter, The New York Times

Lipton is an investigative reporter for the New York Times and winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. Much of his work has been devoted to investigating the 9/11 attacks and its aftermath, through his informative and vividly detailed narrative style of journalism. Lipton Co- Authored the book City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center with James Glanz.

www.bravenewfoundation.org Jane Mayer Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Jane Mayer joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in March, 1995. Based in Washington, D.C., she writes about politics, law and national security for the magazine. Recent subjects include the impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on the 2012 presidential campaign, the Koch Brothers’ funding of the Tea Party Movement, the Obama Administration’s prosecution of national security leaks, and the administration’s expanded use of drones in the . Before joining The New Yorker, Mayer was for twelve years a reporter at . In 1984, she became the Journal’s first female White House correspondent. She was also a war correspondent and a foreign correspondent for the paper. Among other stories, she covered the bombing of the American barracks in Beirut, the Persian Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the final days of Communism in the . Mayer is a winner of the 2012 George Polk Award, and the 2012 Robin Toner Prize for political reporting, She also won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2010, the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2009, the Edward Weintal Prize from Georgetown University in 2009, the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2009, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize in 2009, the and ’s Goldsmith Book Prize in 2009, and the Helen Bernstein Award from in 2009. In 2008 she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, and for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Mayer is the author of the best-selling 2008 book “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” which was chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year, and as well as by The Economist, Salon, Slate, and Bloomberg as one of the best books of the year. She is also the co-author of two other best-selling books: “Strange Justice,” written with and published in 1994, was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award for nonfiction; her first book, “Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988,” co-authored by Doyle McManus, is an acclaimed account of the Reagan White House’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. Before joining the Journal, Mayer worked as a metropolitan reporter for the Washington Star. She began her career in journalism as a stringer for Time while still a student in college. She has also written for a number of other publications, including the Washington Post, the , and The New York Review of Books.

Mayer, who was born in New York, graduated with honors from Yale and continued her studies in history at Oxford. She lives in Washington with her husband and daughter.

Dana Priest Investigative Reporter, Washington Post A national security reporter at the Washington Post, Priest focuses on military operations, intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. She is co- author of the book with , which covers the buildup in top-secret intelligence organizations in the aftermath of the September 11th attack. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting and

www.bravenewfoundation.org Public Service, and the George Polk Award for National Reporting.

Tom Vanden Brook Journalist, USA Today Vanden Brook has worked for USA Today since 2000, primarily covering the Department of Defense. He has reported on the Pentagon’s use of private contractors as well as the efficacy of the programs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vanden Brook broke the story of whistleblower, Franz Gayl’s story about the MRAPs entitled "Troops At Risk: IEDs in Iraq."

Sharon Weinberger National Security Reporter

Weinberger writes on defense and security issues, focusing on science and technology. She reported on MRAPs for Wired’s national security blog, “Danger Room”, and has written about Franz Gayl and his work in several of her articles. She is the author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld and is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

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