Boiling Frogs
This morning Glenn Greenwald had an excellent and very timely article at Salon titled Crime Boasting for Profit. I encourage you to read the entire article and pay close attention to his well-made points on how the known CIA criminal Jose Rodriguez was able not only to escape accountability for his widely public criminal conduct, but was also permitted to ‘wrap his conduct in the banner of heroism as a highly-paid Simon & Schuster author’:
Rodriguez thus joins a long line of Bush officials — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, et. al — who not only paid no price for the crimes they committed, but are free to run around boasting of those crimes for profit. That’s what happens when the most politically powerful officials are vested with immunity for their illegal acts. Both the criminals and their crimes become normalized. They feel free not only to admit their crimes openly but to justify and glorify them, because they know they will never be held accountable for them. Instead of having to explain himself as a criminal defendant, Rodriguez is instead permitted to wrap his conduct in the banner of heroism as a highly-paid Simon & Schuster author.
This case and Greenwald’s article brings up a very significant topic I’ve been meaning to write about and discuss here at Boiling Frogs Post. For years I have closely watched and investigated cases of self-proclaimed phony government whistleblowers and critics-especially those from the Intel communities, who have easily obtained their uber secretive bosses’ blessings and approval, and have secured seven-figure publishing deals, sometimes even before actually (and supposedly) blowing the whistle or publicly voicing their supposed criticism.
IMAGE: Alleged CIA stooge and criminal Jose Rodriguez
Let me tell you with 100% certainty, based on personal experience, and relying on hundreds of legit government whistleblower cases I have come to know intimately: There is no way in hell, let me capitalize it here, in ‘HELL,’ a true government whistleblower, especially those from Intel agencies such as the CIA, can clear a manuscript/book and obtain the agency’s blessing to publish it. Even without a single classified word in the manuscript-book. No way. Similarly, there is no way in ‘HELL’ for a genuine truth-teller, aka whistleblower, to obtain a seven-figure or even six-figure offer from now-dying mega corporate publishers. No way. Not a chance. Impossible.
Let me show you what happens when a real whistleblower, a genuine truth-teller or critic attempts to get the ‘blessing’ of his or her agency, aka the required pre publication review:
I’ll go down memory lane and present CIA’s Frank Snepp’s case from the 1970s:
The CIA attempted to stop Snepp from publishing his book. He accused the CIA of ruining his career and violating his First Amendment rights. The CIA, in return, claimed Snepp had violated his employment agreement by speaking out. He enlisted the help of the American Civil Liberties Union in his defense. In the end, the CIA won a court verdict against Snepp and attached the royalties from Decent Interval.
Now back to the present with the most recent case involving the CIA officer who can only be identified under the pseudo name Ishmael Jones:
Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled at a June 15 hearing (pdf) that the CIA officer, who goes by the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones,” would be held liable for publishing his 2008 book “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture” in the face of a refusal by the CIA’s Prepublication Review Board to clear the volume for publication.
…
But defense attorney Laurin Mills countered that the CIA breached the agreement first by failing to complete the review of Mr. Jones’ manuscript in a timely fashion and then issuing a “bad faith denial.” “I think after 18 months of going through the [prepublication review] process, with them denying him the right to publish anything but footnotes,… and going six months through an appeal process where the Government’s own regulations say they’re supposed to complete it in a month, he exercised his rights under the First Amendment to publish this.”
… A copy of the June 15 hearing transcript was obtained by Secrecy News. The court ruling was first reported by Josh Gerstein in Politico on June 28. Frank Snepp presented a gripping account of his legal battle with CIA in the 1999 book “Irreparable Harm.”
