Anthony Aguilar is presented with this year’s Sam Adams Associates for Integrity Award for notifying the world of the deliberate killing of starving Gazans as they arrived for supposed U.S.-Israel food aid.
The ceremony took place in Raleigh, North Carolina on Jan. 7, 2026. Speakers: Ray McGovern, Bill Binney, Coleen Rowley, Karen Kwiatkowski, Anthony Aguilar. Read the Citation:
After the retired U.S. veteran blew the whistle on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s “death-trap” aid centers, he’s continued to condemn the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. (Reposted from Consortium News, Dec. 22, 2025)
A notice from the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence:
We are honored to give this year’s award to Anthony Aguilar (LTC, USA, ret.) for exposing some of the more egregious brutalities of the genocide in Gaza, including the U.S. role.
Anthony Aguilar, a U.S. Army soldier, studying the glasses which saved him from a piece of shrapnel in June 2006. Years later, he would work for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and accuse them of killing civilians. (Steven Petibone/ US Army/ Public Domain)
Asked why he has spoken out about what he witnessed — like the corralling of starving people into four distribution sites and sometimes shooting them indiscriminately. Aguilar explained, when
“I hung up my uniform. I didn’t hang up my oath to the Constitution.”
A 25-year Army Special Forces veteran, Aguilar agreed to work with the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” with the thought that “there is nothing more Christian than feeding the hungry.”
In Gaza, though, he saw that the GHF was merely an “appendage” of the Israeli military and that the GHF “aid” sites were actually “built as death traps.” The hungry were being fed with bullets.
“I said to him, ‘You’re not alone. People care.’ He probably didn’t understand the words but I think he understood the sentiment … he puts his hands on my cheeks. His little hands are very emaciated, the fingernails dried and brittle; signs of someone starving … And he puts his hands on my face, he kisses me and says, ‘Thank you’ in English.”
Shortly after, bullets from the Israeli military start to fly:
“Palestinians are hit and start falling on the ground, Amir among them. So this young boy, who traveled eight or nine kilometers from his home to get a very small amount of food, thanks us. And ends up dead.”
Aguilar adds, “In my entire career I have never witnessed that level of brutality against unarmed, starving civilians.” He did not sign up to be a mercenary, but rather to help feed people. He would not be a part of killing them.
Aguilar was being well paid but Aguilar toldDemocracy Now!:
“Nothing is going to buy my soul. Nothing can bribe me away from my values and my patriotism as an American.”
(Also on the Chris Hedges Report, former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractor Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar told Hedges that the GHF aid sites — beyond serving as traps to lure Palestinians to their deaths — also effectively serve as biometric surveillance honeypots, scanning the thousands of faces at each site to mark “persons of interest.” In other words, Aguilar claims that this “humanitarian” project is providing the IDF with crucial data to directly carry out targeted murder.)
Aguilar would not be a bystander. While he found a few Congress members who would listen, he was not about to leave it at that. He chose, together with fellow non-violent activist Josephine Guilbeau (Capt., U.S. Army Intelligence [resigned]) to let Congress hear about Gaza in a different, unmistakable way, speaking out at a congressional hearing.
Sam Adams Associates for Integrity is pleased to add Anthony Aguilar to its list of award recipients, the most recent awardees being Aaron Bushnell, Daniel Ellsberg and Daniel Hale.
Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence is a movement of former CIA colleagues of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, together with others who hold up his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. SAAII confers an award each year to a member of the intelligence community or related professions who exemplifies Sam Adam’s courage, persistence, and devotion to truth – no matter the consequences. Read more about the history here.
The annual Sam Adams Award has been given in previous years to truth tellers Coleen Rowley of the FBI; Katharine Gun of British Intelligence; Sibel Edmonds of the FBI; Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; Sam Provance, former US Army Sgt; Maj. Frank Grevil of Danish Army Intelligence; Larry Wilkerson, Col., US Army (ret.), former chief of staff to Colin Powell at State; Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks: Thomas Drake, of NSA; Jesselyn Radack, formerly of Dept. of Justice and now National Security Director of Government Accountability Project; Thomas Fingar, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence and Director, National Intelligence Council, and Edward Snowden, former contractor for the National Security Agency; Chelsea Manning, US Army Private who exposed (via WikiLeaks) key information on Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as State Department activities; and to retired National Security Agency official William Binney, who challenged decisions to ignore the Fourth Amendment in the government’s massive — and wasteful — collection of electronic data.
Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence is a movement of former CIA colleagues of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, together with others who hold up his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. SAAII confers an award each year to a member of the intelligence community or related professions who exemplifies Sam Adam’s courage, persistence, and devotion to truth – no matter the consequences. Read more about the history here.