(Report below from Ray McGovern)
The occasion was the annual meeting of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters, June 13, 2015, at the BWI Doubletree Hotel — oddly, surrounded by NSA buildings in Linthicum, MD.

The evening program was hosted by John Henry, of the Committee for the Republic.

The topic was: “The National Security Agency’s War on the U.S. Constitution”
Speakers: William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake, James Bamford, Bruce Fein, John Henry, and Ray McGovern

The Committee for the Republic was pleased to afford an appropriate occasion for William Binney to receive the framed citation (in English and German) for the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. The award was originally presented to Binney at an SRO ceremony in Berlin on January 22, 2015.

Ed Snowden, who was live-streamed into that Berlin ceremony, emphasized that “Without Bill Binney there would be no Ed Snowden.” Bill, in turn, had been greatly encouraged by the courageous, principled stand taken by Tom Drake in facing down the U.S. Department of Justice and NSA successfully, after four years of persecution that included government-provided “evidence” proven in Court to have been forged.

Actually, in a very real sense, it was a triple-play: Drake to Binney to Snowden. So it was altogether appropriate that Tom Drake be the Sam Adams Associate to present the framed award to Bill Binney on June 13, 2015 in the belly of the (NSA) beast.

Tom also had been the clear choice of his colleague Sam Adams Associates to present the 2013 award for integrity in intelligence to Ed Snowden in Moscow on October 7, 2013. As soon as Ed surfaced in Hong Kong, he made it clear that the U.S. government abuse of Tom had convinced Ed that he had to leave the U.S. in order to achieve his mission and have some chance — however slight it seemed at the time — of avoiding spending the rest of his life in prison.

Hats off to Drake to Binney to Snowden: courageous patriots all!