The above video is of our 2019 Sam Adams award presentation on January 15, 2020 to former CIA agent and hero whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling.  The evening began with a song dedicated to Jeffrey and the integrity he (and his wife Holly) displayed throughout Jeffrey’s truth telling ordeal.  (While viewers must “bear with us” as the singing was unrehearsed so a bit offkey), the (partial) lyrics below by songwriter Ann Reed DO “tell the story.”

Heroes
What can I learn from you
In your lifetime, in what you’ve been through
How’d you keep your head up and hold your pride
In an insane world how’d you keep on tryin’
One life can tell the tale
That if you make the effort, you can not fail
By your life you tell me it can be done
By your life’s the courage to carry on

(chorus:)
Heroes
Appear like a friend
To clear a path or light the flame
As time goes by you find you depend
On your heroes to show you the way

What can I learn from you
That I must do the thing I think I can not do
That you do what’s right by your heart and soul
It’s the imperfections that make us whole
One life can tell the tale
And if you make the effort you can not fail
By your life you tell me it can be done
By your life’s the courage to carry on…

The presentation to Sterling was preceded by a showing of the poignant docudrama “Official Secrets,” the true story of the second (2003) Sam Adams award recipient Katherine Gun.  SAAII members Ray McGovern, Tom Drake, Jesselyn Radack, John Kiriakou, Larry Wilkerson, Ann Wright,  and Coleen Rowley spoke at the event while Todd Pierce and Elizabeth Murray made the actual presentation.  Among the other members in attendance were William Binney, Clement “Lu” Laniewsky, Robert Wing, Karen Kwiatkowsky and Gareth Porter.  Stellar defense attorneys Edward MacMahon and Barry Pollack were also on hand to publicly congratulate Jeffrey as well as a standing-room-only full of admirers of the integrity Jeffrey displayed in telling the truth during these troubled times when, as CIA analyst Sam Adams learned the hard way during Vietnam, truth tends to be the first casualty during a time of war.