Know all ye by these presents that Annie Machon is hereby honored with the traditional Sam Adams Corner-Brightener Candlestick Holder, in symbolic recognition of her courage in shining light into dark places.
“If you see something, say something.” Long before that saying came into vogue, Annie Machon took its essence to heart.
MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, recognized how bright, enterprising, and unflappable Annie was and recruited her as soon as she completed her studies at Cambridge.
The good old boys in MI5 apparently thought she would have a malleable conscience, as well — such that she would have no qualms about secret monitoring of the very government officials overseeing MI5 itself, for example.
Annie would not be quiet about this secret abuse. Her partner, David Shayler, an MI5 colleague and — like Annie — a person of integrity and respect for law, became aware of an MI6 plan to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
They decided to blow the whistle and fled to France. (Many years later, a woman of high station but more flexible integrity openly gloated over Gaddafi’s brutal assassination.)
After three years on the lam, hiding mostly in France, they returned to the UK, where Annie was arrested (but never charged with a crime). The powers-that-be, however, chose to make an example of Shayler (not unlike what they are now doing to Julian Assange).
Shayler’s whistleblowing case dragged on for seven years, during which he did a brief stint in the infamous high-security prison where Julian Assange still rots (having been denied bail, yet again). A strong mitigation plea by Annie helped reduce Shayler’s remaining prison time. All in all, though, what he was forced to endure took a hard toll on him.
More broadly, the issues that surfaced around whistleblowing at the time remain largely the same two decades later. Annie Machon has been a very prominent and strong supporter of Julian. She has also been a much admired mentor to less experienced women and men as they seek to become better informed on issues of integrity and courage, and take Annie up on her offer to “help them meet interesting people”, as she puts it.
We would be remiss today were we not to call to mind the courageous example of our first two awardees, Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Katharine Gun (GCHQ), who took great risks in exposing malfeasance and in trying to head off the attack on Iraq. And, as Julian Assange did when he won this award, we again honor his treasured source, Chelsea Manning, for her continuing courage and scarcely believable integrity.
Ed Snowden, our Sam Adams awardee in 2013, noted that we tend to ignore some degree of evil in our daily life, but, as Ed put it, “We also have a breaking point and when people find that, they act.”
Annie is still acting, as one can see as this World Ethical Data Forum unfolds.
Presented this 17th day of March at the World Ethical Data Forum by admirers of the example set by the late CIA analyst, Sam Adams.
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Edward Snowden awarded the Sam Adams prize for integrity in intelligence – video
Rebuilding the Obama-Putin Trust
Heading into the last quarter of his presidency, Barack Obama must decide whether he will let the neocons keep pulling his strings or finally break loose and pursue a realistic foreign policy seeking practical solutions to world problems, including the crisis with Russia over Ukraine, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
The year 2015 will surely mark a watershed in relations between the United States and Russia, one way or the other. However, whether tensions increase – to war-by-proxy in Ukraine or an even wider war – or whether they subside depends mostly on President Barack Obama.
Key to answering this question is a second one: Is Obama smart enough and strong enough to rein in Secretary of State John Kerry, the neocons and “liberal interventionists” running the State Department and to stand up to the chicken hawks in Congress, most of whom feel free to flirt with war because they know nothing of it. (read more)
William Binney To Receive Sam Adams Award in Berlin, Germany
Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) is pleased to announce that it has selected retired NSA Technical Director William “Bill” Binney to receive its 2015 award for integrity in intelligence. The public is invited to attend the award presentation scheduled to begin at 7 pm on January 22nd at the Berlin Moscow venue, Unter den Linden 52, 10117, Berlin, Germany.
After serving four years in the Army Security Agency during the Vietnam War, Binney joined the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1970. He worked there as a Russia specialist in the operations side of intelligence, starting as an analyst and ending as Technical Director of NSA’s World Geopolitical & Military Analysis organization. He was also co-founder of the NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center where he worked with Ed Loomis, Kirk Wiebe, and others to solve the issues of velocity, variety, and volume of information in the Information Age. Having expertise in intelligence analysis, traffic analysis, systems analysis, knowledge management, and mathematics, Binney has been described as one of the best analysts, mathematicians and code breakers in the NSA’s history.
As a 36-year intelligence agency veteran, William Binney resigned from the NSA in 2001 and became a whistleblower after discovering that elements of a data-monitoring program he had helped develop were being used to spy on Americans. Binney explained that he “could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution.”
In September 2002, he, along with colleagues, Wiebe and Loomis, asked the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze data carried on communications networks such as the Internet. Binney had been one of the inventors of an alternative, less intrusive and far less expensive system, ThinThread, which was shelved when Trailblazer was chosen instead. Trailblazer was declared a failure in 2005.
Later, Binney, Loomis, and Wiebe, along with Diane Roark, a senior staffer with the House Permanent Select Subcommittee on Intelligence staffer complained to Congress regarding the fact that NSA was illegally spying on U.S. citizens.
Binney became one of several people investigated as part of an inquiry into the 2005 (Pulitzer prize-winning) exposé by New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau) on the agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program. Although Binney was told he was cleared of wrongdoing after three interviews with FBI agents beginning in March 2007, a dozen agents with guns drawn appeared at his house a few months later, one of whom entered his bathroom and pointed his weapon at Binney, who was coming out of the shower. In that raid, the FBI confiscated a desktop computer, disks, and personal and business records. The following day, NSA revoked his security clearance, forcing him to close a business he ran with Loomis and Wiebe.
Despite a serious health condition which has left him a double amputee, Bill Binney is tireless, pledging to spend the remainder of his years speaking out and working to reform the gross governmental illegality and stupidity of intercepting trillions and trillions of communications “transactions” of innocent persons’ phone calls, emails, and other forms of data. “I should apologize to the American people,” Binney told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. “It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.”
Thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, documents detailing the top-secret surveillance program were published that corroborate what Binney had long said.
Binney was subsequently called as a witness in U.S. lawsuits challenging the legality of this massive surveillance and also testified to European bodies including the German Bundestag’s NSA Inquiry Commission, deploring the fact that “we have moved away from the collection of (relevant) data to the collection of (non-relevant) data of the 7 billion people on our planet.”
Binney fears the data is being used to “map” or build real-time profiles of innocent individuals. “So that now I can pull your entire life together from all those domains and map it out and show your entire life over time,” Binney told documentarian Laura Poitras in “The Program” (emphasis ours). Binney added that the purpose of the program is “to be able to monitor what people are doing” and with whom they are doing it.
More background information regarding the “Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence” that has been given annually since its inception over 12 years ago as a way to honor the intelligence work of CIA analyst Sam Adams during the Vietnam War is available at https://samadamsaward.ch/. (The story of CIA analyst Sam Adams is detailed here.) It is hoped the award will serve to encourage more integrity in intelligence work — as well as more courage on the part of those in position to blow the whistle when that work violates the Constitution.
Clashing Face-to-Face on Torture
Exclusive: It’s rare on TV when you see two former senior U.S. officials clashing angrily over something as significant as torture. Usually decorum prevails. But ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wasn’t going to let the ex-House intelligence oversight chief get away with a bland defense of torture, as McGovern recounts.
By Ray McGovern
When you get an opportunity like this, don’t fall back – I heard my Irish grandmother telling me last Thursday as I took my place at the table to discuss torture with a former congressional committee chairman whose job it was to prevent such abuse.
Almost rubbing shoulders with me on my right was former House Intelligence Committee chair (2004-2007) Pete Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan. Central China TV had asked both of us to address the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. I said yes, of course, since I was highly interested in how Hoekstra, with his front seat for the saga of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” would try to ‘splain it all.
Here was a unique chance to publicly confront a malleable, moral dwarf who had been in a uniquely powerful position to end the torture. The moment was also an odd one, for Hoekstra – not the brightest star in the constellation – seemed oblivious to his gross misfeasance and dereliction of duty. Or how his behavior might look to non-torture aficionados. (read full article)
How Torture Puts Americans at Risk
Exclusive: Polls show that most Americans – and an overwhelming majority of “conservatives” – view post-9/11 torture as justified, presumably because it made them feel safer. But torture may actually have made them less safe, as retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce explains.
By Todd E. Pierce
Torture, what is it good for? Apparently, as the words to the old anti-war song say, “absolutely nothing.” Behind all the obfuscation (lying) by the defenders of torture is the claim that it “works.” In fact, it doesn’t work if by “work” you mean providing for the overall safety of Americans. (read full article)