The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined [11].
This administration has also obtained much longer jail sentences against whistleblowers than previous presidents.
ACLU legislative counsel Gabe Rottman noted [12] last October:
The Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.
(So – as of October – Obama had thrown whistleblowers in jail for 22 times longer [13] than all other presidents.)
Today, whistleblower [14] Barrett Brown was sentenced to 63 months [15] in prison.
So now we’re up to 589 months for whistleblowers. That’s 25 times more [16] time meted out against whistleblowers by Obama than all other presidents combined.
But even that stunning figure understates the savagery of the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers …
After all, Jeremy Hammond – regarded by many as a whistleblower [17] – was sentenced by Obama to 10 years [18] in prison.
The trial of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling [19] is proceeding right now … and the prosecution is seeking a lengthy prison sentence.
If Edward Snowden or Julian Assange are ever caught, the government will seek very lengthy sentences.
And the government would have obtained lengthy prison terms for high-level NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and William Binney [20] – and even “framed” them with false evidence [21] – but they were brilliant enough to able to prove with bulletproof evidence that the government was lying.
Top mainstream reporters also say the Obama administration is more hostile to the free press [22] – the folks who spread whistleblower leaks – than any other in history. And see this [23].
Indeed, Obama is treating reporters like terrorists and criminals [24]. For example:
- Obama has also gone after top reporters. His Department of Justice labeled chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen a “criminal co-conspirator” in a leak case [25], and for many years threatened to prosecute [26] Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist James Risen
- The Obama administration also spied on [27] Risen, Rosen, the Associated Press, CBS reporter Cheryl Atkinson [28]and other media
- The Pentagon smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda [29]
- Reporters covering the Occupy protests were targeted for arrest [30]
- In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America [31] to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this [32])
- The NSA and its British counterpart treated Wikileaks like a terrorist organization [33], going so far as to target its employees politically, and to spy on visitors to its website
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