On May 25, 2010, Steven Aftergood posted to Secrecy News, that
Shamai Leibowitz, a former FBI contract linguist, was sentenced yesterday to twenty months in jail for having unlawfully disclosed classified documents to an unidentified blogger. It is only the third case in which a government employee has been convicted of “leaking” classified information to the press.
Mr. Leibowitz said that his intention was to expose official misconduct, not to damage national security.
“During the course of my work I came across wrongdoings that led me to conclude this is an abuse of power and a violation of the law. I reported these violations to my superiors at the FBI who did nothing about them. Thereafter, to my great regret, I disclosed the violations to a member of the media,”
he said.
Shamai Leibowitz had top secret clearance from the FBI to translate from Hebrew the results of FBI wiretaps on the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, and on Israel's delegation at the United Nations, was arrested on charges of revealing restricted information.
The espionage case was conducted under such high secrecy that even Judge Alexander Williams Jr., of United States District Court in Maryland, who sentenced Leibowitz to no fewer than 20 months in prison, admitted:
“I don’t know what was divulged other than some documents, and how it compromised things, I have no idea. . . . All I know is that it’s a serious case.”
The case has since been reported in Oregon's Salem News, which emphasized that the documents that Judge Williams did not see had been provided to to Oregonian Washingtonian and Tikun Olam blogger Richard Silverstein. At Leibowitz's request, Silverstein subsequently burned the documents in his back yard.
Liebowitz and Silverstein share liberal Jewish political views which influenced them to seek to reveal the information. Silverstein's blog offers insight into his liberal views; On the website of the Jewish peace organization Gush Shalom Leibowitz, an attorney, argued that Jewish heritage and liberal principles require resistance to actions judged morally outrageous. After describing several practices that have become commonplace in Israel's colonization of Palestine, and noting that carrying out these practices requires manpower, Leibowitz records that more and more Israeli soldiers are recognizing the moral danger of their compliance with these acts.
More and more Israeli soldiers have come to understand this and decided to refuse orders to participate in this evil. Understanding that the infliction of collective punishments and suffering upon the Palestinians is both immoral and hazardous to Israel, they refuse to participate in the Israeli army’s assassinations, dropping of bombs in residential neighborhoods or in the closures and blockades. Some of them have refused completely to serve in the Israeli army which is administering this cruel regime. In this way, they are undermining the foundation of the occupation.
Conscientious Objection in Judaism
By refusing to serve in the occupation they have followed the path of conscientious objection. While many mistakenly attribute the ideas of conscientious objection and civil disobedience solely to thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi or Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, we will analyze Jewish texts and show these ideas are deeply rooted in the Jewish sources.
Leibowitz walked the talk; when he discovered first-hand evidence of an orchestrated Israeli attempt to demonize Iran, with the goal of engendering among the American people such hatred of Iran that war on Iran would become not only acceptable but demanded by Americans, Leibowitz conscientiously objected.
New York Times took a different approach to the story, and its headline, "Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel;" a theme followed by a number of American Jewish as well as Israeli newspapers and blogs. On Israel-based blogger, Larry Derfner at +972 compared the Liebowitz situation to the Pollard spy case.
I was intrigued by the similarity of Shamai Leibowitz's case -- and motivation -- to that of then- 29-year-old American code clerk Tyler Kent, an employee at the U.S. embassy in London. In May, 1940,
Kent was [arrested by British authorities and] charged with having violated the British Official Secrets Act.
The charge stated,
"For a purpose prejudicial to the safety and interests of the state," Kent had "obtained a document which might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy."
An American citizen whose roots in the United States extend deep into the 1600s in Virginia, and who put his St. Alban's, Princeton, George Washington University, the Paris Sorbonne, and the University of Madrid education and facility at linguistics to the service of his country, following in the diplomatic footsteps of his father, Kent had diplomatic clearance. Nevertheless, Kent was tried in secret by British courts, a scheme with which United States authorities acquiesced, and sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released and returned to the United States after serving five years in British prison.
Churchill's worried son Randolph asked Churchill a few days after he became the prime minister how could he expect to win this war. Churchill replied, "I shall drag the United States in." [2]
And so he did, and he knew he could. And how did he do it? He could not have dragged the United States in had Franklin Roosevelt not wanted to be dragged in, in the first place. He did it by not giving up - that is, by not accepting the peace terms Germany was offering. Roosevelt's great fear was that the war would be over before America could get in. FDR wanted to go down in history as a wartime president. Roosevelt and Churchill were in secret communication before Churchill became prime minister. This is the reason why Tyler Kent, who worked in the code room in the American Embassy in London beginning in 1939, was thrown in prison as soon as Churchill took office. Kent was sentenced not for anything criminal, but because of what he knew. Roosevelt would not rescue this American citizen from Churchill's clutches because Kent had proof that FDR was promising the British leader that he would eventually come into the war. Churchill records a conversation he and Harry Hopkins had on January 10, 1941:
The president is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through, no matter what happens to him. There is nothing that he will not do, so far as he has human power. [3]
[2] Kilzer, Louis C., Churchill's Deception, p. 20.
[3] Churchill, Winston, The Grand Alliance, p. 23.
Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1941. When the Germans captured Poland, they found in the Polish archives the evidence about the part FDR played in getting the fuse of World War II lit. These Polish records were transported to Berlin for safekeeping, and when Germany fell to the Allies, they were shipped to Washington, where they were kept under lock and key for about 20 years so that no one could see them.
Shamai Leibowitz had access to information that Israel was attempting to involve the United States in a war with Iran. Tyler Kent had access to first-hand documents that demonstrated that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were working hand-in-hand to involve the United States in a war with Germany, contrary to the pledges FDR was making to the American people, contrary to the wishes of the American people, contrary to the best interests of the American people at the time, and contrary to the efforts of German and Nazi party authorities to achieve a peaceful resolution of the tensions between Great Britain and Germany.
Kent's motivation in breaking the rules and retaining copies of those incriminating documents were the same as Leibowitz's: he was outraged at the immorality of the scheme that he was in a privileged position to see unfolding; he believed that the scheme violated the highest principles and heritage of the American polity; and he thought that he had a responsibility to those principles and heritage to make the information known.
Had Tyler Kent's efforts to bring those dispatches to the awareness of the public been successful, war could have been averted.
Think. about. that.
Readers may notice that there are no links to sources for information on Tyler Kent.
That is because those sources are Not Acceptable in the DailyKos world.
UPDATE Trita Parsi has just published an article on Salon, The Coming Republican Push on Iran, with the subtitle, "Backed by Israel, it's the only foreign policy issue that unites the GOP.
Parsi, head of NIAC, the National Iranian American Council, offers four reasons for his assertion:
1. The Iran issue "unites all factions of the Republican party . . .except for Ron Paul."
2. The Iran issue divides Democrats.
3. The Iran issue give GOP the opportunity to portray Obama as weak.
4. Israel. Israel does not want Obama to engage with Iran. Republicans can raise the Iran issue to portray Obama as insensitive to Israel.
Thus, DailyKos is in a bind: attempting to "outhawk the hawks" on Iran makes Democrats look like Republicans.
Supporting the kind of censorship and punishment for whistleblowing that landed Tyler Kent and Shamai Leibowitz in jail makes DailyKos look like a warmonger(ing Republican), rather than a liberal Democrat.
The way out is hidden in the obverse of the statement by the judge in Attorney Leibowitz's case. Judge Williams said he had no idea what the documents said.
Remember this old chestnut: "All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to remain silent."
Tyler Kent and Shamai Leibowitz, mindful of the consequences of their actions, spoke out against an evil that they saw. In the case of Mr. Kent, he spent 5 years in jail as that evil decimated Europe -- and American soldiers.
Attorney Leibowitz spoke out, and spent 20 months of his life in prison.
Judge Williams remained silent.
What will DailyKos do, speak out, or remain silent; act like liberal Democrats, or warmongering Republicans?
Think. about. that.
UPDATE 10:35 PM PDT
The DailyKos community has spoken.
The numbers don't lie: the tally says "29 comments," but only 7 comments appear.
That tally makes the point of the diary, and will go down in the records as being on the side of concealing inconvenient facts and punishing fact-tellers like Tyler Kent and Shamai Leibowitz -- and Julian Assange, too, -- whose sense of principle and heritage compelled them to speak out in an attempt to short-circuit the press for war.
"All that it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to remain silent."
But what does that say about the churlish people who seek to silence truth-tellers?