Tag: war on whistleblowers

CIA terminates whistleblower who prompted flood of sexual misconduct complaints

The CIA this week terminated a woman whose whistleblower account of being assaulted in a stairwell at the spy agency’s headquarters prompted a flood of colleagues to come forward with their own complaints of sexual misconduct. The woman’s attorney called the action a brazen retaliation.

While the CIA said that accusation was “factually inaccurate,” it wouldn’t comment further on the case and declined to explain why the 36-year-old did not make it through the agency’s clandestine officer training program known as “the Farm” and, unlike many of her classmates, was not hired into another job.

“To be clear, the CIA does not tolerate sexual assault, sexual harassment or whistleblower retaliation,” CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp told The Associated Press, adding the agency uses “consistent processes to ensure the fair and equal treatment of every officer going through training.”

The woman’s termination came less than six months after she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the CIA retaliated against her for reporting what she said was a 2022 stairwell assault in Langley, Virginia, to law enforcement and testifying about it in a closed congressional hearing.

The lawsuit accused the agency of giving her harsher performance reviews and “slut shaming” her by improperly releasing her personal information during the state prosecution last year of Ashkan Bayatpour, a then-fellow CIA trainee convicted of assaulting her with a scarf.

The woman’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, told the AP that the CIA has now “unlawfully ended a young woman’s career only because she had the moral courage, lacking in her managers, to stand up and be a witness about her sexual assault.”

“The agency’s festering workplace sexual violence problem,” Carroll said, “is now harming the retention of young women who won’t put up with it any longer.”

The woman, who is not being identified because the AP does not generally identify victims of alleged sexual abuse, was credited with launching a reckoning, of sorts, at the CIA because hers was the rare allegation of sexual misconduct at the super-secret spy agency to make it into a public courtroom.

An AP investigation found the case helped embolden at least two-dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress over the past two years with their own accounts at the CIA of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend is a campaign to keep them from speaking out.

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Former CIA coder sentenced to 40 years in prison for WikiLeaks ‘Vault 7’ breach

A federal judge sentenced former CIA programmer Joshua Schulte to 40 years in prison on Thursday afternoon on espionage charges for the largest leak in agency history, in addition to child pornography convictions.

Comparing the WikiLeaks “Vault 7” leak of top secret Central Intelligence Agency cyber-espionage tools to a “digital Pearl Harbor,” U.S District Judge Jesse Furman said Thursday he was “blown away by Mr. Schulte’s complete lack of remorse and acceptance of responsibility.”

“The impact on our nation’s intelligence operations was enormous and we will likely never know the extent of the damage caused, but no doubt it was massive and real,” Furman said before imposing the 480-month sentence.

“It did have, as substantiated by the deputy director’s unclassified letter and even more substantiated by a confidential letter, an immediate and catastrophic effect on the CIA, and caused untold damage to national security,” the Obama-appointed judge said at the conclusion of the two-hour sentencing hearing.

Furman sentenced Schulte to 400 months imprisonment on the espionage counts and separately to 80 months for child pornography counts.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York asked for the judge to impose a sentence of life prison for Schulte’s convictions of what they called “some of the most heinous, brazen violations of the Espionage Act in American history.”

“Schulte’s theft of an arsenal of extremely sensitive intelligence-gathering cyber-tools from the Central Intelligence Agency and subsequent dissemination of that information to WikiLeaks — which in turn publicized it to America’s adversaries — is ‘one of the largest unauthorized disclosures of classified information in the history of the United States’,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing letter.

Schulte, who has been detained at federal jails in Manhattan and Brooklyn for over six and a half years, requested nine years’ imprisonment followed by five years’ supervised release.

Federal prosecutors argued an additional terrorism enhancement on his sentence was warranted because Schulte’s theft of the arsenal of extremely sensitive, intelligence-gathering cyber-tools from the Central Intelligence Agency — and subsequent dissemination of that information to WikiLeaks — was intended to satisfy a personal vendetta and “clearly calculated to retaliate against the United States as a whole.”

The 35-year-old asked for a sentence of time served, citing the “immoral human rights abuses” he says he endured during his pretrial detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

In his lengthy 28-minute sentencing statement, Schulte decried the conditions of his “torture cage” at the Bureau of Prison facility, calling it “New York City’s very own Auschwitz,” and “something only the SS could come up with.”

Judge Furman during sentencing called Schulte’s comparison to Nazi concentration camps “offensive”.

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Fani Willis Axed Employee Who Blew Whistle on Misuse of Federal Funds

Fani Willis may have fired the employee who warned her about mishandling federal funds. But she didn’t deny her allegations.

Less than a year into her tenure as Fulton County district attorney, in 2021, Willis met with Amanda Timpson, an employee in the district attorney’s office responsible for giving nonviolent juvenile offenders “alternatives to the juvenile court system.” During their conversation, a recording of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, Timpson claimed to Willis that she had been demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for a youth gang prevention initiative.

According to Timpson, the aide, Michael Cuffee, planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant—earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention—to pay for “swag,” computers, and travel.

“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.'”

“I respect that is your assessment,” Willis responded. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”

Later in the conversation, Willis apologized to Timpson, and said Cuffee had “failed” her administration.

Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, according to Timpson. When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the following year that alleged wrongful termination, Willis’s office issued a statement describing Timpson as a “holdover from the prior administration” who was terminated because of her “failure to meet the standards of the new administration.”

Timpson’s experience sheds further light on how Willis—who campaigned on the promise of restoring “integrity” to the district attorney’s office—does business. The Democrat has come under fire amid revelations that she tapped her lover, Nathan Wade, to handle the office’s racketeering case against former president Donald Trump. Willis is also alleged to have misappropriated taxpayer funds to facilitate her affair with Wade, a married man with scant prosecutorial experience.

To Timpson, these twin incidents demonstrate “a pattern” in Willis’s conduct.

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Court Date Set For Julian Assange’s Final Appeal To Avoid US Extradition

Imprisoned publisher Julian Assange will face two High Court judges over two days on Feb. 20-21, 2024 in London in what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. 

Assange’s wife Stella Assange confirmed that the hearing will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice. Assange had had an earlier request to appeal rejected by High Court Judge Jonathan Swift on June 6.

Assange then filed an application to appeal that decision and the dates have now been set. Assange is seeking to challenge both the home secretary’s decision to extradite him as well as to cross appeal the decision by the lower court judge, Vanessa Baraitser.

Baraitser had ruled in January 2021 to release Assange from Belmarsh Prison and deny the U.S. request for extradition based on Assange’s mental health, his propensity to commit suicide and conditions of U.S. prisons. On every point of law, however, Baraitser sided with the United States.

The U.S. appealed her decision, issuing “diplomatic assurances” that Assange would not be mistreated in prison. The High Court, after a two-day hearing in March 2022, accepted those “assurances” and rejected Assange’s appeal.

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Judge Rules Assange Visitors May Sue CIA For Allegedly Violating Privacy

A federal judge ruled that four American attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was in the Ecuador embassy in London, may sue the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for their role in the alleged copying of the contents of their electronic devices.

The Americans sufficiently alleged that the CIA and CIA Director Mike Pompeo—through the Spanish security company UC Global and its director David Morales—“violated their reasonable expectation of privacy” under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Richard Roth, attorney for the four Americans, reacted, “We are thrilled that the court rejected the CIA’s efforts to silence the plaintiffs, who merely seek to expose the CIA’s attempt to carry out Pompeo’s vendetta against WikiLeaks.”

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Nineteen Years Ago, Journalist Gary Webb Was Murdered After Exposing CIA Drug Trafficking

On December 10, 2004, the body of journalist Gary Webb, 49, was discovered in his home near Sacramento after a moving company worker found a note posted to his front door that read: “Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.”

Webb’s death was listed as a suicide, but Webb was found with two bullet holes in the head, indicating that he was executed.[1]

In the days leading up to his death, Webb had told friends that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed by what he thought were government agents, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen breaking into and leaving his house.

In the late 1990s, Webb had written a series of stories for the San José Mercury News, which provided the basis for his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).

In it, Webb detailed how the explosion of crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles during the 1980s was sparked by two Nicaraguan émigrés, Danilo Blandón and Norwin Meneses, who sold huge amounts of cocaine to raise funds for a CIA-backed rebel army—the Contras.

Webb was a Pulitzer Prize winner whose “Dark Alliance” series went viral in the early days of the internet. It caused a firestorm that led to the resignation of CIA Director John Deutch after he was grilled by angry Black activists at a meeting in L.A.[2]

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Seven Nashville cops are placed on leave after manifesto written by trans shooter Audrey Hale was released

Seven Nashville police officers have been placed on administrative leave amid an investigation into how the ‘manifesto’ of school shooter Audrey Hale leaked online. 

Nashville Police Department told WSMV that the officers were suspended after a probe into how three pages of notes written by Hale before she opened fire at The Covenant School in March. 

She fatally shot three nine-year-olds and three teachers before being shot dead by police. 

The manifesto had been shrouded in secrecy since the shooting, until they were leaked on Monday by controversial podcast host Steven Crowder, who claimed his reporters obtained it from a detective on the scene. 

Police sources told Fox 17 that the documents were authentic, and purport to show Hale’s plan to target ‘white privileged’ ‘cr*****s’ and ‘f****ts’ before killing herself.  

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CPS DOESN’T KNOW WHAT RECORDS IT DESTROYED RELATED TO KEIR STARMER’S WASHINGTON TRIPS

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England and Wales’ public prosecutor, has no knowledge of what records it has destroyed related to its previous head Keir Starmer, it can be revealed.

In June, Declassified revealed that the public body had deleted all records of Starmer’s four trips to Washington while he was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). 

Starmer made trips to Washington in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013 at a cost to the British taxpayer of £21,603. It was his most frequent foreign destination while in post and included a meeting with the US Attorney General.

Starmer served as DPP from 2008-13, a period when the body was overseeing Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations. 

During Starmer’s time in post, the CPS was marred by irregularities surrounding the case of the WikiLeaks founder, destroying key emails related to the Assange case, mostly covering the period when Starmer was in charge. 

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He told on ‘badge bending’ and was fired. Now, former Vallejo cop will get nearly $1 million

A former police captain who alleges in a lawsuit that he was fired for whistleblowing on his colleagues and exposing corruption within the Vallejo Police Department will receive nearly $1 million in a settlement with the city.

John Whitney and his attorney, Jayme Walker, agreed to the settlement last week, in which the city will be required to pay Whitney $900,000 as well as all costs, liens and attorney fees.

“I feel vindicated by the settlement agreement because of the amount,” Whitney told The Times in an interview Monday. “You don’t settle for nearly $1 million if you did everything correct.”

Whitney alleges in a lawsuit filed against the city and his former employers in 2020 that he was fired after he told Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff, Mayor Bob Sampayan and then-City Atty. Claudia Quintana that members of the Police Department were bending the corners of their badges to commemorate every time an officer killed a civilian.

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Ex-CIA agent convicted of largest leak in agency’s history faces NYC trial for child porn

A Manhattan jury is expected to hear opening arguments Tuesday at a former CIA engineer’s third New York City trial in as many years, this time including child pornography allegations.

Joshua Schulte – convicted in July 2022 of carrying out the most prolific leak in the CIA’s history — is accused of transporting and possessing thousands of images and videos showing the rape and sexual abuse of children.

The feds say Schulte brought the sick trove to New York in 2016 when he moved to the city from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., for a job at a financial services firm. It was allegedly stored on his home desktop computer, buried under layers of encryption, and categorized by victims’ identities and characteristics.

Prosecutors say the FBI found the disturbing libraries on Schulte’s computer, which included images of very young children, after decrypting files using a password on one of his cellphones during the probe into his leaks at the CIA.

Schulte has previously argued without evidence that the FBI framed him because of what he did at the CIA. He won’t be permitted to make that argument at trial.

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