Eight years ago I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. I knew there’d be trouble, but I never could’ve predicted the years-long ordeal that followed.
My revelations led to a four-year-long FBI investigation and five felony charges — against me, not the torturers. Facing a lifetime in prison, I pled guilty to a lesser charge of confirming the name of a former CIA colleague to a reporter who never published it.
That may sound familiar to you. It’s exactly what former CIA director David Petraeus did when he exposed the names of multiple undercover officers to his girlfriend. Petraeus took a plea to a misdemeanor. I didn’t have four stars on my shoulder, and I wasn’t a friend of the president’s, so I’d gotten stuck with a felony.
At sentencing, my judge gave me 30 months in prison and three years of probation, and she took away my federal pension. I left for prison believing that was the totality of my punishment. I was wrong.
One of the first things that happened upon my conviction was that the company with which I had my homeowner’s and auto insurance canceled my policies. They don’t do business with felons, they said. That same week, my credit card company canceled my card and demanded the immediate payment of the balance.
Then, shortly before my departure for prison, the agency that my wife and I used to hire child care providers also jumped on the bandwagon. They dropped us as clients and left us without anybody to help her care for our three young children while I was away.
When I finally came home from prison six months ago, I thought probation was all I had left to deal with. Yet even now, I’m still putting up with petty government harassment, even if the private sector has backed off.
I recently traveled to Greece to help the government there craft whistleblower and anti-corruption legislation. As a Greek-American and a whistleblower, I wanted to help my ancestral homeland climb out of its current political and economic troubles and get back on track.
I had great success in Greece, securing support for the legislation from the government and all major political parties. I’ll return to Greece in a few months to begin drafting the new law.
I landed back in Northern Virginia excited about my success and prospects in Greece. Imagine my surprise, then, when an immigration officer at Dulles International Airport stopped me and asked to see my passport.
“Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” he asked. “You know I have,” I told him. “It’s on your computer.” He then handed me my passport, but only after writing a large letter “C” on my customs form.
I walked to the customs line, but was then redirected to the customs office. I waited in a very long line only to be told to have a seat.
“Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” they asked again. “Yes,” I replied. “What does that have to do with being let back into my own country?”
The customs officer then called my probation officer to ask if I’d been allowed to leave the country. She said I had, so the customs agent finally let me go. The whole ordeal took an hour. After 12 hours in transit, it felt like a whole day.
I guess I’ll have to tolerate this nonsense every time I travel internationally. It’s another unseen addition to my sentence.
Something tells me that General Petraeus doesn’t have to put up with these hassles.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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