Whistle-blowing WikiLeaks provides much needed accountability of those in power

As Julian Assange wins the Sydney Peace Prize for “exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights,” NPR reports that “a federal grand jury in Virginia is scheduled to hear testimony on Wednesday from witnesses” in the criminal investigation of his whistle-blowing group, as “prosecutors are trying to build a case against [the] WikiLeaks founder whose website has embarrassed the U.S. government by disclosing sensitive diplomatic and military information.”

Specifically, NPR accurately reports, the effort to turn Assange and WikiLeaks into criminals for doing nothing more than what newspapers, Bob Woodward, and administration officials frequently do — disclose government secrets to the public without authorization — is merely one prong in the Obama administration’s unprecedented war against whistleblowing:

National security experts say they can’t remember a time when the Justice Department has pursued so many criminal cases based on leaks of government secrets.

Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists says some of the most important disclosures of the past decade, including abuses by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, came out because people concerned about overreach blew the whistle on the government.

“Leaks serve a very valuable function as a kind of safety valve,” he adds. “They help us to get out the information that otherwise would be stuck.”

The Obama Justice Department doesn’t agree. This is the real purpose of the Government’s devotion to the secrecy regime: it prevents any meaningful accountability on the part of those in power.

[Excerpt of a Salon article by Glenn Greenwald]