12 November, 2008

Well, Now. This Could Get Interesting

Seems like our new Administration may have no choice but to uncover and punish the abuses of the previous one:

Wired is reporting that a potential army of whistleblowers-in-waiting have been talking to reporters and media outlets saying "call me on January 20th", the day the White House changes hands.

"I'd bet there are a lot of career employees in the intelligence agencies who'll be glad to see Obama take the oath so they can finally speak out against all this illegal spying and get back to their real mission," says Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU's Washington D.C. legislative director.

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh already has a slew of sources waiting to spill the Bush administration's darkest secrets, he said in an interview last month. "You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on January 20. [They say,] 'You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.'"

Is there an army of people chomping at the bit to spill the beans? I sure hope so. But it is up to both the new administration AND Congress to create a hospitable environment for that. I know Obama said no witch hunts, I'm not suggesting that, but we cannot sweep the depredations of the last two terms under the rug in that name of "moving on."

If new whistle-blowers do emerge, Fredrickson hopes the additional information will spur Congress to form a new Church Committee -- the 1970s bipartisan committee that investigated and condemned the government's secret spying on peace activists, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other political figures.

If any of you reading this blog are among those potential whistleblowers, I just want to say one thing: go for it. This country needs you to stand up and expose exactly what happened over the last eight years. We need to ensure it never happens again. The only way to do that is to get the full truth out.

It will be the greatest service you ever performed for your country.

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