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Umar S. Israilov was an official in Chechnya's paramilitary forces, fighting separatists on behalf of the Russian-backed government of Chechnya’s president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov. In 2006, he left Russia and sought asylum.  He filed a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights accusing Kadyrov of participating in kidnappings, torture and murder. Israilov told the New York Times that Kadyrovites had threatened him and that Kadryov had put a bounty on his head. He went into hiding. The Court dismissed his complaint when it could not contact him. Last year he asked Austrian police for protection because of the death threats, but his request was denied. On January 13, 2009, he was fatally shot in Vienna, Austria.

Austrian authorities have now determined that Kadyrov ordered Israilov's kidnapping. The kidnapping was botched, and Israilov was shot and killed after he broke free from the assailants. Austrian police are holding three Chechen exiles as suspects in the case.  They accuse a fourth suspect, Lecha Bogatirov, of firing the fatal shots.  Bogatirov fled Austria and returned to Russia after the shooting. The case is now in the hands of an Austrian prosecutor.

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Yesterday Rep. John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, questioned the General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Valerie Caproni, about the FBI's use of exigent circumstance letters to collect information without a search warrant. After the hearing, Rep. Conyers issued a press release calling for discipline for those involved in illegal searches.  He says,

Today’s hearing showed that the FBI broke the law on telephone records privacy and the General Counsel’s Office, headed by Valerie Caproni, sanctioned it and must face consequences. I call upon FBI Director Mueller to take immediate action to punish those who violated the rules, including firing them from the agency. This must include the FBI Office of General Counsel, headed by Valerie Caproni, which the IG testified today had ‘approved [the] continued use’ of exigent letters and ‘provided legal advice that was inconsistent with’ federal law.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the previous Chair, said,

I’m extremely disappointed that every time Congress has tried to plug potential civil rights and civil liberties violations in our counterterrorism activities, the FBI seems to have figured out a way to get around it.

The Washington Post ran a front page story on January 19, 2010, about how the FBI failed to meet even the minimal requirements of the Patriot Act, and how my client, Bassem Youssef, helped bring the FBI into compliance. A previous post on this blog covered that disclosure.

Law.com reports that Rep. Conyers called Ms. Caproni to testify next to the Justice Department's Inspector General, Glenn Fine. Mr. Fine testified that after the attorneys became aware of the practice, they not only failed to stop it, they made it easier for the practice to continue. Mr. Fine indicated that the FBI is in the process of considering discipline against the responsible officials. Rep. Conyers recalled how FBI Director Robert Mueller said he would consider discipline promptly after the IG released his report. Rep. Conyers said that the present delay is "not acceptable." Ms. Caproni told Law.com that there was "a failure of internal controls." Still, she said she was not responsible for the incorrect advice that came from her office.

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The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting another whistleblower.  According to an indictment by a Baltimore grand jury (reported here by the New York Times), Thomas A. Drake released classified emails showing that the National Security Administration (NSA) wasted billions of taxpayer dollars trying to get computers to collect and sort electronic information. The government is also charging that Drake shredded documents, deleted computer files and lied to investigators to conceal his communications with reporters.

Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon.Com that this prosecution is "one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet." He railed against the Bush administration for protecting officials who engaged in illegal snooping, yet prosecuting those who revealed the illegality. While President Obama decided to "look forward, not backward," this prosecution is a backward step. Greenwald cites the Siobhan Gorman article from the Baltimore Sun reporting that the NSA pursued the "Trailblazer" program when an alternative "Thin Thread" program had privacy protections designed to ensure that the NSA would not eavesdrop on the domestic calls of U.S. citizens. To me, this is another example of the government collecting so many dots that it does not have the resources or talent to connect them.  If the government was more respectful of the Fourth Amendment, and collected only that information supported by probable cause of unlawful activity, it would have fewer and better dots to connect.

John Cole compares the Drake prosecution with the non-prosecution of Porter Goss -- the CIA Director who authorized the destruction of the torture videos. "The message is clear - you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter. If you are a whistleblower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted."

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Artist Marcia Annenberg was so inspired by the story of Army whistleblower Bunny Greenhouse that she has included a portrait of Greenhouse in a recent painting. "You are my hero," Annenberg says in a letter to Greenhouse. "Your compelling story is woven into my painting, 'Portrait of Two Women.'"  Bunny Greenhouse was the top contracting official for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who objected to the long-term no-bid contracts for Halliburton subsidiary KBR. Now she is calling on the U.S. Senate to fix the poison pills in the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) and pass a strong protection for federal employee whistleblowers.

"Portrait of Two Women" will be part of Annenberg's "News/Not News" exhibition at Boricua College, 3755 Broadway (at 156th Street), New York City, from April 28 to June 18, 2010.

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WikiLeaks.org has released an 18 minute video that shows United States armed forces in Iraq attacking a group that included two journalists from Reuters. The journalists, and about ten other civilians, were fatally injured in the 2007 attack.

National Public Radio (NPR) this morning reports (although not in its on-line article) that the video came from a whistleblower. A number of circumstances point to whistleblowing as a source for this video.  The video was classified and encrypted. So, whoever released this video is likely to have had a security clearance. Also WikiLeaks.org has posted a decrypted version of the video. This indicates either that the source had access to the decryption methods or that the government's encryption is vulnerable.

WikiLeaks.org is a volunteer organization that has vetted and released anonymous submissions since 2007. Its initial focus was to expose corruption by authoritarian regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East and Africa. In 2008, a federal judge in California ordered that it be shut down after it exposed illegal activities by the Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank. Last December, WikiLeaks.org suspended availability of past leaks due to a funding shortage. The site is now widely distributed and mirrored to stymie censorship.

Today's video release exemplifies the role whistleblowers can play in revealing how national security laws are used to cover up mistakes or misconduct by military and other government officials. The public debate and historical record benefit from this whistleblower leak. The release is also a test of how technology can facilitate whistleblowing by persons with security clearances.

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