News Items

  • Calls to Suspend Syrian Refugee and Other Recent Anti-Muslim Statements by Government Officials

    Compiled by the Institute for Public Accuracy with Arun Kundnani and Deepa Kumar. Kundnani said: “While it’s very easy to denounce Trump’s recent repugnant, bullying statements — and much of the political class has — it’s important to keep several things in mind: First, as the compilation of statements by elected officials makes clear, he made these statements after many officials from across the country made scores of statements playing on unfounded fears against Syrian refugees and other Muslims.”

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  • Classified Politics: A System and a Clinton in Disrepute

    It is most unlikely, however, that Hillary Clinton will fall victim to accusations that rely on improper over-­classification. The State Department and White House, including President Obama himself, sought to protect her and to minimize the effects of her behavior. The case is extremely high­-profile, Democrats in Congress would attack any borderline classification, and a host of well-­paid lawyers would rise to her defense. Improperly classified items or those deemed Sensitive but Unclassified may be redacted from publicly released documents, but it is hard to imagine that Mrs. Clinton would be falsely accused of felonies.

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  • Video of Sterling News Conference

    Please enjoy the full video of Holly Sterling’s news conference, which was her first such appearance since her husband’s trial and imprisonment. The news conference also featured Thomas Drake, Delphine Halgand, Ray McGovern, and Jesselyn Radack.

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  • Open Letter to President Obama from Holly Sterling

    Does the government have no shame in destroying one man’s life and wasting tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to punish a man who had the audacity to do two things: Stand up for his constitutional rights and utilize proper channels provided to him to express concern for the citizens of our country? I am deeply saddened by our lives’ events that Jeffrey and I have suffered and endured. You publicly committed to a transparent government led by your administration, yet it has been shrouded in mistruth and secrecy.

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  • Unprecedented News Conference: Wife of Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower to Speak Out

    Jeffrey Sterling was convicted under the Espionage Act as a source for New York Times reporter James Risen’s book State of War. He began serving his three-and-a-half year prison sentence in June. His wife’s news conference will be the first time the spouse of a CIA whistleblower has made such an appearance.

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  • Cultural Shift Needed on Police Militarization

    Police militarization is a 25 year long trend that has only grown in momentum over time. The restrictions on militaristic gear directed by the White House while important symbolically, will certainly not substantively impact this trend in and of itself. Police militarization at this point is as much a cultural problem as it is a material one, and reversing the cultural trend toward police militarization will require more far reaching efforts.

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  • Watch the Short Documentary “The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling”

    “‘The federal courtroom in northern Virginia where Holly and Jeffrey Sterling returned for the sentencing on May 11 was the scene of a disturbing, though scantly reported, simulation of justice in late January. At the outset, covering the trial, I noted that ‘prospective jurors made routine references to ‘three-letter agencies’ and alphabet-soup categories of security clearances.’ Steeped in a local atmosphere of deference to mega-employers like the CIA and Pentagon along with numerous big contracting firms nearby, ‘the jury pool was bound to please the prosecution.’”

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  • On Jeffrey Sterling: From the Filmmaker of “Invisible Man”

    “The most shocking element of this story it that Jeffrey Sterling seems to be punished because he ‘pulled on Superman’s cape’ first with a racial discrimination suit they were able to squash and then by reporting what he considered a dangerous CIA operation to the proper government channels for hearing such a concern.”

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  • News Conference: Whistleblowers Weigh In on Policy

    William Binney (NSA), Thomas Drake (NSA), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Raymond McGovern (CIA), Jesselyn Radack (Justice Department), Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Kirk Wiebe (NSA) spoke at this news conference, sponsored by ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • Netanyahu Victory Opens Door for One-State Solution

    Just before the election, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu ruled out the creation of a Palestinian State, which means that he repudiated the two-state solution to the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This has been the pronounced objective of American foreign policy since the Madrid Conference and the Middle East Peace Negotiations in 1991 held under the auspices of the United States government and with the full support of the international community.

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  • · Yeltsin · Tillman/Lynch Falsehoods

    DAVID KOTZ Coauthor (with Fred Weir) of the new book Russia’s Path from Gorbachev to Putin, Kotz said today: “Yeltsin did not bring freedom and democracy to Russia, as we are so often told. These were substantially achieved under Gorbachev in the last years of the Soviet Union. Yelstin rode these reforms to power, then…

  • · Equal Pay Day · Biggest Bank Merger?

    VICKY LOVELL Today is Equal Pay Day. Lovell, director of employment and work/life programs at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said today: “The wage ratio between women and men failed to narrow in 2006, and an earlier trend toward equal pay has stalled. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006…

  • Israeli Military Shoots Nobel Peace Laureate

    MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maguire said today: “I was invited with my friend to attend a nonviolent conference in Bilin, a village outside Ramallah [in the West Bank], and to give a talk there, which I did. At the end of the conference, we were invited to participate in a nonviolent demonstration…

  • Where Is Iraq Headed?

    AARON GLANTZ An unembedded journalist and author of the book How America Lost Iraq, Glantz has reported extensively from Iraq since the spring of 2003. He said today: “Muqtada al-Sadr has millions of followers — many more than the Bush-backed government in the Green Zone. … He may be a Shi’ite fundamentalist, but even Sunnis…

  • Perspectives on Virginia Shooting

    MIKE MALES Author of the book “Kids & Guns:” How Politicians, Experts, and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth, Males said today: “Mass shootings are common in the United States — we’ve had several in recent months in offices, and almost weekly in families. I cannot find another country where mass shootings are so common…

  • D.C. Emancipation Day: Taxation without Representation

    Today is D.C. Emancipation Day, an official holiday in the city of Washington (and the reason the IRS is closed today). The Washington Post notes in an editorial today: “On this day in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed an act that ended slavery in the District of Columbia. … [I]t’s appropriate that it serve as…

  • “Public Investment”: On a Dead-End Track?

    MAX SAWICKY In a real sense, trains are “symptomatic of what is wrong with the way people think about economic policy” — and the consequences for the United States are very serious. That’s the theme of a new essay by economist Max B. Sawicky. “Public spending is seen as a sink, not as a boost…

  • Military Families Across U.S. Responding to the Extension of Army War-Zone Stints

    The Pentagon announced this afternoon what Defense Secretary Robert Gates called “a difficult and necessary interim step” — extending the tours of duty of all active-duty Army troops currently in Iraq or Afghanistan from 12 months to 15 months. He said: “I realize this decision will ask a lot of American troops and their families.”…

  • Beyond Imus: What’s At Stake

    JILL NELSON A journalist and activist, Nelson is author of Straight, No Chaser: How I Became a Grown-Up Black Woman and editor of the anthology Police Brutality. She said today: “The absence of the voices of African American women in the current discussion of Don Imus’ comments emphasizes how irrelevant, powerless, and objectified black women…

  • Former British Ambassador on Lessons of Iran Crisis

    CRAIG MURRAY Available for a limited number of interviews, Murray is former head of the British Foreign Office’s Maritime Section. He has written extensively about the detention of the 15 Britons on his web page and was among the first to note that the boundary was contested. A piece he wrote entitled, “How I Know…

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