Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats just held a news conference on leaks of classified information. See C-SPAN video.

Jesselyn Radack, director of the Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts, stated today:

“The Justice Department’s crackdown on leaks wrongly targets and punishes national security whistleblowers, who have no meaningful internal channels for dissent or meaningful protection from retaliation. The crackdown is a backdoor way of attacking journalists on whom the public relies to be informed about government misconduct.

“Insider Threat Programs have proven discriminatory against legitimate whistleblowers and foster a destructive, McCarthy-esque culture within the federal government.

“Attorney General Sessions fails to distinguish between whistleblowing in the public interest and other leaks and fails to address the rampant over-classification problem plaguing the national security community.”

Background: see statement from April from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: “Trump Threats to WikiLeaks ‘Nuclear Option’ Against the First Amendment.”

ExposeFacts.org is a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.