CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. - More than two dozen national security whistleblowers, lawyers and public interest advocates gathered Monday night in a pristine fishing village on Virginia's eastern shore to discuss strategies for strengthening legal protections against reprisal and to exchange stories.
Participants in the three-day National Security Whistleblowers Conference include former and current employees of some of the government's most secretive agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, CIA and FBI. The event was funded by five advocacy groups: the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, the Project on Government Oversight, the Fund for Constitutional Government, the Cavallo Foundation and the Fertel Foundation.
As night settled over Chincoteague Bay, NSA whistleblower Russ Tice chatted with noted national security lawyer Roy Krieger. Members of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, a group founded by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, plotted legislative and publicity strategies. And Daniel Ellsberg, the former Marine who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War to the media in 1971, met the latest military whistleblower on the block: intelligence specialist Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who has stirred up a frenzy in Washington by reporting that a classified Army program identified one of the main ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attacks more than a year before they occurred.
Most of the whistleblowers at the conference said they were ardent conservatives or lifelong Republicans. But their experiences have brought them into a world where they mingle with representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic lawmakers.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1005/101105c1.htm
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