In his book, Fighting for the Press: The Pentagon Papers & Other Battles, Goodale presents a first-hand account of what happened as lawyers sought to defend the newspaper from the government. He describes how Max Frankel, foreign reporter for the Times, informed him he had “documents related to the Vietnam War.” He did not, at first, see them but was confronted with the issue of whether it was legal for the press to publish classified information.

In a small auditorium at the Newseum in Washington, DC, Brave New Films director Robert Greenwald held the premiere of his new documentary, “War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State.” It features four stories of men who are clear examples of whistleblowers that most Americans would think deserve protection when exposing government corruption, misconduct or wrongdoing, however, officials chose to protect the National Security State and retaliate each of these men for speaking out.

A Navy contract linguist charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act by unlawfully retaining “national defense information” has been hit with a third charge of violating the law.

James F. Hitselberger was working in Bahrain as a translator. A document collector, as Secrecy News’ Steven Aftergood describes, Hitselberger is a “peripatetic collector of rare documents.” In his living quarters, where a “classified document was allegedly found in April” of 2012, newspapers and numerous books could be found. Some of his “discoveries over the years” have been donated “to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, which actually maintains a James F. Hitselberger Collection.” The collection includes “political posters and leaflets that he gathered in pre-revolutionary Iran.”

John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent who was the first to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the administration of President George W. Bush, has been sentenced to thirty months in jail. He was convicted in October of last year of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) when he provided the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter.

A military judge granted a government motion and ruled the defense could not argue motive during the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier being prosecuted by the military for releasing classified information to WikiLeaks.

The decision, which is not available to the press or public, found the defense would not be able to discuss whether Manning had “good faith” when presenting argument on charges that he “wrongfully and wantonly cause[d] to be published on the internet intelligence belonging to the United States government,” or for charges where the government only has to prove Manning had “reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

The State Department has taken action against one of its employees, Peter Van Buren, which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) believes is in retaliation for criticism of the State Department’s reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Here’s an “unauthorized” interview with Van Buren.

The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and New York Times all in the span of twenty-four hours managed to speak with sources that confirmed an international sting operation had been unfolding. But we don’t know who leaked the story or why, and thus have no way of judging its entire credibility.

A look back at the week’s stories covering whistleblowers, watchdogs, and government accountability.

A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted former CIA agent John Kiriakou for releasing classified information to journalists that included the identities of a “covert CIA officer” and information on the role of “another CIA employee in classified activities.” The Justice Department charged him with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and three counts of violating the Espionage Act, along with a count for “allegedly lying to the Publications Review Board of the CIA” so he could include classified information in his book.

As historian Jay Feldman describes in his brilliantly researched and artfully written new book, Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, there have indeed been a great many things wrong with this country specifically with respect to government attacks on civil liberties. Feldman pulls together a jaw-dropping historical catalogue of 20th Century examples where the United States government not only trampled the Bill of Rights, but did so while whipping up class warfare, xenophobic hysteria, and political mob violence, all on the pretext that war or the threat of war necessitated the abrogation of liberty.