Where are America's Katherine Guns?. From Metafilter (and I'm breaking a rule of my own making here, but their links tell the whole story)The Brave Tale of Katherine Gun, aka The Conscience of the Individual versus the State, aka “How the 'Land of the Free' Stopped Worrying about Legality and Liberty, and Learned to Love Wiretap and Manipulation”: “Katharine made the disclosure because she believed that it was necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi citizens and British and American soldiers would die or be maimed.””I have only ever followed my conscience,” she said. Pentagon Paper's author Daniel Ellsberg described the leak as “more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers. Truth-telling like this can stop a war.” Norman Solomon asks ” To what extent is the “special relationship” between the two countries to be based on democracy or duplicity? How much do we treasure the substance of civil liberties that make authentic public discourse distinct from the hollowness of secrecy and manipulation? How badly do we want to know what is being done in our names with our tax money? And why is it so rare that conscience takes precedence over expediency?” [MetaFilter]
It says something about the state of America's defense and intelligence institutions that no Katherine Gun surfaced here. And I wonder how we can persist as a country without actions like these, by people of conscience in those institutions.
Sean M. Gallagher 