Sam Adams Award

Sam Adams Award   (Intelligence, Whistleblower)
Founder	Ray McGovern
Membership	•  Coleen Rowley •  Katharine Gun •  Sibel Edmonds •  Craig Murray •  Samuel Provance •  Andrew Wilkie •  Frank Grevil •  Larry Wilkerson •  Julian Assange •  Thomas A. Drake •  Jesselyn Radack •  Thomas Fingar •  Edward Snowden •  Chelsea Manning •  William Binney •  John Kiriakou •  Seymour Hersh •  Karen Kwiatkowski •  Jeffrey Sterling •  Annie Machon •  Daniel Hale •  Daniel Ellsberg •  Aaron Bushnell
Motto: Truth Wll Set You Free

The Sam Adams Award is given annually since 2002 to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. The Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence is granted by the Sam Adams Associates, a group of retired CIA officers. It is named after Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War, and takes the physical form of a "corner-brightener candlestick".

Reward for spooks

Ray McGovern established the Sam Adams Award "to reward intelligence officials who demonstrated a commitment to truth and integrity, no matter the consequences."

The 2012, 2013, and 2014 awards were presented at the Oxford Union.

Scott Ritter speaks

On 4 November 2024, Scott Ritter posted on X:

"My speech this past Saturday at the Sam Adams Award ceremony honouring Aaron Bushnell."

Recipients

• 2002: FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley
• 2003: Katharine Gun, former British intelligence (GCHQ) translator; leaked top-secret information showing illegal US activities during the push for war in Iraq.
• 2004: Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator; fired after accusing FBI officials of ignoring intelligence pointing to al-Qaeda attacks against the US.
• 2005: Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who blew the whistle on UK complicity in the Uzbek government's use of torture and involvement in extraordinary rendition.
• 2006: Samuel Provance, former U.S. Army military intelligence sergeant; spoke out about abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison.
• 2007: Andrew Wilkie, retired Australian intelligence official; claimed intelligence was being exaggerated to justify Australian support for the US invasion of Iraq.
• 2008: Frank Grevil, Danish whistleblower; leaked classified information showing no clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
• 2009: Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and 2003 Iraq War critic.
• 2010: Julian Assange, editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks.
• 2011: Thomas Andrews Drake, former senior executive of the US National Security Agency (NSA); Jesselyn Radack, former ethics adviser to the US Department of Justice.
• 2012: Thomas Fingar, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
• 2013: Edward Snowden, leaked NSA material showing mass surveillance by the agency, sparking heated debate.
• 2014: Chelsea Manning, US Army soldier convicted in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offences.
• 2015: William Binney, former highly placed intelligence official with the NSA turned whistleblower.
• 2016: John Kiriakou, former CIA analyst and case officer who publicly confirmed the employment of waterboarding against detainees and characterised the practice as torture.
• 2017: Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who reported on the My Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and alleged misrepresentations of the 2013 Ghouta attack and the 2017 Khan Shaykhun attack.
• 2018: Karen Kwiatkowski, US Air Force officer who became a whistleblower, leaking material behind the film "Shock and Awe".
• 2019: Jeffrey Sterling, CIA whistleblower.
• 2020: Annie Machon, MI5 whistleblower.
• 2021: Daniel Hale, US Air Force enlisted airman who became an intelligence analyst for the NSA in Afghanistan and later exposed the consequences of drone strikes.
• 2022: Daniel Ellsberg, former US military analyst who released the Pentagon Papers, showing that the public had been misled about the Vietnam War, to a number of newspapers in 1971.
• 2024: Aaron Bushnell, senior airman in the United States Air Force who engaged in a fatal act of self-immolation in protest against United States support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas war on February 25, 2024 (posthumously awarded).

 

Known members

20 of the 22 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Julian Assange	A "hacktivist" of mysterious background, whose website, Wikileaks, has been the conduit for a lot of whistleblowing. His pronounced disinterest in 9/11 is particularly notable.
William Binney	Former senior technical director of the NSA, in charge of thousands of employees, William Binney resigned after 9-11 to blow the whistle on fraud and corruption.
Aaron Bushnell	"I will no longer be complicit in genocide."
Sibel Edmonds	Sibel Edmonds was recruited by the FBI as a translator in the wake of 9/11. She quickly turned whistleblower when she discovered security breaches, cover-ups and malpractice at numerous levels. The US government has made her "the most gagged person in the history of the United States".
Daniel Ellsberg	A feted whistleblower who exposed some details of how the US government was waging the Vietnam War. The fact that he was not persecuted has lead several commentators to suggest that he may not in fact have been all he appears to be. Specifically, the Pentagon Papers may have been a limited hangout.
Thomas Fingar	Fingar oversaw preparation of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear weapon design and weaponization work in 2003.
Frank Grevil	A major in Danish intelligence who revealed that Anders Fogh Rasmussen had been blatantly lying about Iraq's alleged WMD's. Sentenced to jail for revealing this.
Katharine Gun	A Chinese translator who exposed illegal efforts by the GCHQ to illegally bug the UN offices of 6 nations in an effort to start an illegal war. Considered a hero by many.
Daniel Everette Hale	Drone whistleblower who was arrested and indicted on allegations that he disclosed classified documents about the US military’s assassination program
Seymour Hersh
John Kiriakou	The only CIA officer to go to prison for reasons connected to their torturing of suspects - the first whistleblower.
Karen Kwiatkowski	Former Pentagon staffer who has exposed the lies of the Pentagon.
Annie Machon	Machon quit together with fellow MI5 whistleblower David Shayler in 1996/7 to expose details of various illegal actions by the organisation. She is currently a political activist working to help other whistleblowers.
Chelsea Manning
Craig Murray	A UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who stood up and did the right thing when confronted with evidence of torture. Smeared and dismissed by the UK deep state, he continues his activism exposing Establishment lies and hypocrisy.
Sam Provance
Jesselyn Radack	A US whistleblower in the aftermath of 9-11.
Coleen Rowley	Whistleblower who exposed the FBI's cover-up of the information from the Minneapolis FBI field office that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
Edward Snowden	IT specialist and former contractor for the NSA, Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks about their mass surveillance programs were widely reported by the corporate media, an interesting contrast to the leaks of earlier whistleblowers that were roundly ignored.
Larry Wilkerson

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 5 November 2024.
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