Lon Snowden on his son, on the courage of John and Bonnie Raines, and the price activists pay for exposing national secrets.
In the course of reporting on John and Bonnie Raines for our January issue, writer-at-large Steve Volk spoke with a source who had a uniquely personal take on the plight of whistle-blowers Edward Snowdens father, retired U.S. Coast Guard chief warrant officer Lon Snowden. Lon appreciated how John and Bonnies story parallels his sons, and agreed to share his perspective with Philadelphia magazine. With his permission, published for the first time here is Lon Snowdens essay a father speaking in his own words about the controversial and historic actions of his son; fellow activists separated by decades but united in their belief in a better government; and the price paid for exposing national secrets to the public.
I first learned of the Media, Pennsylvania, break-in when the story gained renewed national attention in early January 2014. Bonnie and John Raines and Keith Forsyth came forward to reveal how they and five associates had shattered FBI secrecy in late winter 1971 to obtain proof of government crimes. The story immediately captured my attention because it occurred less than an hour from my home and shared similarities with more recent disclosures by Ed Snowden my son. Within days of the initial news reports, my wife realized that she shared a mutual friend with the Raineses, which led to phone conversations with John and Bonnie. My wife and I had the pleasure of first meeting Bonnie, John, Keith and others in May 2014 at the Philadelphia premiere of Johanna Hamiltons film 1971. I admire these kind and wonderfully authentic people and always feel fortunate when we reconnect at events and conferences in different cities. The film documents their story a story about eight ordinary citizens who came together to accomplish something extraordinary.
The passage of time has proven the Media Eight to be great Americans courageous humanists who placed civic duty above self-interest and personal safety, to take necessary action to warn their fellow citizens of the FBIs disregard for both the law and the constitutional rights of many innocent Americans. The Media Eight exposed high crimes and abuses that senior government officials intended to cloak in secrecy crimes and abuses now documented as indisputable historical fact thanks to the skill and courage of the Media Eight.
Its difficult to fully comprehend the degree of personal sacrifice made by the eight Media activists to inform us, their fellow citizens, of the governments abusive overreach. The ongoing threat of harsh government reprisal at any moment was a burden they had to live with for years, if not decades. Yet that burden was superior to the alternative of submitting themselves to a U.S. Department of Justice that was, and remains, highly biased against citizens who expose government abuses that embarrass or implicate favored political elites. The passage of time has proven that it would have been a terrible decision for the Media Eight to surrender to a politically motivated justice system in 1971. Exposing themselves to that type of due process would have allowed the government to ruthlessly smear them, distract the public with propaganda, and sequester the truth-tellers to prison while providing a legion of parasitic media shills with talking points to distort or bury the truth. The same strategy is used to silence truth-tellers today, though the tactics are now far more sophisticated and insidious.
I empathize with the youngest of the Media Eight, Judi Feingold, who spent at least the first decade of her adult life exiled within her own country to avoid capture. My son also copied government files and gave them to journalists. Those journalists used the documents to expose government disregard for the constitutional rights of millions of Americans, as well as violations of both domestic and international law. My son now lives in exile, but considering the governments reprehensible treatment of other truth-tellers, detainees and prisoners over the past decade, Im genuinely thankful that he is on foreign soil. I do not believe that my son can find justice or safety on American soil for years, but the story of the Media Eight gives me hope that he will find peace and thrive while in exile and I have absolute confidence that over time, the truth will also prevail in his case. As was the case with J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, those who proclaim a need to govern in secrecy to protect We the People are too often frauds desperate to conceal the truth to protect their political ambition and personal interests. That was true in 1971, and it remains true today.
Betty Medsgers book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoovers Secret FBI and Hamiltons film detail a crucial act of modern American civic leadership, a historic event that revealed important truths that every citizen should understand. The Media story of 1971 is a timeless lesson that is relevant to the challenges that We the People face today regarding secretive government malfeasance, including but not limited to legalized injustice, civil and human rights violations, extraordinary rendition, torture, the militarization of domestic law enforcement, and mass surveillance.
Parallels exist between the Media Eight, my sons ongoing story, and the experiences of fellow truth-tellers such as Daniel Ellsberg, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe, Jesselyn Radack, Diane Roark, Thomas Drake and many others. All questioned the judgment or veracity of senior government officials, and though each of these citizens spoke the truth, all paid a high price. The truth-tellers faced persecution, isolation and/or character attacks to varying degrees especially if their identity was known. The government conditions the media to use a deceptive lexicon to describe such citizens as whistle-blowers, criminals, leakers, traitors or rogues. They use such labels because describing them as what they are truth-tellers has paradoxical implications for a Justice Department attempting to persecute and prosecute them for daring to speak truth to power. Truth-teller is a context the government feared in 1971 and continues to fear today especially when the truth-telling has been criminalized. In principled societies, integrity is valued, and liars are reviled.
Even today, more than 40 years after the Media action exposed despicable U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agency behavior, some government apologists whine that it was an injustice that the Media Eight were not prosecuted. Ill posit that the only injustices were that J. Edgar Hoover did not live long enough to be prosecuted, that Richard Nixon was pardoned, and that others who betrayed their constitutional oaths were never held accountable. In 2014, its similarly unjust and disgraceful that James Clapper, the director of U.S. National Intelligence, continues to collect both a six-figure military pension and a six-figure government salary at the expense of the American taxpayer, despite lying under oath to those same American taxpayers via Congress. Conversely, the Media Eight disclosed truths that exposed government wrongdoing, but any U.S. Attorney would have leapt at the opportunity to represent the government in prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the rule of law in the 1970s. Fortunately, the statute of limitations has expired, and judicious citizens knowledgeable of the facts available today would likely agree, in hindsight, that it would have been a travesty of justice had they been prosecuted.
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