This panel discussion will explore the impact of U.S. leak prosecutions on global investigative journalism. The Espionage Act is a draconian, World War I-era law used to prosecute media sources in the...
Jesselyn Radack
Jesselyn Radack heads the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts where she facilitates investigative journalism in the public interest by providing pro bono, direct legal representation to whistleblowers and media sources with a focus on human rights and civil liberties. With a focus on human rights and national security issues of secrecy, surveillance, torture and drones, Radack has been at the forefront of challenging the government’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers, which has become a war on journalists, hacktivists and those who reveal information that the public has right to know but the government wants kept secret.
Among her clients are national security and intelligence community employees who have been investigated, charged, or prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information, including Daniel Hale, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and John Kiriakou. She also represents clients bringing whistleblower retaliation complaints in federal court and other administrative bodies. Previously, she headed the National Security and Human Rights program at the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization, served on the DC Bar Legal Ethics Committee and worked at the Justice Department for seven years, first as a trial attorney and later as a legal ethics advisor.
Radack has testified before the U.S. Congress, European Parliament, Council of Europe and Germany’s Bundestag. The author of TRAITOR: The Whistleblower & the “American Taliban”, Radack has written prominent opinion pieces that have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Legal Times, National Law Journal, and numerous academic law reviews. Radack received the “Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award” in 2012, the “Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award” in 2012, and was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s “Leading Global Thinkers of 2013.” She served as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow for 2014-2015.
Radack is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School.
