This is the the memoir of the Justice Department legal ethics advisor, Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on government misconduct in the case of the so-called "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh--America's first terrorism prosecution after 9/11.
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There's simply no better first-person book about whistleblowing. It illustrates dramatically both the risks of conscientious truth-telling--fully experienced by Jesselyn, a horror story greatly to the discredit of the government--and the compelling need for indomitable whistleblowers like her.
DANIEL ELLSBERG
Pentagon Papers Whistleblower
This is a riveting--and chilling--account of how far the Bush Administration's Justice Department went to destroy a critic.
ANTHONY LEWIS
New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist (retired)
This book offers a poignant illustration of the erosion of civil rights and liberties in the "war on terrorism. It questions whether we can respond effectively to the threat of terrorism without jeopardizing the very freedoms that characterize a democratic society.
NADINE STROSSEN
Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
DANIEL ELLSBERG
Pentagon Papers Whistleblower
This is a riveting--and chilling--account of how far the Bush Administration's Justice Department went to destroy a critic.
ANTHONY LEWIS
New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist (retired)
This book offers a poignant illustration of the erosion of civil rights and liberties in the "war on terrorism. It questions whether we can respond effectively to the threat of terrorism without jeopardizing the very freedoms that characterize a democratic society.
NADINE STROSSEN
Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
From the Back Cover
I will mention one truth teller and not many people know about her . . . Jesselyn Radack. Jesselyn was the person on duty when John Walker Lindh was taken in. With all this talk about torture you should know that the first person tortured was an American citizen and he was tortured mercilessly for the first few days of his internment and denied medical care. She raised holy Hell. She was tossed out of the justice Department and blacklisted. That's the kind of guts Jesselyn had. Jesselyn had tremendous guts and now she's written a really terrific book.
RAY McGOVERN
CIA Analyst (retired)
RAY McGOVERN
CIA Analyst (retired)
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More About the Author
Jesselyn Radack is currently the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation's leading whistleblower organization. Her writing has appeared in the L.A. Times, Washington Post, Salon, Legal Times, National Law Journal, and The Nation. A graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School, she lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and three children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glenn Greenwald: this book "should be required reading for all first-year law students . . ."
February 7, 2012
By mwcjim
Format:Paperback
Glenn Greenwald: this book "should be required reading for all first-year law students . . ."
Jesselyn Radack's exceptionally well-written memoir about her ordeal as a Justice Department whistleblower details attacks from the George W. Bush administration on both her professional and personal life, from forcing her out of her career at the Justice Department to anonymous administration officials calling her a "traitor," "turncoat," and "terrorist sympathizer."
Glenn Greenwald says it best in his forward to Radack's first-hand account of whistleblowing: "In June 2002, Jesselyn Radack exposed one of the first cases of torture post-9/11 - being used on an American - in the case of John Walker Lindh. Her sobering book should be required reading for all first-year law students because it shows poignantly how 'national security' is being used to fundamentally bastardize constitutional law, criminal procedure, human rights, civil liberties and legal ethics."
Greenwald is right, the intersection in Radack's book of torture, national security, freedom of speech and legal ethics makes the book a unique - and invaluable - contribution to any curriculum. The book is packed full of weedy legal issues fit for wanna-be lawyers, but anyone will be mesmerized by her harrowing tale about the lengths to which our government will go to silence critics.
Radack's story is a stark example of how necessary whistleblowers are in order to ensure transparency in government and of how necessary whistleblower rights are in order to ensure that patriots like Radack are protected and not excoriated.
Jesselyn Radack's exceptionally well-written memoir about her ordeal as a Justice Department whistleblower details attacks from the George W. Bush administration on both her professional and personal life, from forcing her out of her career at the Justice Department to anonymous administration officials calling her a "traitor," "turncoat," and "terrorist sympathizer."
Glenn Greenwald says it best in his forward to Radack's first-hand account of whistleblowing: "In June 2002, Jesselyn Radack exposed one of the first cases of torture post-9/11 - being used on an American - in the case of John Walker Lindh. Her sobering book should be required reading for all first-year law students because it shows poignantly how 'national security' is being used to fundamentally bastardize constitutional law, criminal procedure, human rights, civil liberties and legal ethics."
Greenwald is right, the intersection in Radack's book of torture, national security, freedom of speech and legal ethics makes the book a unique - and invaluable - contribution to any curriculum. The book is packed full of weedy legal issues fit for wanna-be lawyers, but anyone will be mesmerized by her harrowing tale about the lengths to which our government will go to silence critics.
Radack's story is a stark example of how necessary whistleblowers are in order to ensure transparency in government and of how necessary whistleblower rights are in order to ensure that patriots like Radack are protected and not excoriated.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It began with that monstrous young man so evil we needed to blindfold him and strap him to a board, that confusing young man who looked like Christ but cast us in the role of crucifiers, that treasonous young man who brought dark and heathen evils across linguistic and cultural borders and brought torture onto the list of accepted government actions.
When you hear the phrase "American Taliban" you probably think of a young American who betrayed his country, aided its enemies, and - like Saddam Hussein - was behind the attacks of 9-11. John Walker Lindh was an American. That part is accurate. He converted to Islam at age 16 and traveled to Yemen to study classical Arabic and Islamic theology. In 2001 he went to Afghanistan to join an ongoing battle between a political group funded by Russia and another group funded by the United States. Lindh joined the group that was backed and funded by the Bush Administration. It was called the Taliban. Lindh trained to fight the Northern Alliance, not civilians, and not the United States. But, after 9-11, the United States attacked the Taliban, and Lindh attempted to escape and return to America.
Instead he and other soldiers were captured by the Northern Alliance and beaten senseless in the presence of two CIA officers, Johnny "Mike" Spann and Dave Tyson, who interrogated Lindh and threatened him with death on the spot. When some of the other prisoners rebelled (Lindh was not involved), Northern Alliance troops shot and killed scores of prisoners, many with their arms tied behind their backs. Lindh was shot in the leg. Spann was killed. (Though he was not involved, Lindh was later charged with conspiracy to murder Spann.)
When Lindh was finally in U.S. custody, Secretary of "Defense" Donald Rumsfeld's office told an Army intelligence officer to "take the gloves off" and ask Lindh whatever he wanted, only reading him his rights after he said something incriminating. The officer asked for a copy of the Miranda warnings and never received it and never read Lindh his rights. Instead, U.S. Special Forces tied his hands, put a hood over his head, drove him for hours, placed him in a dark room, and taunted him, denying his many requests for counsel.
The same day that Newsweek broke the story of the "American Taliban," Lindh's mother called the State Department, the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, all of which refused to help her. Lindh's father persuaded James Brosnahan to take the case the next day, by which point, in the words of Jesselyn Radack, Lindh
"was being discussed on every radio show, and images of him were constantly shown on TV. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Ashcroft, and Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain made inflammatory comments and prejudicial statements, none of them true, that Lindh was an al Qaeda fighter, terrorist, and traitor; fired his weapon; attended a terrorist training camp; supported bin Laden; and had foreknowledge of September 11th - even though the government from the first day of Lindh's capture was in possession of facts to the contrary."
Jesselyn Radack should know. Radack was a top graduate from Yale Law School in 1995 who went straight to work in the U.S. Justice Department. By the time our nation was adopting torture as an open and respectable practice, Radack worked in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office. There she received a call from counter-terrorism prosecutor John De Pue who wanted her advice on the FBI's proposal to interrogate Lindh without allowing him access to counsel, even though his father had retained a lawyer who was demanding to meet with Lindh and demanding that interrogations cease. Lindh, meanwhile, had been blindfolded, stripped naked, bound to a stretcher with duct tape, taunted, threatened, and locked in an unheated metal shipping container in the bitter cold at a Marine base in Afghanistan.
Radack made a fateful decision. She took an action that was drastically out of place in the Ashcroft Justice Department, although she herself did not then realize how out of place it was. She told De Pue the truth. She told him that the FBI could not legally interrogate Lindh, knowing that his father had retained counsel on his behalf.
Radack recounts what happened next in her book "The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of 'American Taliban'." The book interweaves an account of the Justice Department's retaliation against Radack for doing her job and making public what she had done, with an account of the Bush Administration's development of greater and greater use of torture, violation of rights, secrecy, and lies.
The Justice Department lied about how Lindh was treated. Michael Chertoff even perjured himself in the U.S. Senate. Senator Kennedy and others knew the truth and still voted to confirm Chertoff to head up efforts to keep our "homeland" secure. Lindh is serving a 20-year sentence and is under a gag order not to talk about it. Our government is torturing the innocent and guilty alike around the globe. And many secrets are being kept secret by those who know better, because they've seen what has been done to Radack and others like Bunnatine Greenhouse, James Yee, Sibel Edmonds.
The Justice Department aggressively attacked Radack, costing her a job there and a later job with a private law firm, threatening her license to practice law, damaging her reputation, denying her income, placing her on the "no-fly" list, and endlessly harassing her. Her book recounts the hell she went through.
When you hear the phrase "American Taliban" you probably think of a young American who betrayed his country, aided its enemies, and - like Saddam Hussein - was behind the attacks of 9-11. John Walker Lindh was an American. That part is accurate. He converted to Islam at age 16 and traveled to Yemen to study classical Arabic and Islamic theology. In 2001 he went to Afghanistan to join an ongoing battle between a political group funded by Russia and another group funded by the United States. Lindh joined the group that was backed and funded by the Bush Administration. It was called the Taliban. Lindh trained to fight the Northern Alliance, not civilians, and not the United States. But, after 9-11, the United States attacked the Taliban, and Lindh attempted to escape and return to America.
Instead he and other soldiers were captured by the Northern Alliance and beaten senseless in the presence of two CIA officers, Johnny "Mike" Spann and Dave Tyson, who interrogated Lindh and threatened him with death on the spot. When some of the other prisoners rebelled (Lindh was not involved), Northern Alliance troops shot and killed scores of prisoners, many with their arms tied behind their backs. Lindh was shot in the leg. Spann was killed. (Though he was not involved, Lindh was later charged with conspiracy to murder Spann.)
When Lindh was finally in U.S. custody, Secretary of "Defense" Donald Rumsfeld's office told an Army intelligence officer to "take the gloves off" and ask Lindh whatever he wanted, only reading him his rights after he said something incriminating. The officer asked for a copy of the Miranda warnings and never received it and never read Lindh his rights. Instead, U.S. Special Forces tied his hands, put a hood over his head, drove him for hours, placed him in a dark room, and taunted him, denying his many requests for counsel.
The same day that Newsweek broke the story of the "American Taliban," Lindh's mother called the State Department, the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, all of which refused to help her. Lindh's father persuaded James Brosnahan to take the case the next day, by which point, in the words of Jesselyn Radack, Lindh
"was being discussed on every radio show, and images of him were constantly shown on TV. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Ashcroft, and Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain made inflammatory comments and prejudicial statements, none of them true, that Lindh was an al Qaeda fighter, terrorist, and traitor; fired his weapon; attended a terrorist training camp; supported bin Laden; and had foreknowledge of September 11th - even though the government from the first day of Lindh's capture was in possession of facts to the contrary."
Jesselyn Radack should know. Radack was a top graduate from Yale Law School in 1995 who went straight to work in the U.S. Justice Department. By the time our nation was adopting torture as an open and respectable practice, Radack worked in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office. There she received a call from counter-terrorism prosecutor John De Pue who wanted her advice on the FBI's proposal to interrogate Lindh without allowing him access to counsel, even though his father had retained a lawyer who was demanding to meet with Lindh and demanding that interrogations cease. Lindh, meanwhile, had been blindfolded, stripped naked, bound to a stretcher with duct tape, taunted, threatened, and locked in an unheated metal shipping container in the bitter cold at a Marine base in Afghanistan.
Radack made a fateful decision. She took an action that was drastically out of place in the Ashcroft Justice Department, although she herself did not then realize how out of place it was. She told De Pue the truth. She told him that the FBI could not legally interrogate Lindh, knowing that his father had retained counsel on his behalf.
Radack recounts what happened next in her book "The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of 'American Taliban'." The book interweaves an account of the Justice Department's retaliation against Radack for doing her job and making public what she had done, with an account of the Bush Administration's development of greater and greater use of torture, violation of rights, secrecy, and lies.
The Justice Department lied about how Lindh was treated. Michael Chertoff even perjured himself in the U.S. Senate. Senator Kennedy and others knew the truth and still voted to confirm Chertoff to head up efforts to keep our "homeland" secure. Lindh is serving a 20-year sentence and is under a gag order not to talk about it. Our government is torturing the innocent and guilty alike around the globe. And many secrets are being kept secret by those who know better, because they've seen what has been done to Radack and others like Bunnatine Greenhouse, James Yee, Sibel Edmonds.
The Justice Department aggressively attacked Radack, costing her a job there and a later job with a private law firm, threatening her license to practice law, damaging her reputation, denying her income, placing her on the "no-fly" list, and endlessly harassing her. Her book recounts the hell she went through.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is so real, so personal, and yet a message that every American who cares about the future of our Constitutional Republic and the fate of democracy must read. It is a tribute to Radack and her unyielding adherence to the deepest and most enduring values of duty, honor, and standing up for others -- unjustly tried and treated -- as an exemplar of defending liberty and justice when it is most under assault and peril.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed
If the author's underlying facts are wrong and her opinions are then based on those fictions, I wonder how seriously can readers take the rest of her book. I am in the book. Read more
Published 2 months ago by RYP
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book
This a a true story and demonstrates how the Govt bureaucracy screws employees that disagrees with established order. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Thomas Adams
3.0 out of 5 stars
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Ms. Radack should not have been subjected to such abuses as an attorney. It takes a courageous
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