Jesselyn Radack

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Jesselyn Radack (2009)

Jesselyn A. Radack (born December 12, 1970 in Washington, DC ) is a former legal counsel for the United States Department of Justice for ethics . After the arrest of the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh , she accused the Ministry of Defense of ethical misconduct and became a whistleblower during the interrogation of Lindh, who had not been provided with legal counsel . She received the Sam Adams Award in 2011 and is now a juror for the award of this award. She heads the Government Accountability Project and speaks and publishes on human and civil rights , freedom of the press and oppression, as well as the protection of privacy and that of whistleblowers from surveillance .

Life & Career

Radack was born in Washington and later attended Brown University , where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Association in her first year . In 1992 she graduated with a triple major ( Bachelor ) in American Studies , Womens' Studies and Political Science , and in 1995 she graduated from Yale Law School ( Yale University ). Through the Attorney General 's Honors Program , she was able to practice tort law at the Department of Justice (DoJ) until 1999 , before moving to the newly created Professional Responsibility Advisory Office (PRAO) there until 2002 - a department that investigated allegations against DoJ employees , Issued recommendations on the ethical basis of official acts and prepared reports.

The Lindh case

John Walker Lindh in Custody (2001)

On December 7, 2001, Radack was commissioned by John DePue, the DOJ's terrorism prosecutor, to check the legal correctness of the questioning of John Walker Lindh, as he had no legal counsel to assist him. She concluded that the right to assistance should have been granted.

"It would be a pre-indictment, custodial overt interview, which is not authorized by law."

"This [the questioning without a lawyer] would be a pre-indictment written, guardianship open questioning that is not legitimized by the law."

- Jesselyn Radack

She had her recommendation checked by an experienced colleague and the head of the department, Claudia Flynn, and received their approval.

John Ashcroft (2010)

In the corresponding situation, Lindh was told that there was “no lawyer here” and he was silent about the fact that his parents had already hired legal counsel in the USA . According to the defense, the hungry and tired Lindh decided not to postpone the interrogation until his lawyer was present because of the deliberate misinformation. Radack had recommended to say: “We understand that your father has retained counsel for you. Do you want this lawyer to represent you? (As far as we know, your father hired an assistant for you, would you like this lawyer to defend your rights? ”). After further inquiries, she was then briefly instructed not to pursue the case any further, although “extensive observation of a legal dispute in which the recommendation of the PRAO was not complied with was otherwise the norm”.

After the then Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly commented in January 2002 on the Lindh case, which he had brought as an indictment, and stated that

"The subject here is entitled to choose his own lawyer and to our knowledge has not chosen a lawyer at this time."

"The person concerned is entitled to choose their own lawyer and, to our knowledge, he has not selected one at this point in time."

- John Ashcroft

In Radack, doubts about the morally impeccable behavior of their superiors and other government representatives grew, even if the procedure seemed, from a technical point of view, legally legitimate and in accordance with the law.

In February of the same year, Radack was confronted with an extremely harsh and caustic judgment from her superiors, although there was no regular evaluation of her work performance. She needed more control than expected and her recommendations had caused serious problems once and were published twice hastily without consulting her manager . She was allowed to seek other work herself - or that assessment would be included in her personnel file. In March, Randy Bellows , the prosecutor on the Lindh case, requested that all DoJ correspondence regarding Lindh be turned over to the court, saying that he only had two of her emails and that he needed the rest of them. After queries, Radack found that the majority of her emails with DePue, which she archived in paper form , had been removed from the relevant file. Using forensic means , she recovered around a dozen documents, but was instructed not to send them to the court.

After leaving the DoJ, she summed up in April 2002: A united appearance by an authority in the Lindh case was understandable, as was the withholding of differences of opinion from the public - however:

"What's not okay is to hide that there was any disagreement when a federal judge has asked for information that happens to show disagreement. This is not about any kind of bleeding-heart sympathy for Lindh. It's about justice and playing by the rules. "

“It is not okay to hide the lack of consent when a federal judge asks about these very signs of lack of consent. It's not about heartbreaking compassion for Lindh, it's about the law and "playing by the rules". "

- Jesselyn Radack

Radack assumed that her critical emails never reached the examining magistrate.

Following this thought, she forwarded 13 emails to journalist Michael Isikoff , who received them in Newsweek as The Lindh Case emails with the heading "The Justice Department's own lawyers have raised questions about the government's case against the American Taliban." In June 2002 published, whereupon the judge ordered an investigation into the leak . As a result, her new employer asked her to resign.

John Walker Lindh's defense was based on whether his rights were being respected or violated, which Radack replied to in her emails; However, the relevant documents were not used as evidence in court, as the prosecution had recently achieved a surprising agreement: Lindh had confessed that he had been an active Taliban fighter for a few months and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for this.

After the trial ended, investigations continued until January 2013, with Radack invoking the Whistleblower Protection Act , which guarantees freedom from prosecution if the person believes they are denouncing misconduct by federal agencies or the government.

After the criminal case was closed, the DoJ advised her to investigate by the Bar Association of Maryland and the District of Columbia , whether she had committed misconduct in her profession , such as violating the relationship of trust between client and attorney.

Since the trial

Radack served on the Washington Bar Association's Ethics Committee from 2005 to 2007, and from 2006 to 2008 represented a whistleblower who reported fraud in the reconstruction of Iraq . Since 2008 she has been director of the National Security & Human Rights department of the Government Accountability Project ; there she represented, among others, Thomas Andrews Drake . She also represents whistleblower Brandon Bryant . She publishes texts in international media such as the New York Times and the Guardian or the Nation and blogs .

Activist for women's rights

During her time at Brown University, she was sexually molested by three male fellow students . After the perpetrators were only punished with additional rounds of jogging, Radack tried to persuade the university to impose stronger sanctions through public relations work . After appearing with three other women on the Phil Donahue Show , the Code of Conduct was adjusted.

Awards

Foreign Policy called Radak in their 2013 published list of 100 Leading Global Thinkers (about: Leading minds worldwide) and she was on the list of Faces of the Human Rights Revolution included (Faces of Human Rights Revolution), also she is a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation of the Council of Independent Colleges .

In addition, she received the following awards and honors:

literature

  • Jesselyn A. Radack: Traitor: The Whistleblower and the American Taliban, Whistleblower Press (January 30, 2012). ISBN 978-0-9839928-0-6 .

“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. "

“There is simply no better first-person book about whistleblowing. It dramatically illustrates both the risks of deliberately telling the truth - witnessed in full by Jesselyn, a horror story mainly disgusted by the government - and the imperative for indomitable whistleblowers like her. "

- Daniel Ellsberg

Web links

by Jesselyn Radack
via Jesselyn Radack
  • Laurie Abraham: Anatomy of a Whistleblower - Is Jesselyn Radack's story of being persecuted by the Justice Department typical of what happens to those who speak against the Bush administration? Or is hers a more complicated tale? ( English ), Mother Jones website, January / February 2004, accessed August 10, 2014
  • Emily Gold Boutilier: The Women Who Knew Too Much ( English ) brownalumnimagazine.com, March / April 2004. Retrieved on August 10, 2014.
  • Arte : Be silent, traitor! , December 2014. Documentation about whistleblowers with participation from Radack.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Emily Gold Boutilier: The Women Who Knew Too Much ( English ) brownalumnimagazine.com, March / April 2004. Retrieved on August 10, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Radack, Jesselyn
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Radack, Jesselyn A.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American justiciar to the United States Department of Justice for questions of ethics, activist & whistleblower
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC