Only 11 Americans have ever been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917; eight of them since President Obama took office. Academy Award®-nominated documentarian James Spione returns to Tribeca Film Festival with the incredible personal journeys of two members of that octet, Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou, along with accountability advocate, Jesselyn Radack, who helped bring their cases to light.

With resonance in the post-Snowden era, Silenced catalogs the lengths to which the government has gone to keep its most damning secrets quiet, in an impassioned and thought-provoking defense of whistleblowers everywhere. Executive produced by Susan Sarandon.

The War on Whistleblowers

SILENCED follows a group of high-profile truthtellers who dared to question official national security policy in post 9-11 America, and have endured harsh consequences. James Spione became increasingly interested in the issue of government transparency and accountability, and the ongoing efforts to punish those who reveal information about official wrongdoing, when working on Incident in New Baghdad. That film featured incendiary footage of a controversial U.S. helicopter attack purportedly released by a young U.S. Army Specialist named Bradley Manning, who is currently facing a court martial on charges that could result in a life prison sentence.

But Manning is not alone. Over the past several years, an arcane WWI era law called The Espionage Act has been used six times to bring charges against whistleblowers, not for revealing information to a foreign government, but for talking to the press. In fact, the current administration invoked this law more times than all previous administrations combined.

What does it take for an individual of conscience to speak out in this environment?  What kind of courage and character does it take to challenge the national security policies of the most powerful nation on Earth?  Though Incident was not directly about Manning, the experience of making it got me to thinking about the power of information: who  controls and classifies it, who is allowed to release it, who is rewarded for its use and who is punished.

The targeting of whistleblowers raises profound questions that have implications far beyond the fates of the individuals profiled in this film. In an age where the spectre of terrorism is deemed an appropriate reason for the Executive branch to claim greater and greater powers, can the United States government maintain a commitment to the rule of law? How can a democracy that purports to champion human rights simultaneously attempt to quash criticism from within its ranks? What is the effect on our First Amendment right to dissent–and on the whole idea of a free press–when those in power single out whistleblowers for prosecution?

Meet the whistleblowers

Jesselyn Radack  In 2001, Ms. Radack, then a Justice Department lawyer, resigned over official misconduct in the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, leaking critical emails to Newsweek magazine. A campaign of retribution followed, in which Radack was forced out of her new job, referred for discipline before the bar in two states, threatened with prosecution, and effectively kept from working as an attorney for years. Media investigations of the emails eventually lead to the revelation that a secret program to torture prisoners in U.S. custody was being hidden by the White House.  Now Jesselyn works at the nonprofit Government Accountability Project in Washington DC, and has dedicated her life to helping other whistleblowers.

Thomas Drake  After sounding the alarm for years through internal channels at the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake released non-classified information regarding warrantless surveillance programs targeting millions of Americans to a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. An investigation ensued, and in 2007 Drake’s home and those of several other NSA employees who had made complaints were raided by armed agents. In 2010, the Obama Justice Department charged Drake with an unprecedented use of the Espionage Act in relation to his contact with the press, but the case collapsed in 2011. Nonetheless, Drake was left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills.

John Kiriakou  In 2007, Mr. Kiriakou became the first current or former CIA officer to confirm that waterboarding was official United States policy, criticizing the practice on national television.  While initially claiming the technique worked, he later retracted that stance when he found that the CIA had been providing him with false information.  As he continued to give interviews he became more critical of enhanced interrogations, calling them torture.  An active source for the press, Kiriakou named a former colleague involved in the rendition and interrogation program to a journalist, and the name of the agent ended up in a legal brief for lawyers of Guantanomo Bay prisoners.  Mr. Kiriakou was soon hit with numerous charges from U.S. prosecutors, including Espionage Act charges.  Earlier this year he pleaded guilty to revealing the identity of an undercover agent, and will shortly begin serving a 30-month sentence in federal prison. 

Peter Van Buren  Twenty-four-year State Department veteran Peter Van Buren volunteered for the job of heading up a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq. He recently published “We Meant Well: How I Lost the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People,” a scathing, “Catch-22”-style critique of his experience, detailing waste, fraud and ineptitude on a colossal scale.  Almost immediately he had his security clearances revoked, and the State Department began to monitor all of his online activities.  However, after the ACLU mounted an aggressive public defense of Mr. Van Buren, State eventually backed off and Van Buren was allowed to resign with full retirement, a rare happy outcome in the current environment.

Meet the Filmmaker

Academy Award® nominated director James Spione (photo above) is an independent  filmmaker based in New York. His most recent work, the powerful war film Incident in New Baghdad, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival,  where it won Best Documentary Short. The film went on to win top honors  at many other festivals, and was nominated for an Oscar in February 2012 in the Documentary Short Subject category. It premiered on the  Documentary Channel in May 2012.

Mr. Spione’s previous documentaries include the poignant portrait  film Our Island Home, about the last surviving denizens of a vanished  settlement off the coast of Virginia, and his first feature American  Farm, distributed by Passion River Films, which detailed the deep  generational conflicts on his family’s fifth-generation homestead in  central New York State.

Mr. Spione has also made a number of fiction films, including the  international festival hit and Sundance favorite Garden, starring  Oscar winner Melissa Leo, and the television suspense film The  Playroom. Mr. Spione produced the acclaimed independent feature Parallel Sons. (Sundance ’95).  His first film Prelude earned a  Student Academy Award.

Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1941167757/silenced-a-new-documentary-from-oscar-nominee-jame