{"id":4,"date":"2006-07-31T17:08:04","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T21:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/2006\/07\/31\/torture-is-wrong\/"},"modified":"2006-07-31T18:22:23","modified_gmt":"2006-07-31T22:22:23","slug":"torture-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/2006\/07\/31\/torture-is-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"“Torture is wrong.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post<\/a> reported Friday that Christine Axsmith, a CIA contractor, was fired for posting in her blog, on a top secret clearance government intranet, that “torture is wrong.”<\/p>\n

The day of the last post, Axsmith said, after reading a newspaper report that the CIA would join the rest of the U.S. government in according Geneva Conventions rights to prisoners, she posted her views on the subject.<\/p>\n

It started, she said, something like this: “Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong.”<\/p>\n

And it continued, she added, with something like this: “CC had the sad occasion to read interrogation transcripts in an assignment that should not be made public. And, let’s just say, European lives were not saved.” (That was a jab at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to Europe late last year when she defended U.S. policy on secret detentions and interrogations.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One wonders when the government is going to fire half the authors at the War College<\/a>, where opinions<\/a> like this (some based on the authors’ experience with classified information) are far more outspoken.<\/p>\n

Mind you, Axsmith posted to peers only, on a top-secret access intranet.<\/p>\n

As ZDnet<\/a> said,<\/p>\n

Fired – and threatened with criminal prosecution – for opining that torture is wrong, at a time when that sentiment is official policy.<\/p>\n

How’s that for a chilling effect?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When such speech in such a context draws such consequences, what hope is there for real whistleblowers, or people working on true governmental transparency?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post reported Friday that Christine Axsmith, a CIA contractor, was fired for posting in her blog, on a top secret clearance government intranet, that “torture is wrong.” The day of the last post, Axsmith said, after reading a newspaper report that the CIA would join the rest of the U.S. government in according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anonymous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}