During the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg — a peace activist from Michigan who had worked as an analyst in the U.S. Department of Defense — became so disillusioned with the quagmire that he leaked a critical top-secret report dubbed the “Pentagon Papers” to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers. In retaliation for him trying to tell the truth to the American people, the government charged him under the Espionage Act of 1917, among others, and he faced a maximum prison sentence of 115 years. After a judge dismissed the charges, Ellsberg spent the rest of his life advocating for peace and transparency until he died of cancer in 2023 at age 92.
In honor of Ellsberg’s bravery, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Detroit has introduced the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act. The legislation calls for reforms to the Espionage Act to prevent its abuse in stifling the freedom of speech of whistleblowers, journalists, and the American people who expose government corruption.
“Alerting the public to government wrongdoing is not a crime,” Tlaib said in a statement. “The Espionage Act has been abused by administrations of both parties to target whistleblowers and journalists for sharing critically important information with the public. With whistleblowers, journalists, and civil liberties under significant attack and government decision-making shrouded in increasing secrecy, reining in the abuses of the Espionage Act could not be more urgent.”
Aside from Ellsberg, the Espionage Act has been used to attempt to silence other government whistleblowers and leakers, including Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. More recently, the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter in January who spoke to more than 1,000 government whistleblowers in what critics called “a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.”
The Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act would reform the Espionage Act by limiting its scope to government employees with a legal duty to protect classified information, increasing due process standards and safeguards for whistleblowers, and requiring the government prove that a defendant acted with the specific intent to harm the United States or benefit a foreign power.
“For too long, presidential administrations of both parties have weaponized the outdated Espionage Act to criminalize the whistleblowers and journalists who expose government wrongdoing,” said Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Representative Tlaib’s bill finally brings this law in line with essential First Amendment protections, ensuring it can no longer be used as a cudgel against the free press. This legislation rightly prioritizes the public’s right to know over baseless, self-serving secrecy claims.”
The legislation is cosponsored by Representatives Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Summer Lee (PA-12), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Delia Ramirez (IL-03), and Shri Thanedar (MI-13). It is endorsed by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Coalition for Women in Journalism, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Defending Rights & Dissent, Demand Progress, Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy, Fight for the Future, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Government Information Watch, Just Foreign Policy, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Radio Television Digital News Association, Reporters Without Borders, Restore the Fourth, RootsAction, Society of Environmental Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists, Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts, and X-Lab.
The full text of the legislation is embedded below.
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