The Whistler International Launch

LONDON - Feb. 17, 2014 - PRLog -- Compassion in Care, Cure the NHS, Courage Foundation and the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) have joined forces to form an international fellowship alliance to protect all whistleblowers.

Given the massive interest and support whistleblowers are receiving, the Whistler Fellowship Alliance will be having an international launch on 18 February, 6pm at City University London, room A109.

Eileen Chubb is one of the Bupa Seven care assistants who blew the whistle on elderly patient abuse. Eileen, together with Gavin MacFadyen of CIJ, formed The Whistler Fellowship Alliance providing emotional and legal assistance to those who have or are considering righting a wrong. They will be joined by a group of high-profile American whistleblowers who have flown in to support the cause.

Among them will be Ray McGovern, a former CIA senior analyst, Thomas Drake, a senior former NSA officer, and Jesselyn Radack,a former US Department of Justice ethics advisor - and other including Elizabeth Murray, Ann Wright and Annie Machon, the Director of the newly formed Courage Foundation.

The UK launch will be held on 20 March with whistleblowers Delyth Jenkins, Ian Perkin and Julie Bailey among the speakers.

Eileen Chubb, Director of Compassion in Care, has said: “With the launch of the Whistler Fellowship Alliance, at last the UK will have an organisation that truly champions whitsleblowers. A force for good. An army of the brave and honest that any governments and the powerful ignore at their peril.”

Notes for Editors

Contact:

Gavin MacFadyen 07740 304 570; gavin@tcij.org

Eileen Chubb 07763 066 063; 01689 875 604

Ray McGovern served during the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and later worked for 27 years as a CIA analyst – from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. In January 2003, he helped create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in a collegial attempt to expose the way intelligence was being corrupted, together with senior British and other allied officials, to “justify” the illegal war on Iraq.

Jesselyn Radack, former ethics attorney to the United States Department of Justice, disclosed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation committed ethics violation in their interrogation of John Walker Lindh (an American, who joined in the Taliban, captured in Afghanistan) without an attorney present, and alleged that the Department of Justice attempted to suppress that information. She is now National Security & Human Right Director of the Government Accountability Project.

Thomas Drake was a senior official at the National Security Agency (NSA – the eavesdropping intelligence agency) where he witnessed systematic violation of privacy rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, as well as widespread waste, fraud, and other abuse. He blew the whistle; the Justice Department launched a three-year investigation and charged him with espionage. He was exonerated on all major counts, pleading guilty to a misdemeanour of improper use of a government computer.

Annie Machon was an intelligence officer for the UK domestic security service (MI5) in the 1990s before resigning to help blow the whistle on the crimes, incompetence and lack of accountability of the British spy agencies. She is now a writer, media commentator, political campaigner, and international public speaker on a variety of issues: security and intelligence, the war on terror, the war on drugs, civil liberties, ethics, press and media freedoms, secrecy legislation, internet freedoms and whistleblowing.

Elizabeth Murray served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near

East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring in August 2010 after a 27-year career in the U.S. government. She specialized in Middle Eastern political and media analysis. For the past 10 years she has actively campaigned against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Craig Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. Mr Murray learned that the intelligence authorities of the UK and the US were receiving and using information extracted by the most sadistic methods of torture by Uzbek authorities.

Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She is most noted for having been one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since her resignation, Wright has participated in numerous peace actions and events and has also made visits to areas of conflict around the world.

Todd Pierce served as an officer with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps. He was assigned as defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel, Office of Military Commissions, from June 2008 to November 2012. Pierce was on defense teams representing three clients held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He is a founding member of the Institute for the Study of American Militarism and a Senior Fellow of the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota.