Chelsea Manning (b. 1987) is a former intelligence analyst who worked for the US Army. After being deployed to Iraq, she became increasingly disillusioned with US counterterrorism operations which were treating civilians and terrorist suspects as equal targets, attacking both indiscriminately and later classifying the civilian deaths as ‘enemies killed in action’. Determined to launch a national debate about the brutality of US foreign policy, Manning decided to shed light on backdoor US military tactics and allow the general public to judge for themselves whether they support their government’s actions abroad. After attempting and failing to contact traditional media outlets, Manning transferred around 750,000 documents, many of which were classified such as the Afghan and Iraq War Logs, to WikiLeaks. This included a gunsight video which later became known as ‘Collateral Murder’ depicting the killing of twelve Iraqi civilians and the wounding of two children in 2007; the list of victims included a photographer and his driver, both working for Reuters News Agency. What made the footage especially horrifying was the nonchalant and amused tone of the US soldiers’ commentary while shooting clearly unarmed passers-by and children, referring to the victims as ‘dead bastards’ and blaming the Iraqis for bringing children to the battleground when in actuality the children were on their way to school. Prior to the leak, the US military maintained that all the victims were hostile forces and died in battle — a lie which became difficult to uphold after Manning’s release of the evidence. Despite shedding light on the US government blatantly violating its own laws, Chelsea was labelled ‘traitor’ and ‘spy’, charged with aiding US enemies such as Osama Bin Laden and al-Quaeda, and was sentenced to spending 35 years in prison. After worldwide protests demanding Manning to be released, outgoing US-President Obama commuted her in January 2017.

Daniel Ellsberg (b. 1931) is a former RAND Corp. military analyst who is responsible for the release of the Pentagon Papers — a series of classified papers documenting US-Vietnam relations during the Vietnam War, which unwittingly exposed the US government’s conscious decision to systematically deceive its citizens regarding the details of its involvement in Vietnam and neighbouring countries. The Pentagon Papers played an important role in the later downfall of the Nixon Administration as well as substantially decreasing the public’s support for US engagement in Vietnam. Commissioned by the Defence Secretary, the secret documentation of the Vietnam War was authored by several people including Ellsberg himself and disclosed that South Vietnam was not a US ally but rather an artificially created state conceived for the main purpose of limiting China. The Pentagon Papers also exposed the US bombings of Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam, as well as the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Disillusioned and worried, Ellsberg secretly made photocopies and turned to members of Congress for help. When the senators declined to make the documents public, Ellsberg sent a copy of the Pentagon Papers to The Times which agreed to publish a series of exposés and was thereafter unsuccessfully sued by the government. Ellsberg became a target of White House agents who went as far as to break into his psychiatrist’s office in order to obtain personal and potentially embarrassing mental health records. When the agents could not find anything incriminating, they proceeded to illegally wiretap his home and became involved in a plan to drug Ellsberg using LSD in order to tarnish his reputation. Ellsberg was charged under The Espionage Act of 1917 with a maximum sentence of 115 years, however, his case was dismissed when the extent of government misconduct became known, particularly regarding the illegal wiretapping of his house — the records of which were mysteriously lost during the court hearings. The same agents who instigated these illegal and aggressive measures against Ellsberg were later involved and convicted for direct involvement in the Watergate Scandal. 

Jesselyn Radack (b. 1970) is a former Defence of Justice lawyer who is currently working as a human rights attorney specialising in defending the rights of whistleblowers. While working at the Defence of Justice, she was asked by a prosecutor whether it is legal to interrogate suspected terrorist John Walker Lindh without providing access to his lawyer. Despite Radack’s response that such an act violates the law, the DOJ proceeded to detain, torture and interrogate Lindh. Photos of Lindh blindfolded, naked and tied to a restrainer began to circulate in media outlets which led to a series of investigations regarding the Justice Department’s internal correspondence. Jesselyn Radack was shocked to find out that her emails regarding the Lindh case were deleted and that the DOJ was publicly lying about respecting the rights of Lindh. She reported to Newsweek that DOJ violated the rights of Lindh by torturing him and not providing access to a lawyer, lying about denying Lindh his Miranda rights, lying about being aware that Lindh was represented by a lawyer, and then later destroying the evidence regarding the case. She resigned from her position and soon after became a long-term target of the Justice Department, which accused her of being a terrorist sympathiser and placed her on the “No-Fly List”, assailed her colleagues at her new workplace which led to her being discharged, and tried to revoke her license to practice law — all of this was executed without an official criminal charge. She is currently representing Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake.