39 Facts About Jesselyn Radack

Jesselyn Radack defended CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou and NSA whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and Daniel Hale, all of whom were charged under the Espionage Act of 1917.

Jesselyn Radack graduated from Brown University and Yale Law School, and began her career as an Honors Program attorney at the US Department of Justice.

Jesselyn Radack then became the Director of National Security and Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project from 2008 until 2015, and is currently the director of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program at the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Jesselyn Radack has been widely published and quoted regarding whistleblowing, torture, surveillance, Internet freedom, and privacy.

Jesselyn Radack appears in the press, including on the major American television networks as well as NPR, PBS, CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera English.

Jesselyn Radack was born in Washington, DC, and attended Wilde Lake High School and Brown University.

In 1995 Jesselyn Radack graduated from Yale Law School and, through the Attorney General's Honors Program, joined the Department of Justice.

Jesselyn Radack worked at the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, which advises department lawyers on ethics issues.

On December 7,2001, Jesselyn Radack received an inquiry from Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor John DePue, regarding the ethical propriety of interrogating Lindh in Afghanistan without Lindh's legal representative being present.

Jesselyn Radack told her that Lindh's father had retained a lawyer for his son; Lindh was not aware of this arrangement.

Jesselyn Radack responded that interrogating him was not authorized by law.

Jesselyn Radack continued to research the issue until December 20,2001, when Flynn told her to drop the matter, because Lindh had been "Mirandized".

Jesselyn Radack advised Radack to find another job, or the review would be put in Radack's official personnel file.

On March 7,2002, while Jesselyn Radack was still working at PRAO, the lead prosecutor in the Lindh case, Randy Bellows, messaged Jesselyn Radack that there was a court order for all of the Justice Department's internal correspondence about Lindh's interrogation.

Jesselyn Radack said that he had two of her messages and asked if there were more.

Jesselyn Radack immediately became concerned that the court order had been deliberately concealed from her.

Jesselyn Radack had written more than a dozen emails on the subject, and neither of the ones Bellows had received copies of reflected her fear that the FBI's actions had been unethical and that Lindh's confession, which was the basis for the criminal case, might have to be sealed.

Jesselyn Radack confided in a senior colleague, former US Attorney Donald McKay, who examined the file and told her that it had been "purged".

On December 31,2003, Jesselyn Radack requested the court appoint a special prosecutor to probe the alleged suppression of the emails.

The description of the 24 documents provided to the court at that time matches Jesselyn Radack's emails, including the one that states interviewing Lindh is not authorized by law.

In 2004 Jesselyn Radack filed suit against the government.

Jesselyn Radack resigned from the Justice Department on April 5,2002.

Jesselyn Radack then wrote an article about the Lindh case emails, quoting Radack but not naming her as the source of what he called "internal e-mails obtained by Newsweek".

Jesselyn Radack has said she did not turn the documents over to the court or prosecutors at the time she recovered them because she felt intimidated by Flynn, who had told her to drop the matter.

The Justice Department launched a criminal investigation of Jesselyn Radack that remained open for 15 months.

Jesselyn Radack says an agent of the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General told her new employer and coworkers that she was under criminal investigation and would steal client files.

Jesselyn Radack believes the OIG agent pressured her employer to fire her.

The firm was initially supportive, but after it obtained phone records of calls between Newsweek writer Isikoff and the firm's office showing that Jesselyn Radack appeared to be the leaker of government emails, that changed.

When Jesselyn Radack was granted unemployment benefits, her now-former employer was assisted by the Justice Department, she says, in challenging the benefits on the grounds of her alleged misconduct and insubordination.

The Lindh court issued an order on November 6,2002, concluding that Jesselyn Radack's disclosure did not violate any order of the Court, but this order was not made available to Jesselyn Radack until two years later.

Jesselyn Radack has contrasted the way she was treated by the Department of Justice and the way the department attorneys who authored the memos giving a purported legal basis for waterboarding and other controversial interrogation methods were treated.

The criminal investigation and subsequent ethics referrals prevented Jesselyn Radack from finding suitable work as an attorney for years, she says.

Kennedy later said that Chertoff's initial answers about Jesselyn Radack's case were "nonresponsive, evasive and hyper-technical" but that after follow-up questions, Chertoff provided more "direct and forthcoming" answers.

Jesselyn Radack was in effect fired for providing legal advice on a matter involving ethical duties and civil liberties that higher-level officials at the Department disagreed with.

Jesselyn Radack is one of the attorneys for National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Jesselyn Radack was one of the attorneys who represented National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake, with whom she won the 2011 Sam Adams Award, given annually by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

Jesselyn Radack's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and various law journals.

Jesselyn Radack has appeared in numerous documentaries including War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State, Silenced, America's Book of Secrets, National Bird, United States of Secrets, and Detainee 001.

British media artist Andy King created a photographed portrait of Jesselyn Radack using digital glich techniques.