The Washington Post mounted a three-year battle using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain records from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The records showed that the Trump, Obama and Bush administrations lied to the public about the Afghanistan war, withholding evidence that the war was unwinnable. (The Washington Post, December 9, 2019, by Craig Whitlock)
Mike Massnick of techdirt, December 10, 2019, argues that the quest for the Afghanistan papers makes a case for whistleblowers, “For all the talk about how whistleblowers and leakers should ‘use the proper channels,’ [such as the FOIA], writes Masnick, “every time we see the ‘proper channels’ in action, they seem to only open up opportunities for the government to delay, hide things, and continue whatever destructive (but embarrassing) policy they have in place. There is a place for whistleblowers to call out this kind of misconduct….”
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