A year ago, we let you know that National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake had been struck by serious cancer. The generous responses provided a huge lift for Tom, who has been on a death-defying medical roller coaster -- with many twists and turns -- while continuing his efforts to challenge the U.S. government’s contempt for civil liberties.

Now, we’re glad to be sending along this update from Tom, who has remained a beacon of truth-telling integrity. Here at the RootsAction Education Fund, we’ve been proud to work with him for many years. Today, while sending you a new essay (below) that Tom has just written, we’re making an urgent appeal. Medical bills have piled up and essential drugs are expensive; he needs -- and deserves -- our help.

Click here to make a tax-deductible donation in support of Tom Drake and his vital work for constitutional rights. Three-quarters of every dollar you donate will go directly to him, while the other quarter will help sustain the RootsAction Education Fund’s work in support of whistleblowers.

As a top NSA executive a decade ago, Tom exposed the government’s secret assault on the Fourth Amendment. Federal prosecutors threatened him with prison for the rest of his life. The bogus prosecution eventually collapsed, but not before Tom was banished from government employment, was deprived of a pension, and landed deeply in debt from huge legal fees.

We can help out now!

Below is an essay that Tom has just written to share with you.

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Update on My Health

Want to first express my profound gratitude for all your support and concerns as I navigate the continuing and daily challenges of dealing with cancer, the cumulative costs and the huge impact on my life that included the necessity of retiring early and now relying on a fixed income.

Since my last essay posted by the RootsAction Education Fund in the Fall of 2023, a number of developments occurred with my health. I experienced a period of uncertainty through December, as I awaited the results of referrals and a new treatment plan to deal with my lymphoma going forward that so altered my life going back to 2022.

Symptoms of the lymphoma returned this past Fall and confirmed with a PET-scan in late November showing substantial regrowth of the remaining malignant lymph nodes. Ended up with a new biopsy from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their specialized lymphoma unit done later in December, plus additional advanced blood draw analyses.

Results of the NIH biopsy and blood draws determined that my cancer is actually a rather rare form of lymphoma called Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia or also known as lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma. In early January, I began taking a second-generation targeted oral pill called Acalabrutinib (Calquence) and already feeling positive effects from this new treatment combined with a modified diet including specialized supplements. I am now on the re-recovery road to remission and appreciate and embrace the preciousness of life even more so each and every day. 

Conflict and Chaos in Gaza

As I write to you, the ongoing tragedy of Gaza continues to unfold with another seemingly futile and fleeting attempt at a ceasefire in progress and Israel Defense Forces massed outside of Rafah with the remaining hostages still not released. Admittedly, I found it quite daunting to address this huge humanitarian crisis triggered in its latest historical form by the horrific 7 October Hamas attack on Israel after the apparently imminent normalization of relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Right up front I want to state that one can both unequivocally condemn the Hamas terrorism attack and the Israeli counterattacks utterly destroying the totality of Gaza with many tens of thousands dead.

I am also under no illusions regarding my own ability to explain the complex and convoluted history for this part of the world going back millennia. But the ongoing tragedy does demand some perspective of what’s at stake in what I call the continuing loss of our basic humanity as exemplified by this latest conflict wrapped up in decades of utterly failed peace attempts by war and conflict driven by deep historical, political, religious and cultural divisions.

Also clear to me that the chances for peace seem even further away than ever, let alone the multiple attempts at any form of a proposed two-state solution. There are also any number of Israelis who do not regard Palestinians as equal human beings while Hamas as a movement vows to rid Israel as a Jewish state null and void. But isn’t a Palestinian life in Gaza or the West Bank just as much equal to a Jewish life and the mass murder of either one equally wrong?

What is unfolding post 7 October is now an unmitigated human tragedy as it appears hardliners in Israel used 7 October as an excuse to further expand illegal settlements in the West Bank and make most of Gaza literally uninhabitable.

Also clear that Netanyahu prefers a military “solution” and is proceeding to destroy all of Gaza with the excuse to rid Gaza of Hamas. And yet the international rule of law is shredded as Israel ignores the entreaties of multiple countries, with the U.S. apparently unwilling to outright and very publicly condemn Netanyahu through soft power and restricting military support, as he is clearly bent on maintaining what history can only call an apartheid regime.

And I am also painfully reminded of the massive intelligence failure behind 9/11 in the U.S. and the utter tragedy that followed and some 20 years in Afghanistan including the inexcusable invasion of Iraq with millions displaced and hundreds of thousands of innocents killed. Why?

Public reporting has clearly stated that the intelligence indications and warning system in Israel (like it was in the U.S.) were blinking red over a year before 7 October but the highest levels of the government ignored and buried the warnings. Unfortunately the war paradigm and an eye-for-an-eye mentality has once again created the current “wipe out the enemy” at all costs.

Can also ask the same questions about Israel – what if they had not launched a war on Gaza, or if the U.S. had not launched a global war on terrorism after 9/11, and treated the 7 October Hamas attacks as criminal in the eyes of much of the world instead of taking it out on the whole of Gaza as the solution?

Gaza is now a crime scene. And I am reminded of the Cambodian killing fields and accompanying slogan by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, “To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.”

Israel methodically destroyed the entire Gazan electricity, water, sewer and internet networks with a massive loss of green cover and vast tracts of homes and buildings made unlivable or completely destroyed. The scale of destruction in Gaza by Israel is incomprehensible. All the things that made civil life possible in Gaza now completely wiped out, including homes, schools, churches, mosques, universities, cultural centers and hospitals – just simply erased – the very humanity of Gazans at scale.

Beyond the obviously reprehensible attack on Israel by Hamas using the Gazan people as cover, does that justify the over-the-top response by Israel as justification to effectively erase Gaza as a place to live for its remaining people?

Israel as a state trapped some two million plus people and has displaced within Gaza just about all of them, unable to escape while bombing and starving them. And yet here we are well into 2024 and much of the dialogue is polarized over the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy.

Is it possible to support Israel and oppose Netanyahu, support the Palestinian people and oppose Hamas, criticize the obvious and overwhelming Israeli brutality in Gaza, and also choose the best for both Palestinians and Israelis while pursuing a path (however fleeting it appears) for a legitimate Palestinian state, while also accepting Israel's right to exist and promoting change in both Palestinian and Israeli leadership that is so absolutely critical?

I am still haunted as a teenager (and child of a WWII father who fought in Europe) seeing the horrifying pictures of emaciated Jews in concentration camps taken during the final months of that war. And now we also have a younger generation of Israelis and Palestinians seeing how the Israelis are treating the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank in the aftermath of the reprehensible Hamas attack of 7 October.

Exceptionalism is no excuse to circumvent human rights and international law to “clear” Gaza as the cost of wiping out Hamas. Reminds me of the haunting phrase “Destroy the village to save the village” from the tragic involvement of the U.S. in Southeast Asia back in the ’60s and ’70s.

Also don’t forget that after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by extremists in the wake of the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu assumed power in 1996 the first time and encouraged the financing of Hamas to balance the power dynamics with the Palestinian Authority and avoid any movement toward a two-state solution. And yet it is clear that Israel is also moving to push Palestinians completely out of the West Bank and Gaza, given the chance – IF they can get away with it.

Maybe – just maybe – there is a better chance for a one-state solution? And yet given the ideological bent on both sides of the two-state solution, ANY solution seems quite distant and even virtually impossible.

Maybe the solution arrived at in Northern Ireland that resulted in peace after decades of conflict is a possible template that could resolve the multiple factions and fractures that can also recognize and resolve key differences.

Also important to stop conflating all Jews with Israel. But Israel’s right to exist seems very predicated on Palestinians not existing. History is unblinking. Jews were historically a severely persecuted group ethnically cleansed from around the world, but that does not justify how Israel has treated Palestinians. Both truths are true. And the forced cleansing and dislocation of Palestinians is not voluntary.

Reminds me of a statement attributed to Hannah Arendt, “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”

There is either a two-state solution or a one-state solution with equal rights for both Palestinians and Israelis. The vicious cycle of victimhood and perpetual atrocity or solving one tragedy by creating an even bigger tragedy is simply UNACCEPTABLE.

Reality? The October 7 massacre by Hamas triggered severe inter-generational trauma of the Jewish survivors and descendants of history, existential wars, pogroms and terrorism. Hardcore Zionists support Netanyahu’s assault on Israeli democracy and against any policy of inclusion for Palestinians.

Instead of a special-forces-like operation to deal with Hamas, the Israeli government opted to pursue wiping out the ability of the entire Gazan population to simply live, with no humanitarian regard at all for the needs of the displaced, the million-some children, or post-invasion governance, except taking over and creating an existential crisis for the Palestinians and even a regional if not global catastrophe.

Maybe the better way to prevent terrorism is actually using soft power and foster human rights and equal rights while incentivizing peace, instead of all the perverse incentives to preserve longstanding issues that keep Palestinians and Israelis separated as peoples.

The severe scale of the crisis requires a sustainable solution that avoids further conflict or worse. Who is standing up for the lives of Palestinians? And must show constraint with making false claims of antisemitism that are used to excuse and shield Israel from any accountability.

Am reminded of the lyrics from a Tracy Chapman song:

But now you can’t believe
What you're told
You can't believe what you hear
The speeches of the politicians
Ring untrue & insincere
You can't believe what you read
You can't believe what's said
They count the targets & the bombs
But do not count the dead

It is way past time to bring an end to “forever” wars and addictions to blast, fire and fragmentation – and pursue long-term, persistent, peace-driven diplomatic solutions instead. Otherwise there is a risk of a far greater military conflict and conflagration.

Once again call me a dreamer, but I look forward to the day when there are no more wars to fight, no more dystopian nightmares owning or haunting us, no conflicts that break out, no pathological power to resist, and where real peace reigns supreme – leaving space for the highest and best in humanity to flourish and flower.

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PS from the RootsAction Education Fund:

Whether or not the rare whistleblowers at places like the NSA go to prison, a key official goal is to drive them close to the poverty line for the rest of their lives, deprived of pensions and rendered unemployable for all but low-paid jobs.

While Thomas Drake remains deeply in financial debt, we are in his debt -- morally, politically and ethically. We owe him so much because he has stood up for civil liberties and human decency. Let’s help repay that debt.

Living in what is supposed to be a democracy, we get vital information because of the courage of whistleblowers.

You can make a tax-deductible contribution in support of Tom Drake.

Thank you!

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Background:
>>  Jane Mayer, The New Yorker: Thomas Drake -- "The Secret Sharer"
>>  George Croner, Lawfare: “The FISA Section 702 Debate Intensifies”
>>  Charlie Savage, New York Times: “Security Agencies and Congress Brace for Fight Over Expiring Surveillance Law”
>>  Brookings: “A conversation with Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen on the reauthorization of FISA Section 702”
>>  Jesselyn Radack, The New York Times: “Whistleblowers Deserve Protection Not Prison”