[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hree months ago, a former United States Air Force linguist named Reality Winner became the first person to be prosecuted by the Trump administration on charges of leaking classified information. She pleaded guilty. The 26-year-old had been working as a contractor for the National Security Agency when she obtained a copy of a report that described hacks by a Russian intelligence service against local election officials and a company that sold software related to voter registration.
At a detention hearing last year, the prosecutor, Jennifer G. Solari, said Ms. Winner had been “mad about some things she had seen in the media, and she wanted to set the facts right.” For her part, Winner told Chief Judge J. Randall Hall: “All of my actions I did willfully, meaning I did so of my own free will.” Her mother tearfully told reporters her daughter “would not have decided to plead guilty if she wasn’t ready to accept the consequences and to accept responsibility.”
For most of American history, people accused of leaking to the news media were not prosecuted. In the cases that have come up during the 21st century, most convicted defendants were sentenced to one to three and a half years.
This week the Saint Lucia Chamber of Commerce published its Executive Director’s Review of the Current Economic Environment. One particular item arrested my attention. Its heading posed the question: Are We Eroding Confidence in Doing Business With the Government of Saint Lucia? Perhaps I’d better reproduce precisely what followed: “Surely a disturbing issue is the breach of confidentiality within the public and private sectors. Employees are now flippantly leaking documents of a private nature, regularly, without concern for the ramifications. The effect on business people’s confidence, foreign and local, as to respect of privacy when doing business in Saint Lucia is now real. [Possible concerns]: ‘Will my competitor soon know my every business detail once I do business with the government of Saint Lucia? Will my personal and business banking information make its way to social media?’ The leaders of our nation, on both sides, need to speak out and bring this practice to a stop or we will all pay the price.”
I’ve been able to confirm that many local private-sector businesses require employees to sign confidentiality agreements. As for public servants, their employment is dependent on their taking an Oath of Secrecy. Which brings us to the so-called National Conservation Authority scandal that impacted the political atmosphere back in December 2004, following a reference to documented matters by TV host Claudius Francis, an avowed supporter of all things Labour Party. He started out like this: “You can tell by my demeanor that I am not in my customary effervescent mood.” He went on to acknowledge that he had heard, “like most Saint Lucians,” certain allegations involving the general manager of the National Conservation Authority, and yes, he said, it was true that he had in his possession certain related documents.
A short time later, at his party’s convention starring U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the prime minister and SLP leader Kenny Anthony referenced the NCA matter that Francis had triggered. Typically, he said: “They want us to hate ourselves. There is an assault on my leadership and integrity . . . When allegations surface we have a duty to investigate. But it is only afterward that we can pass judgment. The Labour Party must never be a sanctuary for corrupt elements.”
Several days earlier, under public pressure, the minister with responsibility for the NCA—whose dirty linen a front-line party member had exposed to public scrutiny—had promised a full-scale inquiry into the management of the authority going back to 2001: “My attention has been drawn to repeated media allegations concerning the administration of the NCA, in particular the stewardship of its general manager. The undermining of public confidence in the affairs of the NCA is not in the national interest and should not be encouraged.”
And Menissa Rambally was true to her word. But while her inquiry confirmed much of what Claudius Francis had earlier hinted at, it generated more questions never answered. I’ve revisited the NCA debacle to illustrate the fact that the official attitude to leaks depends on the party in office. But while some reporters would be high and dry if not for leaks, we also have a responsibility to use information, however obtained, only in the best interests of the public. Whistle-blowers must keep in mind the national interest. I’ve been a journalist for most of my working life and I’m not about to suggest laws should be enacted that would make the job of reporting more difficult than already it is. On the other hand, for our own sake we must be careful how we use information, however received, whether in relation to public or private entities.
I recall my 1997 story centered on a would-be foreign investor named Shaun Murphy—published in the STAR soon after Kenny Anthony started his first term as this country’s prime minister. Before putting one word to paper, I spent several days tracking down my quarry and offering him the opportunity to refute swirling rumors concerning his business activities here, some of which had been leaked to another paper. I also took the precaution of challenging countless times what my own informants had assured me was true. Murphy’s local bank was most cooperative after I agreed not to publish details that, though absolutely correct, would nevertheless negatively impact the bank’s image in the eyes of customers. The bank’s manager assured me that before he was accepted as a client, Murphy’s background had been thoroughly investigated. Several agencies, including the FBI and Interpol had given him a clean bill of health, never mind the already published contrary reports.
In its own political interests the Kenny Anthony administration, through the day’s British representative, persuaded Murphy to leave the island “voluntarily”—or face deportation. Just days after he relocated to St Vincent & the Grenadines, having abandoned his brand-new home at Cap Estate, Murphy was officially declared persona non grata via the Saint Lucia Gazette. It later emerged that the Kenny Anthony government had confused him with another Shaun Murphy of The Laundrymen, a book by Jeffrey Robinson—self-described as “the world’s leading writer on financial crime.” According to the author, the Shaun Murphy of his story had ratted on fellow drug dealers in Miami to the authorities; had finally been taken into the Witness Protection Program and handed life afresh, with a brand new name. Why then would he come to Saint Lucia to do business under his original name? Only Kenny Anthony (who received Murphy at his office) and his paranoid advisors know.
Three or four years earlier, when he was director of the Caribbean Justice Improvement Project, Kenny Anthony had stated in an essay entitled Public Officers: Confidentiality and Freedom of Speech: “Whatever the source of the duty, the obligation to maintain the confidentiality of certain information constitutes an infringement on free speech.” While acknowledging sanctioned incursions into the so-called right to free speech, the notion was “so strong that curtailment in the exercise of free expression requires justification by reference to some higher principle.” He cited Lord Goff’s “the principle of confidentiality only applies to information to the extent that it is confidential.” Which Kenny Anthony countered with: “If that was the law, then one might argue that there is no need for laws to prevent whistle-blowing in the Commonwealth Caribbean, since there are no secrets to these islands.” Oh, but that was long before Grynberg had become a household word in Saint Lucia!
The prime minister seemed to have had a change of heart at the time of the NCA debacle, when he appeared as my guest on TALK and admitted he had actually considered enacting legislation to discourage whistle-blowing but had been “otherwise advised.” The Chamber’s warning that the flippant leaking of private documents may already be discouraging local and foreign business brings to mind a ghost from the not so distant past: Section 361. But that’s for another show!
