Jesselyn Radack

Jesselyn Radack (born December 12, 1970) is a national security and human rights attorney known for her defense of whistleblowers, journalists, and hacktivists. She represents some of the most polarizing people in the United States, including National Security Agency whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Thomas Drake, each of whom was charged under the Espionage Act after exposing wrongdoing. While at the Justice Department, she disclosed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) committed an ethics violation in their interrogation of John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban" captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan) without an attorney present, and alleged that the Department of Justice attempted to suppress that information. The Lindh case was the first major terrorism prosecution after 9/11. Her experience is chronicled in her memoir, TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the "American Taliban" and the documentary Silenced. Radack has been widely published and quoted regarding whistleblower, surveillance, Internet freedom and privacy. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Legal Times, and numerous law journals. She frequently appears in the press, including all the major television networks, NPR, PBS, CNN, Al jazeera and the BBC. Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at Expose Facts. She was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's "100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013," was one of 100 worldwide figures pictured in "Justice: Faces of the Human Rights Revolution," and was a visiting Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow from 2014 to 2016. She has been honored with the “Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award" (2011), "Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence" (2009), and numerous other accolades. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and Yale Law School and began her career as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. A regular speaker before governments, universities, and public and private organizations around the globe, Radack explains the ways in which power structures suppress dissent, the value of free speech and privacy, and how ordinary people can change entire industries, agencies, and organizations.