Sam Adams Award
American annual award for intelligence professionals
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The Sam Adams Award is given annually since 2002 to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. The award is granted by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers. It is named after Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War, and takes the physical form of a "corner-brightener candlestick".[1][unreliable source?]
Ray McGovern established the Sam Adams Associates "to reward intelligence officials who demonstrated a commitment to truth and integrity, no matter the consequences."[2]
The 2012, 2013,[3] and 2014 awards were presented at the Oxford Union.[2]
Recipients
- 2002: FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley[4]
- 2003: Katharine Gun, former British intelligence (GCHQ) translator; leaked top-secret information showing illegal US activities during the push for war in Iraq.[5]
- 2004: Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator; fired after accusing FBI officials of ignoring intelligence pointing to al-Qaeda attacks against the US.[6]
- 2005: Craig Murray,[7] former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who blew the whistle on UK complicity in the Uzbek government's use of torture and involvement in extraordinary rendition.
- 2006: Samuel Provance, former U.S. Army military intelligence sergeant; spoke out about abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison.[8]
- 2007: Andrew Wilkie, retired Australian intelligence official; claimed intelligence was being exaggerated to justify Australian support for the US invasion of Iraq.[citation needed]
- 2008: Frank Grevil, Danish whistleblower; leaked classified information showing no clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.[9]
- 2009: Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and Iraq War critic.[7]
- 2010: Julian Assange, editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks.[10][11]
- 2011: Thomas Andrews Drake, former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA); Jesselyn Radack, former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice.[12]
- 2012: Thomas Fingar, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council.[1]
- 2013: Edward Snowden, leaked NSA material showing mass surveillance by the agency, sparking heated debate.[13][14]
- 2014: Chelsea Manning,[15] U.S. Army soldier convicted in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses.
- 2015: William Binney, former highly placed intelligence official with the NSA turned whistleblower.[16]
- 2016: John Kiriakou, former CIA analyst and case officer who publicly confirmed the employment of waterboarding against detainees and characterized the practice as torture.[17]
- 2017: Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who reported on the My Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and alleged misrepresentations of the 2013 Ghouta attack and the 2017 Khan Shaykhun attack.[18]
- 2018: Karen Kwiatkowski, U.S. Air Force officer who became a whistleblower, leaking material behind the film Shock and Awe.[19]
- 2019: Jeffrey Sterling, CIA whistleblower.[20]
- 2020: Annie Machon, MI5 whistleblower.[21]
- 2021: Daniel Hale, U.S. Air Force enlisted airman who became an intelligence analyst for the NSA in Afghanistan and later exposed the consequences of drone strikes.[22]
- 2022: Daniel Ellsberg, former U.S. military analyst who released the Pentagon Papers, showing that the public had been misled about the Vietnam War, to a number of newspapers in 1971.[23]
- 2024: Aaron Bushnell, senior airman in the United States Air Force who engaged in a fatal act of self-immolation in protest against United States support for Israel in the Gaza war on February 25, 2024 (posthumously awarded).[24]
- 2025: Anthony Aguilar, retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and former Green Beret officer serving as a security contractor on behalf of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), who disclosed alleged misconduct and war crimes associated with GHF operations.[25]