(Posted September 26, 2005)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Two former government officials who disagreed with the U.S. government's decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq will give a talk at Juniata College on "Dare to Tell the Truth" at 7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 30 in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The event is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by The Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies as part of its "Dissent and Democracy" lecture series.

The lecture will be given by Jesselyn Radack, a whistleblower in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, and Ann Wright, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who last served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia.

Radack, a former Professional Responsibility Adviser for the U.S. Department of Justice, raised objections to the questioning of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" without a lawyer present. Her departmental memos about her objections were not turned over for Lindh's criminal case and she was accused of revealing misconduct by Department of Justice officials.

After revealing the misconduct, Radack was forced out of the Justice Department, fired from her next job at a private law firm and placed under criminal investigation. She also was put on the Department of Homeland Security's "No Fly" list. The criminal charges against her were dismissed in February 2005.

She currently teaches professional responsibility in the Washington, D.C. area and works with the American Bar Association Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants and serves on the ethics committee for the District of Columbia Bar Association.

Wright resigned from the Foreign Service in 2003, citing her disagreement with the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, as well as disagreements over Israel-Palestine policy and the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States.

Wright's diplomacy career was extensive. She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served in embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan. She received the U.S. State Department's Award for Heroism during the evacuation of the embassy during civil war in Sierra Leone. She also served in Somalia, and in embassies in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada and Nicaragua.

Before entering the Foreign Service she was a career U.S. Army officer. She earned a master's degree and law degree from the University of Arkansas and earned a master's degree in national security affairs from the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Most recently, she stayed 26 days at Camp Casey, the temporary protest site founded by Cindy Sheehan outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.