数十名前国家安全官员——包括曾在唐纳德·特朗普总统手下任职的几名官员——签署了一封公开信，赞扬特朗普-乌克兰丑闻中第一个站出来要求保护他们的告密者。
由90名前国家安全官员签署消息一传出，信就来了此案中至少还有一名告密者站出来，试图表明对特朗普7月25日电话的担忧。特朗普在电话中要求乌克兰总统沃洛迪米尔·泽兰斯基调查2020年民主党竞争对手乔·拜登和他的儿子亨特。
这封由包括前中情局局长约翰·布伦南和前国家情报局局长詹姆斯·克拉珀在内的知名官员签名的信称:“虽然告密者的身份并不公开，但我们知道他或她是美国政府的雇员。”。“因此，根据法律，他或她有权利——实际上也有责任——通过适当的渠道公布严重不当行为的迹象。”
“这正是这个告密者所做的；我们赞扬举报者不仅履行了这一责任，而且准确地利用了联邦法律提供的渠道来提出这种担忧，”它继续说道。
信的署名者呼吁保护举报者，称赞他们的努力，声称“一个负责任的举报者通过确保对严重的不当行为进行调查和处理，使所有美国人更加安全，从而推进我们毕生致力于的国家安全事业。”
“更重要的是，”他们说，“作为一个负责任的告密者意味着，根据法律，一个人受到保护，免受某些恶劣形式的报复。”
国家安全专家表示:“无论对举报者投诉中讨论的问题有什么看法，所有美国人都应该团结一致，要求我们政府的所有部门和媒体的所有渠道保护这个举报者及其身份。”。“简单地说，他或她已经做了我们法律要求的事情；现在他或她应该得到我们的保护。”
这封信是由过去共和党和民主党政府的几十名前国家安全高级官员签署的。
除了布伦南和克拉珀在奥巴马和布什政府期间担任过不同的职务外，这封信还由前国防部长查克·哈格尔和前国家安全委员会反恐高级主任贾韦德·阿里以及其他一些前国防部、国务院和中央情报局官员签署。
一些签名者甚至在特朗普政府任职，包括罗伯塔·雅各布森(Roberta Jacobson)，她曾担任美国驻墨西哥大使，直到2018年5月辞职。
在接受采访时新闻周刊，雅各布森在20世纪80年代末开始为美国政府工作，是国务院情报和研究局的情报分析师。她说，在发现自己无法继续捍卫政府政策后，她已经与特朗普政府分道扬镳。
“这是...无法继续为政策辩护是因为，第一，我根本不同意它，第二，因为我没有得到工具，也没有以大使应该帮助制定和执行该政策的方式被包括进来，”她说。
作为一名前情报分析师，雅各布森表示，她非常同意周日公开信的主旨，并坚称继续保护告密者至关重要。
雅各布森说:“我们情报研究局和我在情报界的同事坚信的一件事是我们独立于公共政策。”。“你必须能够像你看到的那样自由书写情报，不受政策世界的压力。”
她说:“我非常强烈地感觉到，那些职业公务员在做报告时受到保护。
特朗普就职前，雅各布森表示，她可能会惊讶地看到，总统对举报者的最初报告做出了如此反应，总统指责匿名人士，并要求知道他们的身份。然而，“不幸的是，目前在这位总统的领导下，我并不特别惊讶，”她说。
尽管雅各布森表示，她担心特朗普对举报者的一再咆哮可能会产生“严重的寒蝉效应”，并阻止未来的举报者站出来，但这位前驻墨西哥大使表示，看到特朗普-乌克兰案中出现第二名举报者令人鼓舞。
她说:“一方面，我认为这很可能会产生严重的寒蝉效应，这是极其危险的，如果人们不再觉得他们可以提出投诉，因为他们得不到保护，因为他们会被认出来，因为他们只是在做他们的工作，他们的生活就会变得很糟糕。”。
“另一方面，我会说这些情况也会产生相反的效果。雅各布森说:“即使政府可能对举报者或其他人施加压力，他们也可以鼓励其他举报者，他们最终会觉得自己并不孤单。”。“有报道称，在这个问题上，现在不止一个告密者，这可能就是事实。”
雅各布森说，最终，“人们必须尽可能努力凭直觉去做正确的事情”，她说，这就是本案中的举报者似乎在做的事情。
这位前情报分析师表示，那些和特朗普一起谴责那些试图标记潜在不当行为的人的人应该“明白，今天，这可能是一个他们不同意或认为他们没有太多联系的问题上的告密者，但明天很可能是一个向他们透露一些非常重要的事情的人。”
“你不能挑问题，”她说。“因为，正如我所说的，今天，它可能不是你非常关心的事情，但明天，它可能会直接影响你的生计或你家人的健康和安全。”
除了雅各布森之外，特朗普政府的其他一些官员也在信上签了名，包括安德烈·肯德尔-泰勒(Andrea Kendall-Taylor)，他在2018年7月辞职前是俄罗斯和欧亚地区的副国家情报官员，詹姆斯·尼隆(James Nealon)在2018年2月因政府移民政策辞职前一直担任国土安全部国际事务助理秘书。
虽然这封信是为了支持特朗普-乌克兰丑闻中第一个站出来的告密者而签署的，但我们现在知道至少有两名告密者卷入了此案。
律师安德鲁·巴卡和马克·扎伊德周日透露，他们的公司指南针·罗斯代表“多名举报者”，与特朗普7月份致电泽伦斯基的报道有关。
扎伊德告诉美国广播公司新闻的首席主播乔治·斯特凡诺普洛斯，第二个人也被描述为情报官员，他对最初投诉中的一些指控有第一手的了解。
尽管面临弹劾调查，特朗普仍坚称自己无罪，称举报者的投诉“完全不准确”
这篇文章更新了罗伯塔·雅各布森(Roberta Jacobson)的声明，罗伯塔·雅各布森在2018年5月辞职前曾在特朗普政府下担任美国驻墨西哥大使，并签署了公开信。
DONALD TRUMP'S OWN FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIALS SIGN OPEN LETTER SAYING UKRAINE WHISTLEBLOWER DID NOTHING WRONG AND DESERVES PROTECTION
Dozens of former national security officials—including several who once served under President Donald Trump—have signed an open letter praising the first whistleblower to come forward in the Trump-Ukraine scandal and demanding their protection.
Signed by 90 former national security officials, the letter came as news broke that at least one other whistleblower had come forward in the case, seeking to flag concerns around Trump's July 25 phone call, in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
"While the identity of the whistleblower is not publicly known, we do know that he or she is an employee of the U.S. Government," the letter, signed by prominent officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, states. "As such, he or she has by law the right—and indeed the responsibility—to make known, through appropriate channels, indications of serious wrongdoing."
"That is precisely what this whistleblower did; and we applaud the whistleblower not only for living up to that responsibility but also for using precisely the channels made available by federal law for raising such concerns," it continues.
Calling for the whistleblower's protection, the letter's signatories praised their efforts, asserting that "a responsible whistleblower makes all Americans safer by ensuring that serious wrongdoing can be investigated and addressed, thus advancing the cause of national security to which we have devoted our careers."
"What's more," they said, "being a responsible whistleblower means that, by law, one is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation."
"Whatever one's view of the matters discussed in the whistleblower's complaint, all Americans should be united in demanding that all branches of our government and all outlets of our media protect this whistleblower and his or her identity," the national security experts said. "Simply put, he or she has done what our law demands; now he or she deserves our protection."
The letter was signed by scores of former top national security officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations of the past.
In addition to Brennan and Clapper, who had served in different roles under both the Obama and Bush administrations, the letter was also signed by former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and former Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council Javed Ali, along with a number of other former Defense Department, State Department and CIA officials.
Some of the signatories had even worked under the Trump administration, including Roberta Jacobson, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico until she resigned in May 2018.
In an interview with Newsweek, Jacobson, who had started out working for the U.S. government as an intelligence analyst in the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the late 1980s, said she had parted ways with the Trump administration after finding herself unable to continue defending the government's policies.
"It was a combination of... the inability to continue to defend policy because, one, I fundamentally disagreed with it, but number two, because I was not being given the tools nor included in a way that an ambassador should be to help make and carry out that policy," she said.
As a former intelligence analyst, Jacobson said she could not agree more with the message driving Sunday's open letter, asserting that it was vital for whistleblowers to continue to be protected.
"One of the things that we in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and my colleagues across the intelligence community believed in strongly was our independence from public policy," Jacobson said. "You had to be able to be free to write intelligence as you saw, free form pressures in the policy world."
"I feel very strongly about those people career public servants being protected when they do their job by making those reports," she said.
Before Trump took office, Jacobson said she might have been surprised to see a president react the way that the U.S. leader has to the whistleblower's initial report, with the president railing against the anonymous individual and demanding to know their identity. However, "currently, under this president, unfortunately, I'm not particularly surprised," she said.
While Jacobson said she feared that Trump's repeated rants against the whistleblower could have a "severe chilling effect," and discourage future whistleblowers to come forward, the former ambassador to Mexico said it was encouraging to see a second whistleblower coming forward in the Trump-Ukraine case.
"On the one hand, I think it could very well have a severe chilling effect and that's incredibly dangerous, if people no longer feel they can come forward with complaints because they won't be protected, because they'll be identified, because their lives will be made hellish by them just doing their jobs," she said.
"On the other hand, I will say that these cases can also have an opposite effect. They can, even with the pressures that the administration may bring to bear on the whistleblower or others, embolden other whistleblowers, who finally feel that they're not alone," Jacobson said. "That may be the case here with the reports that there's now more than one whistleblower on this issue."
Ultimately, Jacobson said, "people have to try as hard as possible to go with their gut and do the right thing" and that is what the whistleblowers in this case, she said, appear to be doing.
Those who have joined Trump in condemning those trying to flag potential wrongdoing, the former intelligence analyst said, should "understand that, today, this might be a whistleblower on an issue with which they don't agree or with which they don't think they have much connection, but tomorrow it could well be someone who reveals something of huge importance to them."
"You can't cherry-pick the issues," she said. "Because, as I say, today, it may not be something you care about that much but tomorrow it could be something that directly affects your livelihood or the health and safety of your family."
In addition to Jacobson, a number of other officials who served under the Trump administration have signed their names on to the letter, including Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who was a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia until resigning in July 2018 and James Nealon, who served as the assistant secretary for international engagement at the Department of Homeland Security until he resigned in February 2018 over the government's immigration policies.
While the letter was signed in support of the first whistleblower to come forward in the Trump-Ukraine scandal, we now know there are at least two whistleblowers involved in the case.
Attorneys Andrew Bakaj and Mark Zaid revealed on Sunday that their firm, Compass Rose, was representing "multiple whistleblowers" in connection to the report flagging concerns over Trump's July call with Zelenskiy.
Zaid told ABC News' Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that the second person, who was also described as an intelligence official, had first-hand knowledge of some of the allegations made in the original complaint.Despite facing an impeachment inquiry, Trump has maintained his innocence, calling the whistleblower complaint "totally inaccurate."
This article has been updated with statements from Roberta Jacobson, who served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico under the Trump administration before resigning in May 2018 and who signed the open letter.
