Tom Fingar Wins Sam Adams Award 242


The following press release is from the Oxford Union:

The Oxford Union will be hosting the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award presentation on 23 January 2013. The ceremony will feature several individuals well known in intelligence and related fields, including, via video-stream, remarks by Julian Assange, winner of the Sam Adams award in 2010.

The annual award presentation provides a rare occasion for accolades to “whistleblowers” — conscience-driven women and men willing to take risks to honor the public’s need to know.

This year’s Sam Adams recipient is Professor Thomas Fingar, who is now teaching at Stanford University. Dr. Fingar served from 2005 to 2008 as Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

In that role, Dr. Fingar oversaw preparation of the landmark 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, in which all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapon design and weaponization work in 2003. The Estimate’s key judgments were declassified and made public, and have been revalidated every year since.

Those pressing for an attack on Iran in 2008 found themselves fighting uphill. This time, thanks largely to Dr. Fingar and the professional intelligence analysts he led in 2007, intelligence analysis on Iran was fearlessly honest. A consummate intelligence professional, Fingar would not allow the NIE to be “fixed around the policy,” the damning phrase used in the famous “Downing St. Memo” of July 23, 2002 to describe the unconscionable process that served up fraudulent intelligence to “justify” war with Iraq.

We are delighted to be welcoming several previous Sam Adams awardees, including Coleen Rowley, Katharine Gun, Craig Murray, Thomas Drake, and Julian Assange (by video-stream) — as well as other Sam Adams associates from both sides of the Atlantic, including Ray McGovern, Brady Kiesling, Davdi McMichael, Elizabeth Murray, Todd Pierce and Ann Wright.

We feel that the Oxford Union, dedicated to upholding freedom of speech and providing a platform for all points of view, is a fitting venue. The traditional acceptance speech by Dr. Fingar will be followed by briefer remarks by a few previous Sam Adams awardees. They will be followed by Julian Assange who will speak for 20 minutes immediately before the Q&A, during which the audience will be invited to put questions on any topic to any of the presenters.

Assange is clearly a figure who generates controversy for reasons ranging from the allegations made against him in Sweden, to the perceived recklessness of some WikiLeaks activities. We would therefore encourage those who disagree with him, or with any of our other speakers, to participate in the Q&A session.

Last but not least, we are happy to note that Dr. Fingar, will be with us for the entire term. Professor Fingar has just begun teaching a course at the University of Oxford on global trends and transnational issues, as part of Stanford’s Bing Overseas Studies Program. He will also give guest lectures and public talks while here at Oxford (January-March 2013).

Professor Fingar holds a PhD in political science from Stanford. His most recent book is Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011).


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242 thoughts on “Tom Fingar Wins Sam Adams Award

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  • Arbed

    Oxford Union is slowly releasing segments of the Q&A session with Julian Assange after the Sam Adams awards ceremony. As some people have experienced problems with the sound on the Union’s first video, I’ll post these as tweet links, so you can watch the videos by clicking within the tweets. That sometimes helps.

    On governments’ right to keep secrets:
    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/296010805483298817

    On Assange’s formal legal status:
    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/296011623766827008

    On what information Wikileaks decides to publish:
    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/296277864762990592

    On governments and “cyberterrorism”:
    https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/296278854702620672

  • Arbed

    I should really have posted this link on this thread instead of the top page, as it’s directly relevant to the subject.

    A letter to the Guardian:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/29/assange-allies-oxford-union?INTCMP=SRCH

    “If the Guardian could “find no allies” of Julian Assange (Report, 24 January), it did not look very hard. They could be found among the appreciative audience at the Oxford Union, and in our group seated at the front…”

    Signed by:

    Ann Wright, Retired US army colonel and foreign service officer of US state department
    Ray McGovern, Retired CIA analyst
    Elizabeth Murray, Retired CIA analyst
    Coleen Rowley, Retired FBI agent
    Annie Machon, Former MI5 intelligence officer
    Thomas Drake, Former National Security Agency official
    Craig Murray, Former British ambassador
    David MacMichael, Retired CIA analyst
    Brady Kiesling, Former foreign service officer, US department of state Todd Pierce, Retired US army major, judge advocate, Guantánamo defence counsel

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