Whistleblower Protection Blog : Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund : Whistleblower Protection, Fraud Claims : Washington DC

Next Tuesday, October 5, at 9:00 p.m., many public television stations will broadcast The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. It is a 90-minute documentary about Daniel Ellsberg's life, his education and rise in the world of a secret government-funded think-tank, and the thinking that brought him to release the classified Pentagon Papers. I had the opportunity to see this film earlier this year. It is a dramatic story of conscience versus government power, and I recommend it. Here is a link to the trailer. Here is a link to a live chat with Daniel Ellsberg and the filmmakers on October 6 at 2:00 pm eastern. Below is the description of the film by the producers at PBS' Point-of-View:

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a leading Vietnam War strategist, concludes that America's role in the war is based on decades of lies. He leaks 7,000 pages of top-secret documents to The New York Times, a daring act of conscience that leads directly to Watergate, President Nixon's resignation and the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg and a who's-who of Vietnam-era movers and shakers give a riveting account of those world-changing events in POV's The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers by award-winning filmmakers Judith Ehrlich (The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It) and Rick Goldsmith (Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press). A co-production of ITVS in association with American Documentary/POV.
 

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Last April, I submitted a report to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the U.S. State Department about how U.S. law fails to give whistleblowers customary remedies for their retaliation claims. My report listed the international treaties that required the United States to protect whistleblowers. It listed specific cases in which whistleblowers' rights had been denied, including one case, Bradley Birkenfeld, in which the whistleblower was currently imprisoned. It also decried the pitiful state of the law when it comes to protecting federal employees who blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse. I called on the State Department to answer to the United Nations for this failure to give whistleblowers the same rights that victims of auto accidents have.

Last month, the State Department issued its report to the United Nations under its Universal Periodic Review (UPR). That report makes no mention of whistleblower rights.  It does not even include the word, "transparency." I called on the State Department to answer how the limits on political asylum (such as requiring applications to be filed in English within one year of entry to the US) comported with the duty to provide asylum to international whistleblowers seeking refuge here.  No mention of that either. The UPR process provides for direct questioning of U.S. representatives in November. Perhaps those representatives will face questions about how whistleblowers here get less rights that other victims of wrongful conduct, and why the U.S. has not passed laws to assure whistleblowers our customary rights and remedies.

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Harper's Magazine is publishing a report by Scott Horton on yet another prosecution for releasing information. Called "Obama's War on Whistleblowers," the article focuses on the prosecution of Steven Kim, a scholar of North Korea’s nuclear program. Since Kim did consulting work for the State Department, the prosecution contends he should not have spoken to Fox News about how the North Koreans were likely to react to proposed sanctions. Former prosecutor and Johns Hopkins professor Ruth Wedgwood told Horton that the Fox News report “contains completely unremarkable observations about what a country would do if it was sanctioned for its poor behavior. These kinds of observations were well known to anyone paying attention to public sources and ought not be the basis for making someone a federal felon.” Assistant Attorney General David Kris says the charges are a “warning to anyone who is entrusted with sensitive national security information and would consider compromising it.” Those who are following the prosecutions of Thomas Drake and Bradley Manning, and the failure to grant clemency to Brad Birkenfeld, may see a pattern. Horton notes that Obama, as a lawyer, represented a whistleblower.  As a candidate, Obama pledged to “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government.” Horton complains that the prosecution of Kim will effectively "censor public debate about vital facts relating to international affairs and possibly to war. *** [W]e’re supposed to be kept ignorant while the national-security state cares for us all."

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