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

Today we mourn the passing of attorney Leonard I. Weinglass who died yesterday on his 78th birthday. Weinglass defended Anthony Russo, Daniel Ellsberg's co-defendant in the Pentagon Papers case. The 1973 case ended with the dismissal of all charges on grounds of government misconduct. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1958, Weinglass served as a Captain, Judge Advocate, in the United States Air Force. Some of his other famous clients included Angela Davis, Amy Carter and Mumia Abu-Jamal (who is still confined to Pennsylvania's death row).

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During this week's trip to Latin America, President Barack Obama has hit on a theme about the universal nature of human rights. Here is a paragraph from his speech on Sunday in Brazil:

But we also know that there’s certain aspirations shared by every human being: We all seek to be free. We all seek to be heard. We all yearn to live without fear or discrimination. We all yearn to choose how we are governed. And we all want to shape our own destiny. These are not American ideals or Brazilian ideals. These are not Western ideals. These are universal rights, and we must support them everywhere.

He said something similar yesterday in Chile:

And despite this region’s democratic progress, stark inequalities endure. In political and economic power that is too often concentrated in the hands of the few, instead of serving the many. In the corruption that too often still stifles economic growth and development, innovation and entrepreneurship. And in some leaders who cling to bankrupt ideologies to justify their own power and who seek to silence their opponents because those opponents have the audacity to demand their universal rights.

In July 2009, I blogged about President Obama's speech in Ghana: "We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don't, and that is exactly what America will do."

I suggest that the best way to advance universal rights abroad is to live by them at home. Recall that in the previous Congress, President Obama put forward a version of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that would actually take away the existing legal protections for federal employees that raise concerns deemed to be minor or inadvertent. As to living without fear of discrimination or corruption, his bill would have divided federal employees so that national security workers would be dependent for their protection on the agency heads in charge of the operations about which concerns might be raised.

We might also remember that 600,000 U.S. citizens do not have the power to choose how they are governed because they happen to live in the District of Columbia. They cannot change their local constitution because an act of Congress sets out how they are governed. They have no representation in that Congress which imposes taxes they must pay. They cannot impose taxes on out-of-staters who work in their District (including me), and any laws their Council passes might be overturned by Congress.

It is good that the international flow of ideas includes what rights should be "universal." This call would ring less hollow if we saw those espousing them doing more to accomplish them in their home jurisdictions. I submitted a report to the United National Universal Period Review about ways in which U.S. laws fall short of international treaty standards for whistleblower protections. The U.S. Department of State chose not to answer it.

Whistleblowers everywhere will benefit if we can call our leaders to account for their treatment of whistleblowers, here and abroad. Instead of trying to pick specks out of the eyes of other countries, I invite President Obama to join with me in looking for the logs in our own.

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An article published in the San Francisco Examiner by Barbara Hollingsworth explains why you should be concerned about the Senate Intelligence Committee's plan to include a provision in the Intelligence Authorization Bill that will "require federal employees working at intelligence agencies to sign a contract stipulating that they would forfeit their federal pensions if they were caught leaking even non-classified information to the press, outside groups like Wikileaks, or even Congress." The provision will give the "head of each intelligence agency broad discretionary power to decide what a 'leak' is - which could be defined as complaints about waste, fraud and abuse - or even risks to public safety."

Those familiar with whistleblowers know that federal employees who have the courage to speak out about misconduct and violations of law are often wrongfully accused of leaking information in retaliation for speaking the truth. This provision will now allow intelligence agencies to take it one step farther and strip an employee of his or her hard-earned pension if they are accused of leaking information. The chilling effect on federal employees will be immense. They already risk their careers to blow the whistle and have little, if any, legal remedies for getting their jobs back. Now they will be risking their pensions as well.

We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. Please TAKE ACTION and tell the Senate to remove this harmful language from the Intelligence Authorization Bill.

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The Big Uneasy is a new feature documentary movie by Harry Shearer. It responds to those (including President Obama) who say that New Orleans was the victim of a terrible natural disaster. That response:  No. New Orleans could have handled Hurricane Katrina if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had not wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in projects that ruined wetlands, pushed salt water inland where it degraded the natural plant growth, and installed levies and pumps that it knew would fail. When Hurricane Katrina rolled over New Orleans in 2005, it was a category 3 hurricane -- the type one should expect every few decades. The 2005 flooding of New Orleans was a man-made disaster and the greatest failure of civil engineering in American history.

Last night, the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland, featured The Big Uneasy. Harry Shearer, USACE whistleblower Maria Garzino (left in photo) and Danielle Brian (center) of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) were present to explain the context of the film and answer some questions. "I hope you enjoy being angry," Shearer said when introducing the film. Shearer explained that he felt compelled to make this film when he heard President Obama speak during his first trip to New Orleans as President. When Obama said that Hurricane Katrina was a "natural disaster," Shearer knew that his blogging (on the Huffington Post) and radio show (Le Show, available as a free podcast) were not enough to get the truth out. The public was unaware of USACE's role in causing this man-made disaster. This is why, in Shearer's view, the President could get away with "pandering to ignorance." To me, The Big Uneasy is an example of answering bad speech with more good speech. Harry Shearer uses his extensive knowledge of New Orleans, his show business connections, and his personal funds to present a clear picture of what really happened.

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Tomorrow, March 15th, in a "closed" mark-up at 2:30 pm EST, the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee plan to slip into an appropriations bill a provision that will give the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the heads of other intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and NSA, the power to strip whistleblowers of their pensions. The provision empowers intelligence agency bureaucrats to strip whistleblowers of their hard-earned pensions, simply by accusing them of leaking classified information.

This provision is so dangerous because intelligence agencies often retaliate against whistleblowers by accusing of them of leaking information. For example, prominent whistleblower Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who blew the whistle on forensic fraud and misconduct at the FBI crime lab, was falsely accused of leaking information.

The government also retroactively classifies information as way of targeting whistleblowers. For example, in the case of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, who blew the whistle on national security breaches in the FBI's translation division, the FBI retroactively marked as classified information about her allegations long after the same information had been publicly released by the FBI.

The Obama administration's recent announcement targeting whistleblowers as part of its campaign to prevent leaks to the news media and Wikileaks makes situations such as Dr. Whitehurst and Ms. Edmonds more likely to occur.

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“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” 

These words are enshrined in our Bill of Rights in the 8^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They apply to every American. They apply to Private First Class Bradley Manning.

Private Manning is a twenty-one year old solider accused of leaking confidential information to the news media via WikiLeaks. He has been arrested and held in isolation and solitary confinement for approximately eight months at a military brig in Quantico, Virginia. 

He is being treated worse than the most hardened criminal.  

Whenever our constitutional liberties are violated, every American’s freedom is threatened. While some have already argued that Private Manning committed treason and should be executed and the government has charged Manning with serious crimes for leaking classified information, no trial has been held. Regardless of your views as to what Private Manning did, under our constitutional system the following rights apply:

First, he is innocent until proven guilty.

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In April 2009, the Department of Justice (DOJ) served a subpoena on New York Times reporter James Risen. DOJ wants to know his source for a story he published in his book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. The book describes a horribly botched CIA effort to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program. DOJ's issued an earlier subpoena during the Bush administration. That administration wisely abandoned the subpoena. However, according to Glenn Greenwald (writing in Salon.com), the revitalization of the subpoena by the Obama administration was “but one of many steps taken to dramatically expand the war on whistleblowers being waged by the current President” although he ran on a platform of protecting whistleblowers.

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