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

U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel III issued a letter of commendation to Steve T. Mackey, a former bridge manager for Metro's Silver Line extension to Dulles Airport.  According to a story in today's Washington Post, Dulles Transit Partners overruled Mackey's concerns and decided to use 11 foundations abandoned in the 1970's without testing them to determine if they could bear the weight of the planned rail bridge over Interstate 66.  Mackey reported his concerns to Scovel's office which led to federal safety intervention to obtain the testing Mackey recommended.  Mackey has since left the Dulles Transit Partners and works for an area engineering firm. Scovel's letter states, "Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public. Your actions exemplify this ethic and are a credit to you and your profession." If the Silver Line bridge had been built without testing, a latent defect could have led to catastrophic failure at a time when the bridge was under increased load -- such a a crowded train during rush hour traffic.  We add our thanks to Steve Mackey.

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Nerve gas monitors were inoperative from 2003 to 2005 at the U.S. Army's Blue Grass Army Depot, near Richmond, Kentucky. This week, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released a 2006 Army Inspector General's report that made this finding.  The failure of the monitors might never have come to light if it wasn't for Donald Van Winkle, a chemical weapons monitoring operator at Blue Grass.  After he tried and failed to get management to correct the problem, he was forced to file a complaint with the Inspector General.

In other findings, the Army's Inspector General confirmed Van Winkle's concerns that:

•  Leak detectors were improperly removed from inside the igloos holding highly lethal VX nerve gas;
• As a result, from September 2003 to August 2005 (after Van Winkle came forward), Blue Grass had no means, other than visual observation, to determine whether the odorless, colorless nerve gas was seeping from the rockets in which the agent is stored; and
• These changes were contrary to Army protocols and safety standards but only minor disciplinary action was taken against the responsible managers.

The Army resisted releasing the Inspector General's report for three years citing an ongoing criminal investigation.  Now the Army is resisting PEER's requests for information about the status of that criminal investigation.

“At Blue Grass, the Army was flying blind in protecting its chemical weapons stockpile,” stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein on the organization's web page. “Incredibly, the Army’s attitude appears to be that since no workers or civilians were killed then no harm no foul.”

 

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Last week, I blogged about the recent critical GAO report which found that Congress and the Administration have not done enough to implement oversight of the $700 corporate bailout bill that was passed in October. Well, after weeks of foot-dragging, the Senate has finally voted to appoint former New York Prosecutor Neil Barofsky to the position of Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) -- the program responsible for doling out all of that money.
 

This is a good first step, but much more needs to be done. As this exceptional article in the Washington Post reports, IG's serve at the pleasure of the president, and some have been notoriously loyal to the administration. Further, the IG will not be effective unless he can get credible information about illegal or wasteful spending from employee whistleblowers who can speak up without fear of retaliation. That's why the most important piece of this, and any oversight effort, is a strong whistleblower law. Congress should pass one immediately.

DIGG this article here

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This morning, the AP released a story detailing the failure of the Department of Defense Inspector General's (DoD IG) office to perform it's two essential functions: (a) protect military whistleblowers and (b)investigate their claims. As one whistleblower in the story says: "They are supposed to serve as the conscience of the Department of Defense. And they're not." The AP used Freedom of Information Act Requests and interviews with whistleblowers and advocates to determine multiple shortcomings:

 

• Although DoD IG received over 3,000 whistleblower claims over the past six years, it found no wrongdoing by the military over 90% of the time.

• 73% of the cases were closed after only a "preliminary review."
   
• A confidential survey of the workers and managers in DoD IG found that the workforce was "demoralized and ambivalent." and that one-third of the employees there were described as "disaffected.

Revalations of this kind would be of concern in any agency or area of government, but this story is particularly worrisome. We know that the men and women serving our country in the military witness countless acts of fraud, waste, abuse, and much worse (think Abu Ghraib). The size of the Defense Budget, and the volume of lucrative government contracts to private corporations in recent years (see Bunny Greenhouse), has increased the need for oversight and whistleblower protection for military employees. Further, military whistleblowers are often more vulnerable to retaliation, and they often have no recourse whatsoever if their claim is rejected by the DoD IG.

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