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

In the 1990's Dr. Whitehurst blew the whistle on scientific abuses in the FBI crime lab.  He won his cases and as a result, President Clinton signed an order protecting FBI agents who blow the whistle.  The current Senate bill repeals the Clinton order and the law it was based on.  It will result in the dismissal of numerous pending whistleblower cases, including that of FBI Counterterrorism Unit Chief Bassem Youssef.
 
Dr. Whitehurst wrote:
 
"Like most Americans I was looking forward to seeing President Obama and Congress fulfill their promise to strengthen these whistleblower rights that protect Americans.  However, I was horrified to discover that the Senate whistleblower bill does not do this.  For national security whistleblowers it does the exact opposite.  S. 372 repeals the FBI whistleblower protections that I sacrificed my career for."

Dr. Whitehurst's letter comes shortly after two other FBI whistleblowers, Jane Turner and Sibel Edmonds, issued a similar plea to fix the Senate bill.

Although many provisions of the bill enhance whistleblower protections, there are many "poison pills" that must be corrected, including these (see links to Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs report accompanying S. 372):

*Meryl Grenadier (NWC fellow) contributed to this posting.

Friedman shares a conversation he had with reporter Elizabeth Chouldjian, freelancing for Armenian Horizons TV.  Chouldjian says that Schmidt's attorney, Bruce Fein "was a Board member of the Turkish Coalition of America, Turkish American Legal Defense Fund and legal counsel for Assembly of Turkish American Associations."  Chouldjian adds that Fein has initiated other legal actions intended to suppress information about the Armenian Genocide. Fein did not stay long enough after the deposition to answer Chouldjian's follow-up questions.

In a "bombshell" revelation, The Brad Blog reports that Edmonds provided a new revelation about the demise of Brewster Jennigs & Associates, the CIA front company that employed outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. Edmonds said that the CIA shut down Brewster Jennings in the summer of 2001 (two years before Robert Novak outed Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband's criticism of President Bush).  Friedman reports that the American Turkish Council was about to hire Brewster Jennings when the State Department's Marc Grossman found out.  He tipped off a suspect of an FBI counterintelligence investigation.  According to The Brad Blog's reporting, the FBI reported the disclosure to the CIA which then promptly shut down Brewster Jennings -- long before Robert Novak's article revealed Plame's identity as a CIA agent.

Edmonds' attorney, Michael D. Kohn (President of the National Whistleblowers Center) said that he was pleased government attorneys refrained from intervening in the legal case, and allowed the deposition to proceed.  He said he hopes that the video tape of the deposition can be released soon.  Also, The Brad Blog's reference to Rep. Dick Gephardt is in error to the extent it indicates that he was implicated in any wrongdoing.

This case well exemplifies the strategic risk of trying to use the legal system to sue or punish someone for what they say.  Schmidt, through her attorney Fein, sued Krikorian for saying that Schmidt accepted "blood money" from Turkish interests. With the hearing before the Ohio Elections Commission now looming, the facts are spilling out.  Schmidt and Fein have now ramped up the very information they sought to supress.

You can also find coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition on Talking Points Memo.