Whistleblowers Charge Retaliation; More Protections Sought
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t Report, Tuesday 22 May 2007

Career federal employees who report waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in government agencies are routinely subjected to career-ending retaliation, humiliation and legal costs - despite laws that are supposed to protect them, and repeated assurances from the White House, many government agencies and Congress that there is zero tolerance for retaliation.

These are some conclusions of public interest organizations that monitor the federal bureaucracy. They say the incidence of retaliation has increased exponentially during the administration of President George W. Bush, and they are calling on Congress to strengthen legal protections for whistleblowers.

As more than 40 public interest groups marked "Washington Whistleblowers Week" - a weeklong gathering of whistleblowers from throughout the country in Washington, DC, to share their stories with Congress and the public - Joan Claybrook, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, said, "Whistleblowers are crucial to the health of democracy and need stronger protections from Congress against retaliation."

Some victims of retaliation for whistleblowing are well-known. Perhaps the most highly publicized is Sibel Edmonds. Ms. Edmonds began working for the FBI shortly after the September 11 attacks, translating top-secret documents pertaining to suspected terrorists. She was fired in the spring of 2002 after reporting concerns about sabotage, intimidation, corruption and incompetence to superiors. The Department of Justice inspector general agreed with Edmonds's charges.

But in October 2002, at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft imposed a gag order on Edmonds, citing possible damage to diplomatic relations or national security. Edmonds sued the FBI, but the government invoked the so-called "state secrets privilege" - a previously rarely used legal maneuver that has been used numerous times during the Bush administration. Edmunds appealed her case all the way to the Supreme Court. But the high court agreed with lower courts that trying her case would compromise "state secrets." Edmonds organized an advocacy group, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, to lobby for greater protections for employees in agencies dealing with national security (www.nswbc.org/).

Other whistleblowers who have paid a high price for coming forward are less well-known.
For example:
Bunnatine H. "Bunny" Greenhouse, senior contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers, who objected - first, internally, then publicly - to a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq. She was removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of "poor performance reviews." But Green says the performance review "was conducted by the very subjects" of her allegations. Greenhouse went public with her concerns over the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the Army Corps of Engineers without competition. Previously, her complaints within the agency having been ignored, she had started giving interviews to national publications, and she testified before a Democrat-sponsored Capitol Hill event on contracting in Iraq.

Army Specialist Samuel Provance said he was demoted and humiliated after telling a general investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal that senior officers had covered up detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib. He said he tried to tell the general "things he didn't want to hear," adding, "Young soldiers were scapegoated while superiors misrepresented what had happened and tried to misdirect attention away from what was really going on." Provance lost his security clearance, was placed under a "gag order," and is now stationed in Germany, where his responsibilities consist of "picking up trash and guard duty."

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer was among the first to disclose the Pentagon's "Able Danger" data-mining program. He said he believes that the program identified Mohammed Atta before he became the lead hijacker in the 2001 terrorist attacks, though a Pentagon review found no evidence to support that conclusion. Shaffer's security clearance was revoked.

Russell Tice, a former intelligence officer at the National Security Agency (NSA), charged that there were "illegalities and unconstitutional activity" in the agency's so-called "special-access programs," but was advised that he could not discuss them, even with members of the Senate and House intelligence committees in closed session. He told a Congressional committee the Defense Department's harassment of him included spreading rumors that he suffers from bipolar disease.

Mike German resigned as an FBI agent after reporting that other agents and managers mishandled a major counterterrorism case in 2002 and falsified records.. The Justice Department inspector general confirmed German's allegations, and also confirmed that he was retaliated against. His security clearance was revoked.

Richard Levernier's job as a senior Department of Energy nuclear security specialist was to test how prepared America's nuclear weapons sites were to defend against a terrorist attack. He testified that the tests he supervised showed a 50 percent failure rate. When he reported this to his superiors, he was demoted and his security clearance was revoked. He says he was forced into early retirement. During the Bush administration, the suppression or manipulation of science for political or ideological reasons has become a frequent whistleblower complaint.

For example, earlier this month the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) told Congress that politics was trumping science at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), part of the Interior Department. Their allegation came on the heels of a scathing report from the Interior inspector general that chastised former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald for distorting FWS scientific documents to prevent the protection of several highly imperiled species. MacDonald resigned her post last week.
The director of the UCS Scientific Integrity Program, Francesca Grifo, is quick to point out that MacDonald's case is just one of many. The misuse of science at Interior has been reported on issues as diverse as mountaintop-removal mining, cattle grazing and protection of trumpeter swans. Grifo called on Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to "send a clear message to all Interior political appointees that substituting opinions for fact is unacceptable."
Grifo testified to a Congressional committee that political interference in science "has become epidemic - not only at FWS, but at agencies throughout the federal government."
While there have been a number of whistleblower complaints from career government scientists, many (potential complainers) have been intimidated into silence, and others have quietly left the public sector.
Agencies that deal with the climate change issue have been under extraordinary scrutiny by public interest groups, which charge that the findings of government scientists have been routinely suppressed or distorted by Bush administration political appointees.
The Government Accountability Project (GAP), (www.whistleblower.org/) a public interest group, recently issued a report - "Redacting the Science of Climate Change" - on the findings of a yearlong investigation into political interference at federal climate science agencies.
GAP says the report "demonstrates how policies and practices have increasingly restricted the flow of scientific information emerging from publicly funded climate-change research. This has negatively affected the media's ability to report objectively on scientific issues; public officials' capacity to respond with appropriate policies, and full public understanding of environmental concerns."
Science relating to public health issues has also been under severe scrutiny. Emblematic of this problem was the resignation of Dr. Susan Wood, who quit her post as assistant commissioner of women's health at the Food and Drug Administration in protest against the FDA's long delay in approving the so-called Plan B emergency contraception medication for over-the-counter sale, despite the recommendations of agency scientists and outside review panels. Dr. Wood chose to resign after repeated unsuccessful attempts to make her objections heard within the FDA.
Dr. Wood charges that federal health agencies "seem increasingly unable to operate independently, and that this lack of independence compromises their mission of promoting public health and welfare." She added, "Whether it is the environment, energy policy, science education or public health, the American public expects our government to make the best decisions, based on the best available evidence."
"Having spent 15 years working for the federal government, nearly five of which were at the FDA, I care deeply about what's happening in the federal agencies, particularly our health agencies. Nearly twenty-five cents of every consumer dollar is spent on products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. We count on the FDA for the safety and effectiveness of our medicines, vaccines and medical devices, and for the safety of the blood and food supply. The American public does not want to - nor should it - have to think twice about the quality and reliability of information it is getting from the FDA. Its reputation as the international gold standard for regulatory agencies, and as a body that sets the bar very high when it comes to scientific evidence and integrity, is being put at risk over adult access to contraception. Why would the administration risk such a reputation over this?"
Many federal employees say they have often found the protections theoretically afforded to them within the executive branch of government to be inadequate. These protections are intended to include statements to their immediate supervisors, the inspectors general that reside within virtually all government departments, and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent agency dedicated to ensuring that whistleblowers do not suffer retaliation.
But the OSC, led by Bush political appointee Scott Bloch, has itself come under heavy fire from public interest groups - not only for failing to protect whistleblowers from a variety of federal agencies, but also for practicing retaliation against its own employees. Since 2005, Bloch has been under investigation by the inspector general of the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM), at the behest of the President's Office of Management and Budget. OPM's investigation centers on charges that Bloch had retaliated against whistleblowers who complained that they were being transferred out of Washington for political reasons because they disagreed with Bloch's policies. That investigation is reportedly reaching its final stages.
The administration's investigation of Bloch comes as a result of a complaint filed by his own staff members and whistleblower groups alleging a host of misconduct charges against Bloch.
Bloch insists that the "forced removals" were part of a reorganization that sent 12 career OSC employees to new assignments in other cities "to improve performance, not punish any employees."
The OPM inspector general's investigation is the third probe into Bloch's operation after less than four years in office. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and a US Senate subcommittee both have ongoing investigations into mass dismissal of hundreds of whistleblower cases, crony hires, and Bloch's targeting of gay employees for removal while refusing to investigate cases involving discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The allegation was made by in 2005 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which said figures released by Bloch reveal that in the previous year OSC dismissed or otherwise disposed of 600 whistleblower disclosures where civil servants have reported waste, fraud, threats to public safety and violations of law, and "made 470 claims of retaliation disappear."
PEER'S Jeff Ruch says, "The 600 disclosure cases that Bloch has admitted were dismissed are all instances where civil servants came forward to report waste, fraud and abuse, yet OSC decided that there was no need to investigate."
He added, "Dismissing all 600 cases and deciding that not one deserved investigation (because, in the words of the OSC spokesperson they were all ('minor matters or issues previously investigated') stretches credulity."
"Bloch has yet to announce a single case where he has ordered an investigation into the employee's charges," PEER charges. The organization says, "in not one of these cases did Bloch's office affirmatively represent a whistleblower to obtain relief before the civil service court system," called the Merit Systems Protection Board.
PEER says, "In order to speed dismissals, Bloch instituted a rule forbidding his staff from contacting a whistleblower if the disclosure was deemed incomplete or ambiguous. Instead, OSC would simply dismiss the matter. As a result, hundreds of whistleblowers never had a chance to justify why their cases had merit."
Whistleblowers are supposed to be protected by the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA). But a series of court rulings since 1994 has weakened the safeguards Congress intended, making it extremely difficult for whistleblowers to protect themselves when they speak out to protect the public.
Public Citizen's Claybrook is calling for support of bills currently in Congress that would remedy the situation by strengthening whistleblower protections. On March 14, the US House of Representatives passed, 331 to 94, essential reforms to the WPA, H.R. 985, the "Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act." The bill extends protections to federal employees who work in national security, including those at the FBI and intelligence agencies, as well as to federally funded contractors. It also protects all federal employees who disclose wrongdoing in the performance of official duties.
The bill gives federal employees and contractors the right to jury trials in federal court to challenge reprisals. A similar bill is under consideration in the Senate, S. 274, the "Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act."
If the House bill were to become law, it would negate a 2006 US Supreme Court ruling that limited the rights of employee whistleblowers. In 2006, Public Citizen argued Garcetti v. Ceballos in the Supreme Court on behalf of a Los Angeles County prosecutor, Richard Ceballos, who was retaliated against after telling his supervisors of his belief that police falsified an affidavit to obtain a search warrant. The court ruled that the disclosure was made in the course of his official job duties, holding that he was entitled to no protection, not even his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
"Conscientious civil servants deserve strong statutory protections - not bureaucratic intimidation," said Claybrook. "Federal employees should not have to sacrifice their careers and livelihoods to do the right thing by disclosing information to protect public health, reduce fiscal abuse or secure the nation."
President Bush has already signaled that he will veto the new House-passed bill, should it get through the Senate. The measure has a number of sponsors in the Senate, but is not yet on the calendar for debate and vote.
Whistleblowers have a number of champions in Congress. In the Senate, the most outspoken is Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, now the ranking member of the Finance Committee. Grassley has advocated on behalf of individual whistleblowers for more than 20 years and has co-authored laws to empower and protect whistleblowers, including the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, the 1986 whistleblower amendments to the False Claims Act, and the 2002 whistleblower amendment to the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform legislation. Along with Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, he has also called for the extension of whistleblower protections to staff members at the World Bank, after receiving accounts of retaliation against whistleblowers.
In the House, arguably the most vocal champion of whistleblowers is Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California), who is the author of the recently passed Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act.
Says Waxman, "A key component of accountability is whistleblower protection. Federal employees are on the inside. They see when taxpayer dollars are wasted. They are often the first to see the signals of corrupt or incompetent management. Yet, without adequate protections, they cannot step forward to blow the whistle."
Waxman adds, "There are many federal government workers who deserve whistleblower protection, but perhaps none more than national security officials. These are federal government employees who have undergone extensive background investigations, obtained security clearances, and handled classified information on a routine basis. Our own government has concluded that they can be trusted to work on the most sensitive law enforcement and intelligence projects. Yet these officials receive no protection when they come forward to identify abuses that are undermining our national security."

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for the Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.

Be Kind to Our Whistle-Blower Friends
May 24, 2007, NY TIMES OPINION

The most endangered species inside the Washington Beltway is the federal worker who dares to disclose waste and mismanagement by government superiors. The vulnerability of the workers is palpable lately at the Commerce Department, where the inspector general — who is charged with protecting, not silencing, whistle-blowers — was found taking vengeance on two subordinates who dared to question his expense accounts. The Washington Post reports an independent investigation concluded the inspector general, Johnnie Frazier, committed “egregious violations” by reassigning his top deputy and counsel to peripheral jobs after they refused to sign off on expensive trips and office renovations.

The abuse is denied by Mr. Frazier, but follows the pattern of the Bush administration’s muting of internal critics. Whistle-blowers have been systematically denied, demeaned and demoted by political appointees flouting laws designed to protect workers with the courage to come forward. Mr. Frazier is one of four different inspectors general in the administration under investigation for allegedly subverting their responsibilities.

The House has approved an overdue remedy that would strengthen whistle-blower protection and the penalties for retaliators. The measure is particularly important for extending protection to national security workers so they feel freer to report misconduct and gaps in antiterrorism defenses. One provision would bar a familiar tactic of retaliation — the revocation of a complaining worker’s security clearance.

The White House, of course, is threatening a veto, claiming the measure weakens national security. Tell that to Coleen Rowley, who quit the F.B.I. after documenting the agency’s failure to follow up on field office warnings before the 9/11 attacks. In truth, it is vital for national security that the Senate vote final approval of the measure with the same veto-proof support shown by the House. Whistle-blowers honor government service. It is time to strike back at their tormentors.

Make It Safe Campaign

WHISTLEBLOWER WEEK IN WASHINGTON DC May 13-19, 2007: The Truth Will Set You Free

Whistle-blowers form a breed apart
By Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — When people think of corporate whistle-blowers, Enron's Sherron Watkins probably comes to mind. Confident and well-coiffed in testimony before Congress, she was the picture of corporate responsibility.

Time magazine named her one of its "People of the Year" in 2002. Watkins went on to become a consultant and high-profile public speaker. Several former Enron executives have been charged or convicted since her revelations about Enron's accounting.

Things rarely turn out that well for whistle-blowers, who speak out against corporate misdeeds and cast themselves as company pariahs. Whistle-blowers might be heroes to people tired of the scandals that have swept Corporate America, but they often find themselves near-penniless, their home lives and emotional well-being in shambles, and followed by private investigators.

Whistle-blowers persist because that's the way they are — a breed apart, driven by a desire to expose dirty executives, protect consumers or avenge wrongs they feel have been done to them.

Two years ago Friday, President Bush signed an Enron-inspired law that gave whistle-blowers at public companies the right to sue for anything that could affect shareholders. Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed, corporate whistle-blowers have filed 97 cases under the law against companies from Home Depot to Hewlett-Packard.

With or without the backing of the federal government, some people can't imagine keeping quiet when they witness what they believe is wrongdoing. For some, it seems, whistle-blowing becomes almost a way of life.

"They are very ethical people who follow through on what they were taught as children," says Donald Soeken, a Laurel, Md.-based psychotherapist and an expert witness who specializes in psychological issues in whistle-blowers. "But if someone came to me beforehand, I'd tell them, 'If you can't do it anonymously, don't do it, because you'll be sacrificing yourself.' "

Enron's Watkins once read a description of whistle-blowers that suggested they can be "high-maintenance, because they're so forceful." She thought it fit her to T. "Sometimes I make a mountain out of a molehill," she said.

Ed Bricker, one of the first nuclear industry whistle-blowers, has nearly made a career out of whistle-blowing. Bricker, 49, says he has faced retaliation since he went undercover for Congress in the 1980s to expose health hazards at a nuclear plant in Hanford, Wash. His crusade has had unwelcome consequences.

Bricker's daughter Debbie Deerwester, now 25, remembers when she and fellow sixth-graders were asked to explain their parents' careers. She said her father was a whistle-blower at Hanford.

"One boy interrupted and said, 'Whistle-blowers are tattletales!' " she said. "I was devastated, because I was proud of what my dad stood for and thought that everyone else saw it the same way."

Bricker, balding and chatty, left his federal job in 1991, after he says co-workers at Hanford assaulted him and made life-threatening calls to his wife. In 1994, he settled a whistle-blower lawsuit for $200,000 against Westinghouse and Rockwell, which had contracts with the Energy Department to run the nuclear site. The companies did not acknowledge wrongdoing.

The fight took its toll on Bricker, who is Mormon. "I'd look myself in the mirror and think, 'Is your job worth it that you can't live with yourself and pollute the air your relatives breathe?' " he said.

Now working at Washington state's health department in a role unrelated to nuclear safety, Bricker continues to speak out about possible safety problems — including, one time, a terrorism hotline he says didn't work. Co-workers once put up a mock death-threat poster that he says was directed at him, and he was told to see a psychologist when he complained.

He's suing the state for damages from the harassment and stress. He says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and "stupidity — for sticking with it."

Of the toll on his family, Bricker said, "They're tired of it, and it's sad because they went through this once before."

Gary Larson, a spokesman for the Washington attorney general, says the state denies Bricker's allegations. "This state is protective of whistle-blowers and has a long-standing policy of encouraging people to come forward and to see they are protected when they do," he said.

Protecting the public good

Whistle-blowers often feel it's their responsibility to speak up for those who can't.

Last fall, Mark Livingston filed a federal lawsuit under Sarbanes-Oxley. In it, he alleges he lost his job as a quality control manager at Wyeth because he complained repeatedly about manufacturing practices for a vaccine that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is given to about 60% of infants. The soft-spoken and slightly built Livingston, 46, says he saw the drug company take shortcuts in the manufacture of Prevnar, a vaccine for meningitis and pneumonia, endangering babies.

Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus denies Livingston's allegations. "The safety of this vaccine is not in question," Petkus said.

George Holmes, a former training manager for Livingston, says Livingston faced resistance from the time he arrived at Wyeth to institute a training program required under a Justice Department consent decree. The 2000 decree, which also required Wyeth to pay the government $30 million, addressed deviations in manufacturing practices at two plants and other quality control problems.

Holmes says he witnessed "repercussions" against Livingston after a deadline from the decree was not met because the plant wasn't documenting or emphasizing training enough. He says the human resources director showed up uninvited at training sessions and at a work-related 2002 Christmas party Livingston was hosting at a local restaurant.

Livingston says he warned the H.R. director he would ask the police to escort him from the party if he didn't leave. Six days later, Livingston lost his job. Petkus says Livingston was fired for "unruly and unprofessional behavior toward a co-worker." Livingston's case is in deposition and discovery in federal district court in North Carolina.

Companies often suggest that whistle-blowers have mental health or addiction issues. Whistle-blowers say any problems they have come from the stress associated with taking on a company.

Livingston says he still wakes up in the night, shaking and sweating uncontrollably, which he believes is attributable to post-traumatic stress disorder. He has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with anxiety and depression. Not long ago, the North Carolinian didn't want to leave his house.

'Utter loneliness'

Jim Torgerson was a senior manager at American Express until, he says, he went on medical leave to get away from harassment that followed his complaints about a faulty technology contract. He says it became so bad he was "dry-heaving on the way to work."

Torgerson complained about a contract AmEx had signed with an Internet-related company that specialized in procurement management and that he says was owned by a friend of American Express Chairman Kenneth Chenault. In August 2001, the Internet firm's computers malfunctioned — allowing hundreds of vendors and suppliers to see one another's confidential data — and Torgerson says AmEx tried to cover it up. He reported the problem to the general counsel's office.

He says retaliation, including negative personnel memos and constant criticism, soon began. Torgerson, who has strong Lutheran beliefs, says his manager once called him "Christian boy." After Torgerson, 50, had been on medical leave about two months, he says, the company fired him in December 2001.

"There's a sense of utter loneliness even when you have family supporting you and you know you're right," he said. Torgerson, who worked for AmEx in Arizona, has a 12-count lawsuit pending against the company in federal court there. American Express said Torgerson resigned, and spokesman Tony Mitchell said Torgerson's "whistle-blower claim is without merit."

Retaliation often follows

Whistle-blowers say that once their complaints become public, the workplace often becomes hostile and threatening.

"You know your intentions were good, and it's kind of surprising to see people think otherwise," said Enron's Watkins.

Sandra Moore, one of a handful of female electricians at General Motors, says the atmosphere at the Pontiac, Mich., truck plant where she worked was worse than she'd ever imagined. She says graphic pornography was stacked a foot high on tables and viewed on computer screens. She thinks that allowed her supervisors to feel it was almost acceptable to proposition and harass her, as she says they often did.

Moore, 47, says her complaints to managers and to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and a subsequent lawsuit, led to death threats. She also says she was dumped with water from a bucket with electrical wires in it.

Moore wants to keep her job because of pay and benefits she says could total $160,000 a year. "I earned the right," she said.

GM spokesman Kerry Christopher says the company takes "discrimination and harassment issues very seriously," but he says Moore's allegations have no merit. He says Moore has filed charges against GM three times, and each time the EEOC ruled against her.

Moore is on sick leave because she says the environment was too stressful. She's suing GM in state court in Michigan. Christopher says GM hasn't "taken any adverse action against her employment." The automaker also says Moore never mentioned the pornography or assault when deposed by company lawyers, so it would not comment on specifics.

Some payoffs in the end

Despite the frustration, some whistle-blowers see results. David Franklin, a scientist at Pfizer, recently won a $27 million settlement in a lawsuit accusing the company of defrauding Medicaid by encouraging doctors to prescribe a drug for unapproved uses.

In Watkins' case, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay was indicted July 7 on 11 counts of conspiracy and fraud after an array of charges against other former executives and guilty pleas by several.

Peter Scannell, a former employee at Boston-based Putnam Investments, told state securities officials about irregular stock trading by union members and helped expose the mutual fund scandal last year. He says that made his efforts worth it, though he says he was hit over the head by a brick-wielding assailant in a union sweatshirt and is still occasionally followed. He hopes to return to work in financial services and maybe to write a book.

Longtime whistle-blower Bricker, whose lawsuit is pending, isn't as confident of his prospects: "Where am I going to go? Who's going to hire me?"

Contributing: Greg Farrell

Whistleblowers-in-America@yahoogroups.com