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TechnoratiA New Golden Age for Whistleblowers
Congress is about to get serious about attacking government corruption sustained by secrecy and enforced by fear. Before Christmas, the Senate unanimously joined the House to approve legislation reviving the moribund Whistleblower Protection Act. The House and Senate versions need to be speedily reconciled and enacted. This would give federal employees genuine legal rights as honest public servants. Now they often face the daunting choice of acting conscientiously, risking their career and livelihood, or toeing the bureaucratic line and turning a blind eye to waste, fraud and abuse. The public will be the real winner when the reconciled bill becomes law. This is why the reform is nicknamed the "Taxpayer Protection Act."
Whistleblowers use freedom of speech to challenge abuses of power that betray the public trust. They change the course of history by refusing to sacrifice their own principles, unwilling to go along with corrupt practices. By exercising their freedom to warn, they prevent avoidable disasters before all that is left is damage control.
Consider examples of how they have made a difference for America's families. Disclosures by David Graham, a Food and Drug Administration scientist, forced market withdrawal of the painkiller Vioxx, which caused over 40,000 fatal U.S. heart attacks after our government officially labeled it safe. Climate-change whistleblowers, like Rick Piltz at the White House and James Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, exposed how gags, censorship and oil-industry collusion turned some $2 billion of climate-change research into anti-scientific propaganda and delayed urgently needed action. The Marines' Franz Gayl demonstrated that hundreds of American combat fatalities in Iraq might be traceable to Pentagon mismanagement, which unnecessarily delayed delivery of mine-explosion-resistant armored vehicles.
The consequences of gagging federal workers are clear. Actuary Richard Foster was threatened with termination if he exposed the Medicare prescription-drug bill's true price tag. Congress ended up passing a law (by one vote) that cost $200 billion above its stated price. Whistleblowers protect the federal Treasury. Since public citizens were empowered to file whistleblower lawsuits on behalf of taxpayers in 1985, they have increased the government's civil fraud recovery 120-fold, from $26 million to $3.14 billion last year.
The voting public understands the value of whistleblowers. A Democracy Corps survey last February found 79 percent of voters are more likely to support a Congress that passes "a strong whistleblower law to protect government employees from retribution if they report waste or corruption." This was second only to stopping illegal government spending.
The Pentagon's Ernest Fitzgerald called whistleblowing "committing the truth," because you're treated like a criminal, and subjected to public humiliation, isolation, stripped duties, termination and criminal investigation. In theory, harassment is illegal under the Whistleblower Protection Act, which, after unanimous 1989 and 1994 votes, was powerful free-speech law - on paper. But hostile judicial activism has made it a trap that rubberstamps almost whatever retaliation is challenged. Through last October, the special court with monopoly power over the law ruled against whistleblowers in 183 out of 185 decisions on the merits.
Tragically, the WPA's toothlessness is a primary reason federal workers remain silent observers after witnessing government lawlessness or waste. The last straw was a 2006 Supreme Court decision, Garcetti v. Ceballos, stripping public employees of protection for speaking out about wrongdoing while doing their job - when it matters most.
The revived WPA has four cornerstones:
• Restoring the original WPA rights to federal employees.
• Protecting government contractors, law-enforcement and national-security-intelligence agency employees against all forms of reprisal, including loss of security clearance.
• Providing whistleblowers normal access to court, including jury trials.
• Empowering Congress to receive national-security disclosures, ending the corrupt tradition of sealing a cover-up by classifying it. Every presidential candidate endorses this ethics reform. Unfortunately, President Bush has threatened four times to veto it.
Congress needs to promptly finish what it started and stand up to the president. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's insight over a century ago retains its wisdom today: "If corruption is a social disease, sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Tom Devine is legal director and Adam Miles is legislative representative for the Government Accountability Project.
© 2008, The Providence Journal Co.
11 Comments so far
Show All"Isn't it amazing that the nation that touts "freedom, liberty and justice for all" has ruled AGAINST those who would support those intentions?"
Sorry you've mistaken the advertising for the facts, siouxrose...
Paul B.: Hang in there. You may never get to the truth or get justice, but at least you got out in one piece. I'm hopin' for you! Good luck.
I suggest "I am telling the damn truth, the whole damn TRUTH ACT", I never get to hear a direct answer anymore.
It is the way people side-step the truth, believing they may catch 'Truth', certainly bush et al, the Full House, the ones that hold the deed to Room 621A in San Francisco, you know, the 'Schizophrenic Company'AT&T now known as Cingular now known as AT&T', the whole lot seem to have most certainly been immunized(sic)against 'Truth'. Seemingly more and more the use of the term 'progressive' and using Boolean Algebra, re; 'AND', 'OR', when applied to if A or B then C or A not B when C, in the case of voting for McCain, or DR. RON PAUL. Goodness are you entirely unawares of the fact that White Supremicists, indeed any-ol-all-white-never-not-white person reveers this DOCTOR RON PAUL? I have seen it in action, by it, I mean them, you see how they make us say things when we too are 'IMMUNIZED'?
i hope i have the damn room # right, i've been awake for 55 hours. i know the immunized are in session...............
"Taxpayer Protection Act."
This title is very misleading because it doesn't shed any light on the importance of "whistleblower protection" with regard to protecting taxpayers money.
"Whistleblower/Taxpayer Protection Act" would certainly be more inclusive.
Senator James Jeffords (not Jeffors). I tried to edit, but it was no longer possible.
I was threatened with being fired from the United States Postal Service by Mark Lemnah, the postmaster of Burlington, Vermont, for calling a talk radio show and talking about Letter Carriers delivering mail in the dark. When I had first started working for the Postal Service night delivery was considered dangerous and only parcels were sometimes delivered at night because the Carrier could drive them to their destination. But with the flick of a pen delivery in the dark became stadard operating proceedure.
Before I finally resigned from the Postal Service after 21 years and just 2 1/2 years before my scheduled retirement, all the Postal employees (except managers, of course)in Vermont and New Hampshire received a letter from management ordering them to NOT give an answer to any United States Senator or any Member of the U. S. House of Representatives that asked them a question. I once worked for the NSA and not even NSA put such restrictions on enployees. At least not when I worked there. In fact we we told to answer questions from Senators without even consulting our superiors. How times change.
My letter of resignation (mailed from Senator James Jeffors' Burlington office)accused the Postal Service of delaying (hiding) mail during an inspection of Carrier routes. Four years later and The Postal Sevice has never given me a response to that allegation or other allegations in my letter of resignation.
Jeff Munger, the manager of Jeffords' Burlington office, e-mailed me after several months that they had finally received a copy of my letter of resignation from the Postal Service. Jeff Munger had already told me that even Senators were afraid of the Postal Service, because the Postal Service could make Post Offices in their states disappear. Something that would not endear Senators to their constituents.
I was offered a disability retirement, which I assumed meant retracting my letter of resignation and my allegations.
Before Jeff Munger e-mailed me, I wrote several government offices where personnel records are kept, only to receive written responses that my records were not there. No one has ever written me to inform me that my records have been found. After having to wait an additional two years for retirement because I left early. I will soon be applying for my discontinued service retirement. Pray for me.
Potential truth tellers/whistleblowers are fully aware that if the information they have is serious enough to implicate the "wrong" people, they are dead. This government is illegally spying on EVERY American. Why do you think that is? This bill if it is ever passed is probably a little too little and a lot too late.
I support the addition of a Reward component: A $1 Million Tax Free Reward on the day a Felony Conviction is handed down.
Appeal to their Greed and government workers will trample one another to turn in their bosses.
The bigger problem isn't so much protection of whistleblowers (in some cases they can do it anonymously), but the lack of independent/interested entities to whistleblow to.
Isn't it amazing that the nation that touts "freedom, liberty and justice for all" has ruled AGAINST those who would support those intentions? As per, "Through last October, the special court with monopoly power over the law ruled against whistleblowers in 183 out of 185 decisions on the merits." Gift to the profit-lust of corporations, scourge to the health of the republic!
Yes!