On Friday, the chairman of the House intelligence committee subpoenaed acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. The subpoena demanded that Maguire send the committee a whistleblower complaint that should have been submitted to Congress by law, and to appear before the committee for a public hearing on Thursday, September 19, if he would not comply with the request.
The conflict is the latest example of how legal rights for intelligence community whistleblowers fall short, leaving Congress in the dark about allegations of problems involving national security.
|
 |
When it comes to mononymous people in government oversight, “Stockton!” was at the top of the list. But he also had a first name. Peter Stockton, age 80, passed away Sunday, September 8.
|
This Week: Celebrating the Constitution
|
September 17 was Constitution Day, celebrated each year to commemorate the signing of the Constitution in 1787 in Philadelphia. Until Congress makes the occasion a day off, we hope you’ll enjoy celebrating with some unique features we have developed for the occasion.
|
Event: Cocktails with the Constitution
On Tuesday, September 17, The Constitution Project at POGO held a fun pre-show cocktail reception, followed by an excellent performance of "What the Constitution Means to Me"—a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist and Tony Award nominee—at The Kennedy Center in DC.
Thank you to all who attended, and especially to our sponsors!
|
 |
Sometimes the facts about our founding charter get distorted in the ensuing game of telephone. This Constitution Day, we are taking a look at some common misconceptions about the Constitution and what the document really says.
|
 |
POGO is challenging you to test your knowledge of this essential document. Everyone remembers 8th grade civics class, but can you tell us which amendment enshrines the freedom of the press?
|
 |
Sidebar features our quick takes on today’s most pressing constitutional issues, valuable and informative resources, and thought-provoking trivia and facts you can share. We will be brief, interesting, and occasionally amusing.
|
|
Join Us on Social Media
 |
Jake Laperruque, Senior Counsel at The Constitution Project at POGO, will speak with Arthur Holland Michel on his new book, "Eyes In The Sky." This book covers how a Pentagon surveillance system traditionally used overseas is increasingly being deployed domestically by law enforcement and may jeopardize individuals' privacy rights. Follow the conversation on Facebook Live from 10-11am EDT. Have questions for Arthur on sky surveillance? Click below to submit them. |
 |
The Constitution Project hosted a Twitter chat on September 16, 2019 to answer questions on national security, policing, and the Constitution to kick off this year's weeklong celebration at the Project On Government Oversight.
|
 |
On Thursday, September 19, POGO hosted a discussion on how the mining industry is influencing government decisions to open mining on public lands.
|
POGO maintains resources to educate and empower federal sector employees on their options when witnessing wrongdoing.
Explore Our Resources |
|
|
POGO in the News
|
|
One reason for this lingering problem is the Merit Systems Protection Board, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information. The agency adjudicates alleged reprisals against whistleblowers, but the Senate has yet to fill its three seats. It’s been empty for a half-year, and its backlog of cases is piling up.
But even when it was handling disputes, it rarely sided with whistleblowers, Smithberger said, and intelligence officials don’t have access to the court. Advocates have instead pushed for jury trials, which they say will lead to more equitable and just verdicts.
Instead of relying on a legal framework for protection against retaliation, Smithberger said potential whistleblowers should proceed carefully: Gather as much documentation as possible, consult a lawyer and try to stay anonymous.
“One has to go in with the assumption that it’s career suicide,” she said. “Talk to your family before you blow the whistle because you’re making a big decision you can’t take back. You’re doing it at a great personal risk.”
Smithberger’s organization even offers an online manual, “Caught Between Conscience and Career: Expose abuse without exposing your identity.” (“If you are a government whistleblower,” she advised, “I would recommend you don’t download it from your government computer.”)
Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, she said, but the climate for whistleblowers is already one of intense fear.
“I think it will have a chilling effect,” Smithberger said, “but it’s already Siberia.”
However, the legal and political dispute does provide lawmakers an opportunity to change that — to show whistleblowers that their complaints are valued.
“This is really a moment when the spotlight is on Congress to show government employees they’re going to take their concerns seriously and act on them responsibly, and not just play politics,” Smithberger added. “If this person gets fired, are they going to fight to get them reinstated when this story isn’t on the front page anymore?” |
|
|
|
|
Additionally, experts say, whistleblowers are sometimes required to meet with their supervisor, members of the agency’s legislative affairs team or other officials inside the agency, and by then, the firewall between senior leadership and the whistleblower is often obliterated, most likely exposing them to possible retaliation from their superiors.
While it doesn’t happen every time, “the [intelligence community] frequently tells people that they would have to go through [legislative affairs],” said Mandy Smithberger, the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight.
...
“It’s a gray area. … Congress hasn’t weighed in as much as they should about what they consider to be a protected channel,” said Smithberger.
A key danger for the whistleblower is that, by going out on their own, they will not be protected and could in fact be labeled a leaker for sharing classified information improperly.
“Retroactive classification certainly has been a concern,” said Smithberger. In one instance, a client of the Project on Government Oversight — who blew the whistle on the hostage recovery process — was reprimanded for giving a public presentation that had already been cleared by the Army.
“That’s kind of what happens consistently in these cases,” she said. “The agency looks over your record with a fine-tooth comb. If you’ve handled classified information, if someone looks at your record closely, pretty much everyone has ‘mishandled a document.’”
Yet those issues only become a problem once that person has raised complaints, she explained.
|
|
|
|
|
Rekognition can be used for many purposes, but has drawn controversy after police departments began piloting it to identify potential suspects. Amazon also made an effort to sell it to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to documents uncovered by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, and the FBI has explored using it. Employees and shareholders have both protested, asking Amazon to stop selling it to law enforcement agencies, but Amazon easily defeated a shareholder proposition that would have forced its hand. Chen said that controversy didn’t factor into his decision to depart.
|
|
|
|
|
Luck’s retirement dinner will take place about 10 weeks before attorney general William Barr is scheduled to throw a $30,000 “family holiday party” at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Barr’s plan reportedly passed muster with Department of Justice ethics officials because it is not an official DOJ event. Still, it “creates the appearance that high-level political appointees or allies of the president may feel like they need to spend money at the president’s businesses as a show of loyalty, and that is something that makes me deeply uncomfortable and should make taxpayers deeply uncomfortable,” Liz Hempowicz of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told the Washington Post.
|
|
|
|
|
So far, in other words, the F-35 has had an abysmally low rate of availability. Technically speaking, it remains in “initial operational testing and evaluation,” during which, as defense journalist Dan Grazier has noted, it achieved a “fully mission capable rate” of just 11 percent in its combat testing phase. (The desired goal before going into full production is 80 percent, which is, in a sense, all you need to know about the “success” of that aircraft so many years later.) Compounding those dreadful percentages is another grim reality: the F-35’s design isn’t stable and its maintenance software has been a buggy nightmare, meaning the testers are, in a sense, trying to evaluate a moving and messy target.
|
|
|
|
|
We need not offer a complete catalog the history of CCA/CoreCivic and its abuses: a simple Google search will generate enough to make a moral human being cringe. Shane Bauer went undercover at CoreCivic and last year wrote a history of this brutal industry for Mother Jones, for instance. Deaths, sexual abuse, torture, improper use of solitary confinement (a practice condemned by the UN) are the tip of the iceberg. Pending cases (of which there are at least twelve known to Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent watchdog that champions good government reforms) include more cases of sexual abuse and forced labor. Abuses also include visitors: in one pending lawsuit a woman claims that, while undergoing a security screening during a visit to the facility in April 2014, she was forced to verify she was menstruating by allowing a female guard to inspect her genitalia.
|
|
|
|
|
The Project on Government Oversight reported that Interior appointees went to work on critical minerals within the first weeks of Trump’s presidency. POGO’s report further found that mining industry influence began immediately following Trump’s inauguration.
“The documents POGO obtained offer a window into mining industry representatives’ efforts to influence the Interior Department’s development of the list beginning in the first month of the Administration and leading up to the President’s order for a new list,” according to the report.
|
|
|
|
|
According to data collected by the Project on Government Oversight, 11 presidentially appointed IG positions currently lack permanent leaders, and only two of those currently have a nomination pending in the Senate.
|
|
|
|
|
According to the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, 13 of the 74 inspector general positions lack a permanent director. Of the vacant positions, 11 require presidential nomination, but only two have a person named. Several of the vacancies date back to the Obama administration, when Republicans criticized President Obama on the issue, The Washington Post reported.
|
|
|
|
|
Whistleblower Protection Blog
|
|
[A]ccording to a recent investigation by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), it’s doing a terrible job. Could better protections for whistleblowers get the effort back on track? One of the recommendations in the POGO report notes that “whistleblowers could help make enforcement of the audit firm industry easier and more effective.”
The PCAOB was set up to monitor accountants and prevent the kind of fraud and financial collapses that have destroyed consumer savings, brought down huge companies and gutted the economy. From the story:
But, in key respects it’s been doing a feeble job.
Over its entire history of more than 16 years, when it comes to some of the biggest firms under its jurisdiction, it has taken disciplinary action over only a tiny fraction of the apparent violations its staff has identified. Meanwhile, the financial penalties it has imposed pale into insignificance compared to the fines it apparently could have imposed.
From the report:
To better oversee the industry, the board should incentivize whistleblowers to come forward when they suspect violations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, PCAOB rules, and other laws, rules, and professional standards governing the audits of public companies, brokers, and dealers. Whistleblowers should receive a reward if their report results in a PCAOB enforcement action. Whistleblowers are a critical tool in the fight against waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. These individuals keep a watchful eye on the government and industry. Whistleblowers could help make enforcement of the audit firm industry easier and more effective. The board should protect from retaliation workers who make protected disclosures, deter efforts to discourage people from coming forward, and provide resources so workers know the right way to bring information to light. Such a program could be modeled on the whistleblower offices at the SEC and the Internal Revenue Service, which are both authorized by Congress to provide monetary awards to individuals who come forward with information that leads to enforcement actions. Congress has a long history of financially rewarding whistleblowers—dating back to the False Claims Act in 1863, when Congress was concerned that suppliers were ripping off the Union Army during the Civil War.
|
|
|
|
|
As Mandy Smithberger of the Project on Government Oversight has noted, “A lot of the projects that are having their funding removed are directly supporting the military and their families.” Examples include firing ranges, childcare, and a fire rescue and crash station for Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, which is still recovering from the damage done by Hurricane Michael. And a full $400 million in funding is being diverted from projects in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
|
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile, a previously confidential Department of Homeland Security report revealed the ICE-run Adelanto immigration jail in California places an “alarming” number of migrants with serious mental illness in solitary confinement for “shockingly” long periods of time. The 2018 report was obtained by the organization Project on Government Oversight through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
|
|
|
|
|
.png)
Comments
Post a Comment