Chairman Elijah Cummings was a titan of congressional oversight. He seemed to intuitively understand and revel in how his work as chairman of the oversight committee was both essential for his constituents and the country. We had the opportunity to work with him and his tremendous staff over the years, and his commitment was apparent, not just when he was up on the dais, but in those little moments in passing when he would explain why stopping the abuse of power mattered so much.
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A federal regulator responsible for protecting investors is increasingly withholding information from the public.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) polices accounting firms that audit and certify the financial reports of companies traded on U.S. stock markets. Its mission is to protect investors, including anyone who is counting on a pension or retirement fund, by reducing the risk that through fraud or error companies will present a false picture of their financial performance.
The oversight board has long suffered from a lack of transparency, partly because the law that created it limited what it can disclose about problems it uncovers. However, of late, the board has taken its secrecy to a new level.
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Independence helps ensure the Fed can effectively pursue its statutory goals based on objective analysis and data, and not political considerations.
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Meeting the Challenges of Today
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Over the past 38 years, the Project On Government Oversight has worked to stymie corruption in our government so the American people could be confident that decisions being made in Washington are aimed at benefiting them. Over those almost four decades of work, the fight has gotten more difficult as the country has faced new and growing challenges. Read about POGO's accomplishments and impact in 2018.
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Upcoming
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On Saturday, November 9th, the Alexandria Film Festival is hosting a screening of the documentary film Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? in Alexandria, Virginia. The poignant picture of one family's tragedy uncovers a long history of negligence and institutional failings that led to the fatal crash of a 53E helicopter, the deadliest aircraft in the military. New POGO staffer Jason Paladino will be on a panel discussion following the film. Cost: $12.50 online, $15 at door.
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POGO & Whistleblowers
POGO has a long history of working with whistleblowers and protecting their rights. We believe that whistleblowers are our first line of defense against corruption and abuse by the federal government. We’ve spent years protecting these truth-tellers and the mechanisms to hold government accountable, and today we’re seeing why all of that work matters.
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It’s not new to see the motivations of whistleblowers and inspectors general questioned when their disclosures are politically inconvenient.
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Intelligence community whistleblowers shouldn’t have to go through intermediaries before they can inform Congress of matters that can impact the nation’s security.
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Whistleblowing is not a crime—in many cases, it is a legally-protected right. This interactive quiz can help you learn more about your whistleblower rights and protections as a federal sector employee.
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It is possible to fight wrongdoing from within without sacrificing your career. This survival guide, intended to help and empower conscientious government employees when they encounter wrongdoing in the workplace, covers what federal sector employees should know before blowing the whistle.
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We distilled our survival guide into this e-course, delivering key lessons and tips to your inbox each week.
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Federal employees should never have to risk their careers when doing what's right for our country.
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We need the official channels for disclosing wrongdoing in the government—that’s why POGO continues to fight for increased whistleblower protections. Without increased whistleblower protections, honest citizens trying to protect the integrity of our system could be intimidated into silence while the legal fabric of the country unravels.
Give now to support POGO’s work protecting whistleblowers.
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POGO in the News
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Fitzgerald’s reputation and work helped lead to the adoption of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law and which was intended to protect federal employees from retaliatory measures. A separate act governs whistleblowing in the intelligence agencies: the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998, which has been updated several times. Fitzgerald also championed the National Taxpayers Union and helped inspire an array of nongovernmental organizations that assist whistleblowers, such as the Project on Government Oversight and the Government Accountability Project.
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The current whistle-blowers should probably anticipate that they too may be ostracized by their colleagues. They should be aware they may be ruined financially. Heaven forbid that they put their family through what I did mine. That is truly my biggest regret.However, they should also know there is an entire community of good government organizations that supports and uplifts whistleblowers, including the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project, and the Ridenour prizes.
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Independent watchdogs said Dunlap's involvement raises concerns about whether he improperly influenced EPA's actions on formaldehyde, which is widely used in wood composites, building materials, insulation, fabrics and glue. As deputy assistant administrator for science policy, Dunlap is the top political official in EPA’s Office of Research and Development — a post that allowed him to avoid the Senate confirmation process.
“Despite the fact he knew a draft recusal was being created, he stepped into an area where he knew he had a conflict of interest,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the independent Project on Government Oversight.
“The timing of this doesn’t pass the sniff test. It really does appear he wanted to weigh in on the formaldehyde issue for as long as he could,” he added.
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While there are protected avenues for sharing concerns about government wrongdoing and abuse, seeking any outside channel for sharing secret information leaves a whistleblower vulnerable to being charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which was written to prosecute spies against the United States during wartime. President Obama, a constitutional-law scholar, weaponized the Espionage Act against whistleblowers like no administration before.
“Under the Obama administration was a complete misuse of the Espionage Act to target whistleblowers and to create an example of these individuals who came forward to blow the whistle on really serious intelligence community abuses of power,” says Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight. Only 13 people have been charged under the Espionage Act, but eight of these cases occurred during President Barack Obama’s two terms. None of those cases involved double agents or wartime security concerns, but instead leaking secure documents. Examples of these document leaks ranged from highly classified military intelligence to embarrassing candid diplomatic cables.
[...] The intelligence community, being more secretive than the rest of the government, has separate and sometimes conflicting rules. Intelligence community whistleblowers should report complaints, only if they pertain to an “urgent concern,” to someone in their chain of command, which can be someone from a direct supervisor to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, according to a September letter from the Office of the Inspector General. The Office of Special Counsel could also accept disclosures. Another set of laws says that IC members can also go to congressional intelligence committees, a protected yet external disclosure channel. “The law requires the whistleblower (as an intelligence community member) to jump through many hoops,” Hempowicz says. “And some of the laws are conflicting.” Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has proposed provisions to harmonize the whistleblower reporting procedures for intelligence community members, but they have not yet been implemented.
[...] Adopted shortly after U.S. entry into World War I, the Espionage Act was intended to prosecute spies who endanger American national security. At the time, there were concerns about revealing information about military operations and recruitment. Famously, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to the electric chair and executed in 1953 for spying for the KGB during the Cold War. But practically everyone else tried under the Espionage Act has been a journalist’s source.
“Those prosecutions in my perspective were meant to make an example of these individuals,” says Hempowicz. “What we see is putting a thumb on the scale, making it less worth it for an individual to come forward and that starts from the beginning, where it’s like if I come forward my complaint is not going to be addressed and not be given the attention it deserves and I’m going to be retaliated against and I’m going to be forced out of the agency and I’m going to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.”
[...] Snowden now lives in Moscow under political asylum, and cannot return to the U.S. without facing criminal charges. But his situation is positive when compared to other whistleblower-leakers, who have faced long prison sentences for exposing concern in the government. Hempowicz says, “They’re not becoming a whistleblower to avail themselves of these protections. They’re becoming a whistleblower because they are seeing something that is concerning enough to them that they’re willing to throw away their careers.” This can be true when reporting in protected channels as well as when leaking information to the press.
In creating charges against whistleblower-leakers, Presidents Obama and Trump have worked to separate the whistleblowers from the context of their complaints. “It’s much easier to silence an individual than it is to address a systemic problem in the federal government,” Hempowicz says. Whatever positive change a whistleblower-leaker might cause through their complaint is not factored into their punishments or charges under the Espionage Act—that is to say, there is no clause for moral exceptions. Stanger also says that focusing more on the individual than the complaint tinges the complaint with whatever the whistleblower can be shaded with: partisanship, bias, or other flaws.
[...] Hempowicz agrees that the whistleblower should not be vulnerable to attacks using the Espionage Act. “But does that mean they won’t? I don’t know. The assumption that because it wouldn’t be a good faith application of the Espionage Act and therefore we shouldn’t expect it from the Department of Justice, I think is maybe giving a little too much credit that they’re always acting with the appropriate legal judgment, and I don’t know if we can make that assumption.”
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Rebecca Jones, policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based watchdog, contends that the lack of Senate-confirmed officials within the Trump administration — and at DHS specifically — violates the Constitution’s mandate that the Senate vet and approve presidential nominees.
"It might be more convenient for the president to have people who are immediately going to do exactly what he wants them to do in the moment, but I don’t think it’s beneficial to our democracy, or transparency or accountability,” she said.
Jones argues that the cast of acting officials at DHS makes it hard for the department to act effectively. “We need someone who’s knowledgeable and empowered to make the big decisions when the time comes,” she said.
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An investigation by the Project on Government Oversight showed that about 40 percent of people placed in solitary confinement at ICE detention centers have mental illnesses.
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On the same day Dunlap signed his recusal, the EPA threw out an assessment that Politico said was set to find that “the levels of formaldehyde that most Americans breathe in daily puts them at risk for leukemia and other ailments.” Koch has lobbied for years to kill the assessment. “The timing of this doesn’t pass the sniff test,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the independent Project on Government Oversight. “It really does appear he wanted to weigh in on the formaldehyde issue for as long as he could.”
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America’s accounting watchdog is not exactly a paragon of effectiveness.
Set up in 2003 to oversee the audit profession after collusion led to the collapse of Enron and WorldCom, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has issued just $6.5 million in fines in its 16-year history. That’s especially surprising since the board found that the Big 4 accounting firms bungled almost a third of the audits it has analyzed since 2009.
Now it seems that, on top of this historically weak oversight, the PCAOB is just plain working less.
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But privacy advocates warn that the survey appeared to be weighed in favor of the proposal, which has been pushed by a private donor — the Ohio-based firm Persistent Surveillance Systems. In 2016, Persistent Surveillance Systems worked secretly with the Baltimore Police Department to fly a surveillance plane over the city. The program eventually was exposed and ended.
“This aerial surveillance program would be handed over to the city by a private donor without any oversight,” said Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for the Project on Government Oversight’s Constitution Project.
“Governments cannot act like some sort of a demigod in the sky, which is what they are trying to do here,” Mr. Laperruque told The Times.
He added that while police “are not bad actors,” strict oversight is always required during aerial surveillance to ensure that privacy rights are not infringed upon.
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Dunlap did eventually sign a recusal statement, though it was filed the same day EPA officially blocked the formaldehyde review.
"The timing of this doesn't pass the sniff test," Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, told Politico. "It really does appear he wanted to weigh in on the formaldehyde issue for as long as he could."
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Other aspects of Biden’s ethics plan include: preventing conflicts of interest among executive branch and congressional members, reducing the influence of money in politics and introducing a constitutional amendment to fund elections publicly.
“The plan looks to resolve many old and recently exposed ethics dilemmas that harm the integrity of our democracy,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the watchdog Project on Government Oversight. “His proposed solutions could prevent or expose backroom deals that aren't in the public's interest.” Amey said this was not an endorsement of the candidate.
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Sounds disturbingly similar to how the military-industrial complex operates, doesn’t it? “National security” is certainly a core component of the Deep State. As described by William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger of the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information, the “pots of money dedicated to fighting wars, preparing for yet more wars and dealing with the consequences of wars already fought” added up to more than $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2019.
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However, Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, sees things very differently, saying, “This report makes clear that, had the DEA’s oversight of these deadly drugs been more robust, thousands of our family members, friends, and neighbors might be alive today.”
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Sounds disturbingly similar to how the military-industrial complex operates, doesn’t it? “National security” is certainly a core component of the Deep State. As described by William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, of the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information, the “pots of money dedicated to fighting wars, preparing for yet more wars, and dealing with the consequences of wars already fought” added up to more than $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2019.
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Politico Morning Energy newsletter
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"The timing of this doesn't pass the sniff test," said Scott Amey, general counsel at the independent Project on Government Oversight. "It really does appear he wanted to weigh in on the formaldehyde issue for as long as he could." Democrats have already asked EPA's top ethics official to look into whether Dunlap violated his recusal statement, but ethics experts say that because Dunlap's recusal was voluntary, officials would have little recourse even if they determined he had violated his agreement.
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Not even the US military knows whether the jet will ever be reliable because it hasn’t even come close to being adequately tested and still faces myriad issues. Dan Grazier, an F-35 expert at the Project On Government Oversight, reported in August that the F-35 test fleet has only achieved an 11 percent "fully mission capable rate" – embarrassingly low when the initial goal was to reach 80 percent readiness by the end of operational testing.
One might wonder why South Korea is even taking delivery of a plane that, as a model, is still being evaluated and is by no means near full development seventeen years into the program. This is because Lockheed Martin is fast-tracking the rollout of units for foreign purchase to offset the outrageous cost of the program. Essentially South Korea is buying a fleet of unfinished, defective jets.
"I think the Republic of Korea will find that the F-35 will prove much more expensive to operate than has been advertised," Mr. Grazier told me by email. "The aircraft delivered so far have not been fully developed and tested and will require costly upgrades to bring them up to the promised performance standards, if the engineers are ever able to work out all of the technical issues that yet remain."
Operational testing has yielded a series of very troubling issues for the F-35A: the guns don’t shoot straight, which is obviously problematic for a jet that is supposed to be used, at least in part, as air support for ground troops; structural testing remains incomplete and it is uncertain whether the F-35A will ever have the lifespan advertised, a clear issue for already completed units; the jet, as an almost wholly computerized system, is extremely vulnerable to hacking; and the data processing technology required for use of the stealth function is flawed, has never properly been tested, and a 2018 US Air Force report indicates the research lab responsible doesn’t even have the equipment for realistic combat simulations – inadequacies that Grazier notes "…could put missions and troops at risk."
F-35 developers also moved from the development phase to the operational testing phase – "a milestone in any weapons program," according to Grazier – without adequately resolving "941 design flaws … with 102 listed as ‘Category I’ flaws that ‘may cause death [or] severe injury,’ or lead to major damage to the aircraft or seriously inhibit combat effectiveness…" He adds, "Each of these 102 flaws could ground aircraft or force them to abort missions."
What should perhaps be most alarming to South Koreans is that developers are rolling out these jets without the use of combat simulations necessary to evaluate them "…because the available test aircraft and the open-air test ranges in the western United States cannot replicate all the modern threats flights of six or more F-35s might face," per Grazier. The simulation center for this testing was not scheduled for completion until the end of 2019, meaning the units South Korea is now importing have been developed before any such evaluation.
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