Yesterday, the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, testified before the House Intelligence Committee about the issues raised in the whistleblower complaint over a phone call by President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine.
The whistleblower has faced attacks by both President Trump, and many Republican members of Congress, that are undermining the legitimacy of whistleblowers. A group of former intelligence community inspectors general, including Joel Brenner, former inspector general at the National Security Agency, have signed an open letter calling on Congress to protect the whistleblower from retaliation and unwarranted attacks, while also supporting Atkinson’s handling of the situation.
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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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This Week at POGO
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Mounting evidence shows the FAA’s rules for certifying planes’ safety fundamentally conflict with meaningful oversight.
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POGO in the News
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CNN ANCHOR: The type of rhetoric by some in the Republican party has spurred the inspector-general to take a remarkable step yesterday, twice correcting the record on what the President and his allies have said. Noting the whistleblower had “direct knowledge” of certain alleged conduct. With us now is Mandy Smithberger, she's the Director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Mandy, thank you very much for being here… let me just ask you, your read on the fact that the IG appointed by the President felt the need to do this twice yesterday publicly to correct the record. POGO'S MANDY SMITHBERGER: So it's an unusual step and I think it really underscores the importance of having independent watchdogs to oversee our federal government. It’s very clear in the law that the standard is a reasonable belief that misconduct had occurred. It doesn't matter what was on the form. And again as the IG clarified yesterday, the whistleblower had direct and indirect knowledge. What's important to look at his underlying disclosure focusing on a form as a red herring. CNN ANCHOR: [...T]he law is designed, is it not, to protect whistleblower’s identity so they feel the security to report such things within government without penalty? MANDY: The President's statements are extremely troubling. I think an important thing to keep in mind is that the protections in place in the law frequently look a lot stronger than we actually see them being enforced… And what we’ve seen throughout this process is that we need to strengthen the protective channels in the whistleblower protections because there were a number of places where the process broke down and Congress might have gotten this information but for that IG really making sure that he was fulfilling his duty before Congress. Watch the broadcast |
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“It isn’t surprising to me that the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower is from the intelligence community,” says Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight. “Whistleblowers don’t plan to become whistleblowers. People think of whistleblowers as some kind of anarchist, but they tend to be more conservative than we realize and to see the world in terms of right and wrong.”
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Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, called Trump’s apparent desire to unmask the whistleblower “horrific and chilling.”
“It’s the last thing a president should be doing if he really wanted to root out waste, fraud and abuse,” she said.
[...] While Smithberger said whistleblowers do enjoy protections, they are not always absolute.
Revealing the identity of a complainant can be a crime if that person, for example, has served in certain covert intelligence roles. The law, however, does not extend to non-covert officers, Smithberger said.
A 2012 policy directive issued by the Obama administration protects whistleblowers from revocation of any security clearance they may hold. The protection is not codified in law, Smithberger said, and could be rolled back by another administration.
If a person were fired in retaliation for making a whistleblower complaint, Smithberger said a complainant has the right to appeal the action through the agency’s inspector general. An inspector general may recommend restoration of the job, but the recommendation is not necessarily binding, she said.
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It’s not just government retaliation that concerns Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, which Fitzgerald helped found. “I’m frankly terrified for his personal safety,” she said, citing Trump’s words. She’s also worried because of the $50,000 reward for “information relating to the identity of the ‘Trump Whistleblower’ ” offered by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, according to the Washington Examiner, which previously branded them “right-wing smear merchants.”
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MCCAMMON: Moss says it will be up to members of Congress and their staffers to respect the privacy of the whistleblower as the process moves forward. Justin Rood is with the watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight, which trains congressional staff on how to protect whistleblowers. One way, Rood says, is by not leaning too heavily on their testimony in building a case. POGO's JUSTIN ROOD: You try as little as possible to rely on a single source of an allegation. You try to corroborate as much as possible. And you try to keep their name and their existence out of the investigation as much as possible. MCCAMMON: Rood says it may be more difficult to keep this whistleblower out of the public eye given that this complaint points directly at the president. Listen to the broadcast |
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A study on impeachment by the Congressional Research Service doesn’t indicate a vote is needed, according to Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight.
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Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, said the list of corrections was “surprisingly long” and raises questions of whether “they messed up and skipped some editorial or revision review before publishing.”
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Three former Pennsylvania congressmen, including two who served on the House ethics committee, are becoming lobbyists, joining the hundreds of former lawmakers seeking influence with their one-time colleagues in the Capitol.
[...] It’s a legal practice, but one that ethics watchdogs say adds to public cynicism about Congress. When lawmakers leap to jobs that trade on their inside access, it raises questions about whether their career plans influenced their work in Congress, said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a policy analyst at The Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
“What we fear and what we see a lot is that people are cashing in on their access and their relationships, not their expertise,” added Hedtler-Gaudette. “You’re there to serve your constituents and the public, you’re not there to have some kind of lucrative post-Congress career.”
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But Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told USA Today that whistleblower protections contains loopholes which mean that a whistleblower not serving in a covert intelligence role might be lawfully exposed.
She said that whistleblowers could appeal being fired with the inspector general, but that the inspector general’s decision to reinstate the person’s employment is non-binding.
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With President Trump now facing an impeachment inquiry over his request that the president of Ukraine investigate his political foe, Joe Biden, White House staff now face a decision: Cooperate with Democrats or risk legal jeopardy themselves, says Justin Rood, director of the Congressional Oversight Initiative at the Project on Government Oversight. Still, it's not clear if a still-divided Democratic caucus in the House will have the votes to impeach, should it come to that, says Lindsey McPherson, CQ Roll Call's House reporter. Listen to the podcast |
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Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, is slightly less generous with his assessment. As he told Quartz, “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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Unlike Drake and Kiriakou, it doesn’t appear the Trump whistle-blower has spoken with journalists or other members of the media, which likely protects them from criminal prosecution. That doesn’t mean, however, they are in completely settled legal territory.
It's not entirely clear, for instance, how fully the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act shields people from retaliation, says Liz Hempowicz, the director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit that works to expose misconduct in the US government. “Retaliation protections that intelligence community whistle-blowers have are not very enforceable,” she says. “It’s a problem because on paper, they look pretty good.” The issue, in part, is that the protections rely a policy directive from the Obama administration, rather than a statute written by Congress.
Hempowicz hopes that as a result of the current complaint, Congress will step in and provide greater clarity about how whistle-blowers from intelligence agencies will be protected in the future. “The silver lining to all of this is that there is an appetite to address the deficiencies in the law,” she says. If the White House is “questioning if someone is even a whistle-blower—who followed all the proper channels—what is the incentive for anyone else to come forward?”
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In addition to jacking up military spending, Thornberry’s marquee priority while serving as committee chair was to overhaul the weapons acquisition process for the military in 2015. His critics warned that this would dramatically reduce the Pentagon’s ability to provide oversight and audits in the contracting process and could give defense contractors far more leeway to charge excessive prices on the backs of the taxpayer. Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight, called the reforms “overly friendly to the industry and costly to taxpayers.”
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Consolidating federal agency ethics operations under one office can be a good way to ensure consistency and efficiency. But when the Interior Department did so, it put the ethics office inside the legal office. Liz Hempowicz argues that could work against the public interest in federal ethics. She is director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight, and she joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more explanation.
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“Contractors seek opportunities where they can provide goods and services to the federal government,” says Scott Amey, General Counsel The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, and abuse of power, and which has recently given testimony on immigrant detention centers. “While some companies might avoid socially or ethically concerning contracts, others will be happy to jump right in, thinking that if it isn’t us, it will be someone else. Hopefully, the products or services are essential and the contracting process is competitive and well-informed.”
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"When you create a new bureaucracy, that bureaucracy tends to focus on its own ends. That's where the problems happen," Dan Grazier, military fellow at the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told SpaceNews.
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Finally, Louis Fisher, a Constitutional Scholar at the Project on Government Oversight and a Visiting Scholar at the William and Mary Law School, reviews the alarming reversal of Constitutional precedent that has characterized many of the Supreme Court’s “war powers”-related decisions from 1936 onward. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress “express and implied authority in matters of war and foreign commerce,” Fisher begins, and for the first 147 years of its existence, Supreme Court precedent reflected Constitutional intent. Beginning with the 1936 case of United States v. Curtiss-Wright, however, the Court began to incrementally and systematically chip away at Congress’ statutory powers to initiate war and regulate foreign and interstate commerce, relegating the primary authority for these actions to the executive branch instead. “This determination to elevate the president above Congress,” writes Fisher, “inflict[s] substantial damage to democratic principles, the system of separation of powers and checks and balances, and constitutional government.” His article explores the series of flawed premises, judicial errors, and misconceptions about Presidential authority—especially in military affairs—that for nearly a century have inflated the power of the presidency at the expense of our Constitutional principles.
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Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for the Project on Government Oversight’s Constitution Project has some advice for companies that law enforcement agencies interact with for the purposes of performing facial recognition; include such interactions in your transparency reports. In a Lawfare blog post, he explores the possible directions that police may take in future searches of image sources.
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“It’s a bit unfortunate that it took this national scandal in 2014 for this office to really finally draw scrutiny,” said Nick Schwellenbach, the communications director for the special counsel’s office at the time. Schwellenbach is now the director of investigations for the Project on Government Oversight, a government accountability nonprofit.
[...]“It’s still a continuing cause for concern,” Schwellenbach said. “The numbers you just gave me don’t inspire any confidence that things are getting better.”
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