Seeking To Root Out Leakers, The Intelligence Community Is Destroying Official Routes For Whistleblowers

from the ensuring-there's-only-one-way-out dept

Fri, Oct 20th 2017 3:23am — Tim Cushing

The Trump Administration is continuing its war on leakers. It's probably meant to keep whistleblowers at bay as well. This isn't necessarily a trait unique to Trump's White House. There really hasn't been a whistleblower-friendly administration in pretty much ever, but this particular administration has been awash in leaked documents, each one prompting more severe crackdowns.

But it's going to come to a head at the national security level. The "Intelligence Community" -- sixteen agencies participating and partaking in intelligence analysis and collection under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- is basically ousting its internal oversight. Jenna McLaughlin, writing for Foreign Policy, has the details.

[Dan] Meyer, whose job is to talk to intelligence community whistleblowers, can no longer talk to whistleblowers. He has been barred from communicating with whistleblowers, the main responsibility of his job as the executive director for intelligence community whistleblowing and source protection. He is currently working on an instructional pamphlet for whistleblowers, and he will have no duties to perform after he’s completed that work.

He can also no longer brief the agencies or the congressional committees on his work as he’s done in the past, send out his whistleblower newsletter, or conduct outreach. And he has no deputy or staff.

This is the end result of internal struggles and the continual sidelining of the so-called "proper channels." They weren't worth much when Snowden decided to leak. They were relatively worthless when others leaked documents years before Snowden began changing the intelligence community from the far outside. And if they were ever going to be worth anything, that effort has been derailed in favor of hunting down leakers.

This is incredibly stupid. If the administration wants to stop leaks, one of the better tools is proper channels that actually work -- ones that get results and shield whistleblowers from retaliation. Instead, intelligence officials have decided leaking and whistleblowing are pretty much the same thing and have headed off attempts to build an official whistleblowing outfit worth a damn

What's being ousted, bit by bit, is the IC's Inspector General's office. Elimination of whistleblower outlets may only be part of the plan. Once rendered toothless, it may be prevented from performing other oversight duties. But the war of leakers starts where it always starts: with whistleblowers. If the Inspector General's office is completely neutralized, the only option will be leaking, not exactly the best news for this particularly sieve-like administration.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: inspector general, intelligence community, leaks, whistleblowers

25 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 4:23am

"this particular administration has been awash in leaked documents, each one prompting more severe crackdowns"

The beatings will continue until moral improves.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 4:25am

The timing is suspisious. As much of a pain it is to deal with "the witch-hunt" Mueller and others are performing, it seems like he is very concerned about specifically that type of information. Why else try to close that channel?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
David, 20 Oct 2017 @ 5:07am

Good.
This means that the "proper channels" joke is getting retired, right?

The way to deal with an active volcano is to plug it up. Look ma, no more leaks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 5:32am

all this shows is that there must be a myriad of wrong-doings by government and it's agencies and how the fear of the public (who they are supposed to be representing and protecting!) finding out exactly what is going on is so real as to warrant this massive cover up and instigation of whatever methods possible to get whistle blowers and leakers locked up! and the USA fought against this in world wars! look at what it has become!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael, 20 Oct 2017 @ 5:35am

"He is currently working on an instructional pamphlet for whistleblowers, and he will have no duties to perform after he’s completed that work"

Not only did they take away any additional work, but the pamphlet can really only consist of a couple of recommendations:

Option 1) Don't blow the whistle. It will probably ruin your life.

Option 2) Take the following steps:
- Gather your evidence
- Immediately leave the country and seek refuge in a country that will not extradite
- Pass your evidence to a news outlet outside of the US
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 5:54am

Re: Good.
That might work for a while ....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 5:56am

Re:
"the USA fought against this in world wars"

Ummm - wut? Perhaps a review of history is in order
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:12am

Re:
I think you meant 'morale' but 'morals' works too.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:20am

Re: Good.

The way to deal with an active volcano is to plug it up.

Ahh, so that's what those human sacrifices into volcanoes were for. Looks like this administration is trying something similar.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
JoeDetroit (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 6:23am

Leaks/Whistle-blowing
Leaks/Whistle-blowing are the same exact thing to the people in charge & has been for quite some time. Even more so for our current Administration.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 8:05am

Re: Re:
Not really. Morals wouldn't actually improve; they'd have to decrease in number.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 8:34am

Re:
Isn't it more like 'We can't have all these whistleblowers around, they're all out of tune and can't keep a beat, therefore silence is golden' said the tone deaf, rhythm impaired, and very frightened leader?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 8:35am

Re: Re: Re:
So...

The beatings will continue until morale improves and morals are destroyed!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Baron von Robber, 20 Oct 2017 @ 9:02am

Re:
Yea, Russian interference with an possible agent in the highest office is 'witch-hunt'.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 9:36am

Let me understand...
If you see something bad, you are supposed to take it up the chain.
The chain is told to crush you & discredit you, ignore & cover-up and wrong doing reported.
Lets get rid of someone who might actually punish us for attacking people reporting on crimes we commit.

So with this ideal system they are SHOCKED just SHOCKED that people run the risk of taking things public. The system is broken, it protects law breakers, & the entire system is on the side of hiding bad acts.

Maybe if they stopped lying to the public and their alleged oversight we could trust them to keep their own house clean... but yeah that's not happening.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
David, 20 Oct 2017 @ 1:07pm

Re: Re:
That was my first reaction as well. But fascism was actually more defining for the axis powers than national socialism, and fascism as the doctrine about government considerations trumping the people's interests is definitely quite related with considering as unnecessary both accountability and any manner of keeping the public informed of the government's actions.

The U.S. did not just fight Germany in WWII. Now bringing WWI into it seems indeed like sort of a stretch as that wasn't as much a clash of doctrines.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 1:47pm

Why not get rid of the whistleblower hotline?
All the whistleblowers were staying away from it, therefore it wasn't doing its job of identifying whistleblowers for termination.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 3:26pm

Brilliant!
Take away the 'official' channels so that the handful of people that were still naive enough to think that they would accomplish anything other than painting a target on their backs by going through the 'official channels' are faced with either keeping quiet or dumping anything directly to the public.

That'll certainly cut down on that whistle-blower problem.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Get off my cyber-lawn! (profile), 20 Oct 2017 @ 3:41pm

Re: Re:
That's "Dear Leader" to you!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Oct 2017 @ 5:32pm

"Trump killed the Snowden star"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Padpaw (profile), 21 Oct 2017 @ 4:12am

What is the difference between a leak and a whistleblower?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
David, 21 Oct 2017 @ 5:04am

Re:
I know that one! One is a myth and the other lives at the North Pole. No wait, that was between a good banjo player and Santa Claus.

Uhm... If you blow the whistle and nobody is there to hear it, is there a sound?

Or was it about when you open the box and can hear a whistle, the cat is a traitor?

No, I forgot the punch line. But it was something about whistleblowers being imaginary. If they effect any change, they are traitors, and if they don't, they aren't whistleblowers but fired. Something like that. But no, they are fired either way.

Somebody remind me?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Coyne Tibbets (profile), 21 Oct 2017 @ 6:58am

Re: Re:
> If you blow the whistle and nobody is there to hear it, is there a sound?

If you blow the whistle and an anvil lands on your head, is there a sound?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 22 Oct 2017 @ 7:42am

Re: Re:
well ... do russians float?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Oct 2017 @ 9:20am

Re: Re:
Morale
[ link to this | view in thread ]