The Intelligence Community's Official Whistleblower Channel Is Going To Start Hunting Down Leakers

from the prepare-for-the-worst-of-both-worlds dept

The Inspector General for the Intelligence Community is finally implementing long-resisted whistleblower-related reforms. The IG has previously buried reports indicating whistleblowers were being greeted with retaliation for going through the proper channels. Despite this, government officials continue to claim the only whistleblowers they'll recognize are those who use the internal options -- options that allow the government to control the narrative and, in many cases, do as little as possible to address complaints.

The Inspector General's office is one of the official channels. After turmoil that consumed most of last year -- including the ouster of Dan Meyer, the head of the IC's whistleblower outreach program -- a new Inspector General is in place. Michael Atkinson promised to get the IC IG's house in order after news surfaced of its burial of a damning whistleblower retaliation report earlier this year, but so far it's unclear what improvements have been made.

What does appear to be in place is the IG office's participation in the Forever War on Whistleblowers. National security reporter Jenna McLaughlin noticed this disturbing development in the IG office's latest semiannual report [PDF]:

Beginning in June 2018, the Investigations Division began to take steps to permit the ICIG to fulfill its responsibilities under Intelligence Community Directive 701, Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified National Security Information (ICD 701). In December 2017, the DNI revised ICD 701 to improve the IC’s efforts to detect, deter, report, and investigate unauthorized disclosures. The revised ICD imposed new responsibilities upon the ICIG to report and investigate unauthorized disclosures.

The office will somehow protect whistleblowers while hunting down those who operate outside official channels.

Under ICD 701, the ICIG will:

Review unauthorized disclosure cases where the FBI decides not to investigate or the FBI investigates but the Department of Justice declines prosecution, in coordination with the other Office(s) of Inspectors General involved, to determine whether an Inspector General administrative investigation is warranted.

Now, even if the FBI and DOJ decide a disclosure case isn't worth pursuing, the IG will open its own investigation and, apparently, see if it needs to talk the DOJ into taking another look at it. The IG is limited to administrative investigations, but there's no reason the DOJ can't turn it into a criminal investigation after receiving more info from the Intelligence Community Inspector General.

Oddly enough, this is followed directly in the report by the ICIG's announcement of a "Center for Protected Disclosures." This is the IG's belated compliance with whistleblower protections enacted during the Obama administration. Coming along too late to do people like Ed Snowden any good, the new hotline connects whistleblowers to the IG's office, hopefully in a way that keeps their complaints confidential and shields them from retaliation.

Hopefully, this new Center works better than the IG's old whistleblower business model, which saw all but one case resolved in favor of the government and the single outlier allowed to drag on for more than 700 days without resolution. But the IG's plan to get into the leak-hunting business tempers this mild good news, suggesting it may utilize its resources to hunt down those who bypass an office some IC employees justifiably believe won't protect them.

Filed Under: ed snowden, inspector general, intelligence community, leaks, official channels, whistleblowing

NSA Will Try To Stop Turning Whistleblowers Into Leakers With Kinder, Gentler Official Channels

from the ALL-WHISTLES-MUST-BE-BLOWN-INSIDE-THE-HOUSE----The-management dept

The NSA is promising to be kinder to whistleblowers.

The U.S. National Security Agency’s top oversight official, Robert Storch, is working to repair the spy agency’s reputation with whistleblowers in an effort to encourage staff to report wrongdoing internally, rather than go public.

“It’s really important we encourage whistleblowers to come forward and that they feel comfortable doing so and if there are allegations of reprisal then we take that very seriously,” Storch said in an interview with Reuters last week.

This is important, at least to the NSA, because its most famous whistleblowers have eventually gone outside the system to deliver news of systemic surveillance program abuse to the masses. I don't think NSA officials necessarily want to handle internal complaints and scale back abusive collection programs. I think they just want to make sure no one outside of the NSA and its direct oversight hear about it.

That being said, the NSA definitely needs to work on its interpersonal relationships with disgruntled employees. People yelling about Snowden not going through the proper channels didn't have much to say about his proper channel being on the chopping block for retaliating against a whistleblower. And protections for contractors are still weaker than those offered to federal employees, which means the NSA can keep complainers quieter by continuing to rely on outsiders to handle the dirty work of analyzing incoming intel.

To be fair, this effort to protect whistleblowers seems a lot more earnest than past efforts. At least in this case, the NSA consulted with outside groups for input on anti-retaliation policies.

Storch said he has made progress by working with civil rights and privacy groups.

That effort included a February meeting with the non-profit Project on Government Oversight and other similar organizations.

Even so, whistleblower protections work better in theory than in practice. The NSA is the government's most secretive agency and has a long history of abusing its surveillance authorities. It's been resistant to internal change for much of its lifespan and change is something nearly every whistleblower is seeking. If it can keep whistleblowers from becoming leakers, it can better hide its misdeeds from the public. And that's something we need to be wary of anytime the NSA starts talking about protecting employees who aren't happy with its programs, policies, or practices.

Filed Under: leaks, nsa, official channels, proper channels, whistleblowers

Intelligence Community Apparently Wants More Snowdens, Continues Ouster Of Official Whistleblower Channel

from the need-more-unauthorized-whistleblowing dept

The Intelligence Community -- sixteen government agencies engaged in intelligence work under the ODNI's direction -- doesn't have much in the way of effective oversight. It's also not fond of whistleblowers, despite several legislative efforts to force the IC to play nice with those who report wrongdoing. Because of this, it's been repeatedly rocked by leaks. That's the sort of thing that happens when someone clamps down on the official whistleblowing routes: the pressure has to escape somewhere.

Things will get worse in the IC, especially for whistleblowers, before it gets any better… or if it gets any better. A few months ago, the IC began ousting its in-house oversight. Dan Meyers, the Inspector General for the IC, is slowly and steadily being stripped of his power. Not only is Meyers barred from communicating with whistleblowers, but he's forbidden from briefing Congress or IC agencies about his office's tasks. He's also been stripped of his staff.

Things have gone from bad to worse, Jenna McLaughlin reports:

The chairman of the the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding to know why an employee in charge of whistleblower outreach was removed from his workplace “pending a tribunal.”

“I just learned that Dan Meyer, the Executive Director of Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection, was placed on administrative leave and escorted out of his offices pending a tribunal before senior executives to consider his proposed termination,” wrote Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, in a letter sent November 29 to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Wayne Stone, the acting director of Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

No one's saying why Meyer is being booted from the IG's office, but it appears to be related to the Trump administration's war on leakers. There's no room in the current administration for whistleblowing, and that's going to be a problem going forward. Removing lifeboats won't prevent a ship from being sunk.

Some inside the intelligence community remain concerned that sidelining Meyer, who helps employees field complaints legally, could inadvertently lead to the next major leaker, like former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Meyer is out as Inspector General and no replacement has been picked to head the IC's internal oversight. Senator Grassley, who's generally been good on whistleblower issues, seems to feel Meyer's ouster is retaliatory -- that his office is viewed as a threat to the government for encouraging whistleblowers to come forward with evidence of misconduct or malfeasance.

Grassley argued it is important that Meyer be protected from retaliation for managing his whistleblower protection program, and demanded any records and documents relating to his case.

“For the agency to take such a drastic personnel action while there is no confirmed, permanent Inspector General in place irreparably undermines the independence of that office,” he wrote.

The lack of a successor is concerning. It shows the agencies involved in the ouster aren't interested in any form of oversight, much less honoring laws protecting whistleblowers. IC employees with concerns will have no official outlet to bring their complaints and concerns to. This leaves only unofficial routes, which certainly can't be the administration's intention. Agencies with the power to violate rights en masse via unauthorized or misused surveillance can't be left to sort out their own internal issues.

Filed Under: dan coats, dan meyer, inspector general, intelligence communicate, odni, official channels, whistleblowers

CIA Snags Confidential Whistleblower Communications Sent To Congress

from the protection-in-name-only dept

The government seems unable (and unwilling) to differentiate between whistleblowers and "insider threats." "Dissatisfaction with US policies" would seem to be a trait inherent to whistleblowers, but that's right up there at the top of the list of warning signs for insider threats. The FBI claimed it had this whistleblower/threat problem sorted out, abelit in the worst way possible: requiring whistleblowers to "register" in order to avoid being caught in the "insider threat" dragnet. But no one can get any details out of the agency as to how "registering" whistleblowers encourages whistleblowing, much less how the FBI handles these registered whistleblowers. When asked, agency officials simply walked away from the conversation.

The CIA is no better, apparently. McClatchy DC reports that the agency intercepted protected whistleblower communications.

The CIA obtained a confidential email to Congress about alleged whistleblower retaliation related to the Senate’s classified report on the agency’s harsh interrogation program, triggering fears that the CIA has been intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases.

The CIA got hold of the legally protected email and other unspecified communications between whistleblower officials and lawmakers this spring, people familiar with the matter told McClatchy. It’s unclear how the agency obtained the material.

The agency obviously has ways to dig into protected emails from other government agencies, even if it can't seem to navigate its own internal email system. This news is troublesome enough, but the timeframe of the interception makes it worse. According to McClatchy, this was obtained during the CIA's unauthorized "investigation" of Senate staffers over documents related to the (still unreleased) "Torture Report."

So, while the CIA was digging through the Senate's computers, it was also taking a look at whistleblower-related correspondence.

Somehow, according to these people, [CIA Inspector General David] Buckley obtained the email, which was written by Daniel Meyer, the intelligence community’s top official for whistleblower cases, to the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a leading whistleblower-protection advocate. The Senate Intelligence Committee also learned of the matter, said the knowledgeable people.

After obtaining the email, Buckley approached Meyer’s boss, I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the 17-agency U.S. intelligence community, in what may have constituted a violation of the confidentiality of the whistleblowing process, they said.

This indicates the proper channels for whistleblowing are inherently (and quite possibly, purposefully) leaky. There's no true protection here, not when the agency being called out can access supposedly protected communications. Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake says this is a side effect of the "Insider Threat" program's reach.

[T]he interception probably occurred because it was caught by the “Insider Threat” program. The program was adopted throughout government in the aftermath of military whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s disclosures of hundreds of thousands of previously classified documents to WikiLeaks.

McClatchy has exposed the “Insider Threat” program as a system that is sweeping in its capabilities. Any “unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material,” can be targeted. It encourages federal employees and contractor to be suspicious of each other and watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors.” Failure to report on suspicious activity could result in penalties. Plus, the program equates leaks to the media with espionage.

The program keeps profiles of “Disgruntled Employees” and “Insider Threats.” What is there to stop officials from using these profiles to target whistleblowers?

Most whistleblowers are "disgruntled" employees. No one blows the whistle because they're happy with their employer's activities. Intelligence agencies, in particular, are primed for overreaction after Edward Snowden's leaks. Gosztola quotes James Clapper's plans for maintaining near constant surveillance of those granted security clearances.

“What we need is — and this is, I think, pretty much recognized — is a system of continuous evaluation where when someone is in the system and they’re cleared initially, then we have a way of monitoring their behavior, both their electronic behavior on the job as well as off the job to see if there is a potential clearance issue.”

The NSA and CIA see whistleblowers as "threats," no matter if they fit the government's lofty ideal or not. When a CIA official snags protected whistleblower communications, he's simply protecting the agency's operational security, assets, etc. -- whatever justification fits.

Clapper talks a good game about protecting true whistleblowers (i.e., not Snowden, Thomas Drake, etc.), a definition that really shouldn't be left to the Director of National Intelligence to decide -- not with his track record. "True" whistleblower cases would be provided confidentiality safeguards, according to Clapper, although his statements don't specify how these would avoid the dragnet cast over those with security clearances. In this case, the CIA's protections -- whatever they were -- completely failed.

The interception of Meyer’s email would also fall into the category of “such cases” [protected confidential whistleblowers] and apparently the safeguards do not work because the person alleging retaliation was exposed to further retaliation from CIA leadership.

The more defenders of the intelligence community claim there are "proper channels" for whistleblowing while condemning the actions of Snowden and Manning, the more evidence emerges that the proper channels are completely useless. Given this, walking out the door with a hard drive full of documents seems like the sane plan.

Filed Under: charles, chuck grassley, cia, confidential, daniel meyer, david buckley, mccullough, official channels, torture report, whistleblower

No, Snowden Didn't Have Any 'Other Avenues' To Blow The Whistle

from the let's-get-real dept

One of the key points that defenders of the NSA surveillance efforts keep making is that if Ed Snowden was so upset by what was happening he had "other avenues" to make his concerns known. Jennifer Hoelzer, whom you may recall from the post she wrote here about President Obama's supposed desire for an open debate concerning NSA surveillance, has penned an excellent piece for Slate, once again debunking the President. This time, it's about those supposed "other avenues" he had. As she notes, the problem is that anyone he took these concerns to would brush him off by claiming "it's legal." But the real concern the public has is the very fact that the NSA and so many of its defenders think this is legal.

If Edward Snowden had concerns that one of his co-workers was abusing the NSA’s surveillance authority to—for example—collect data on a former girlfriend or blackmail a member of Congress, he could have reported his concerns to a supervisor, and it’s highly likely that person would have done something about it.

But, contrary to what the president seems to think, Edward Snowden wasn’t concerned that the NSA was “improperly” collecting information on hundreds of millions of Americans. He was concerned that the government was collecting information on hundreds of millions of Americans. And how exactly does the president think Snowden should have raised that concern?

This is a key distinction that very few defenders of the NSA (and who are attacking Snowden) seem to grasp. The fact that the public -- and many in Congress -- have since spoken out in outrage over the program certainly suggests this is a key point. Every time NSA defenders argue "well, it's legal" they miss out on the fact that a very large number of people don't care because they don't think it should be legal at all. That's the debate we're trying to have -- and it's the one President Obama, Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers, Keith Alexander and James Clapper still can't even recognize is the key question.

Either way, as Hoelzer notes, Snowden really had nowhere to "complain" to about this actual issue:

Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen, which requires employees to report “all suspected violations of the law” and cautions them to “take care to not report a violation to someone that [they] believe is involved in the matter.”

Well, nearly everyone Edward Snowden worked for—up to and including the president of the United States—was involved in the matter. So, again, whom exactly should he have gone to with his concerns?

Okay, well, what about Congress? Multiple people have suggested he could go talk to members of Congress. But, not so fast. Hoelzer takes a look at the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's website where it has a page on How to File A Whistleblower Complaint, explaining the "process" for contacting Congress (if you aren't comfortable raising the concern within the intelligence community, which, clearly, Snowden was not). But, again, not so easy:

But then I noticed a problem. Before bringing an “urgent concern” to Congress, the guidance states that all potential intelligence community whistle-blowers must first notify the DNI of their “intent to contact the congressional intelligence committees directly.” In other words, if Snowden wanted to inform the Senate intelligence committee that the DNI had lied, he would first have to inform the DNI that he intended to inform on him. That seems like it could be a problem.

But, let’s say it wasn’t. Let’s say the director of national intelligence did the honorable thing and allowed Snowden to go to the Senate intelligence committee with evidence that he lied. Would Snowden have had any reason to believe going to Congress would make the least bit of difference?

Probably not, since the House and Senate intelligence committees were already aware of the NSA’s activities. And, having worked for Wyden, a committee member who spent years trying to raise concerns about domestic surveillance, I can tell you, individual members of Congress were virtually hamstrung from doing anything about the administration’s activities. Especially since the executive branch’s classification rules forbid the senator from sharing his concerns with anyone outside of the intelligence committee, including staff.

So, really, what "official channels" could Snowden have possibly used? As Hoelzer notes, the only way to really blow the whistle on this was to go "over the head" of the federal government and the President -- and that's to go to the American public.

I understand Obama’s frustration. No one likes it when someone goes over his head. It’s humiliating. But when the guy in charge appears to be a significant part of the problem, sometimes the only way to resolve the problem is to let his boss know what’s going on. And when the guy in charge is the president of the United States, that means letting the American people know what he’s been up to.

On that front, it appears that Snowden did exactly the right thing in how he blew the whistle.

Filed Under: congress, dni, ed snowden, james clapper, nsa, nsa surveillance, official channels, whistleblowing

Obama's Simply Wrong: Whistleblower Protections Would Not Have Applied To Snowden

from the that's-not-true dept

During the Q&A portion of today's President Obama press conference, reporter Chuck Todd asked Obama about Ed Snowden and whether he was a "patriot," after Obama announced some reforms and even directly made clear that those who support civil liberties and greater transparency "love their country" and are "patriots." Except, Obama said that he does not think Snowden is a patriot, in part because he had signed the Whistleblower Protection Act and extended the protections to the intelligence community. This is laughable on a variety of levels, including the Obama administration's actions against other whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and William Binney, who did go through official channels, and then were subject to ridiculous investigations and (with Drake) totally trumped up charges on a bogus unrelated issue.

But there's a bigger point: Snowden actually is not covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act, entirely contrary to President Obama's claims. That's because the act does not cover contractors, such as those who worked for the NSA via Dell or Booz Allen like Snowden did. After the Snowden revelations came out, the Obama administration admitted that it was "looking at" ways to extend the protections to contractors, but at this time (and at the time that Snowden leaked) they do not cover him.

In other words, there were no legal protections under the Act, contrary to Obama's claims, and (worse) it's not as though the government has a history of respecting such whistleblower protections in the first place. Why bother when you can just trump up some other charges on those same people as punishment? Remember that this is the very same Obama administration that has directly declared that anyone leaking documents is aiding the enemy.

Filed Under: barack obama, contractors, ed snowden, official channels, thomas drake, whistleblower protection act, whistleblowers