Donald Trump Fires Inspector General Who Brought Ukraine Phone Call Whistleblower Complaint To Congress

from the just-more-retaliation-targeting-the-proper-channels dept

No one really needs to wait until Friday afternoon to bury bad news. Not these days when bad news is all we seem to have, occasionally mixed with even worse news. But the White House remains the White House, so the time-honored process of dumping stuff you want to stay out of the headlines right before everyone punches out for the weekend remains in place.

The government as a whole claims it wants whistleblowers to report wrongdoing through the proper channels. It then routinely follows this up by ensuring the proper channels remain the best way to see good deeds punished.

The whistleblower that reported President Trump's inappropriate conversation with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky saw their report buried by the White House's Office of Legal Counsel. So much for the proper channels. President Trump himself asked for the whistleblower to be outed, undermining the protections the federal government has established to ensure wrongdoing is reported.

The only party receptive to the whistleblower's complaints has now been fired by President Trump, closing the loop on the White House's retaliatory actions.

President Donald Trump on Friday fired Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who had told Congress about the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump's impeachment, the President told Congress in a letter obtained by CNN.

So, there's another spot open in the administration -- one that will probably be filled by an underqualified suck-up, rather than someone who can actually do the job. Trump's faith in appointees often appears to be directly related to how good they make him look, rather than how well they do their jobs.

"As is the case with regard to other positions where I, as President, have the power of appointment ... it is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general," Trump wrote. "That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General."

Atkinson's response letter is worth reading. It makes it clear his firing was politically motivated and had nothing to do with his ability to carry out his duties.

It is hard not to think that the President's loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, and from my commitment to continue to do so.

More of the same from this administration, which isn't all that different from the actions of the administrations that preceded Trump's. Whistleblowers get punished. Those aiding whistleblowers in their efforts by following the law are also retaliated against with alarming frequency.

This is what whistleblower laws are supposed to deter. But they're ultimately toothless, especially when it comes to presidential appointees who can be hired and fired at will. Since the protections only go so far, whistleblowers are likely to be deterred by appointees inhabiting the "proper channels," who may selectively bury reports to ensure their own employment continues. Those that do pass on information that will displease the administration put their own necks on the line, and that's the sort of ideal that rarely has a 100% participation rate in Washington, DC.

It would be nice if these protections -- and the rules against retaliation -- were respected across the board. But they'll never be. They'll only be used when they're politically expedient.

Filed Under: donald trump, friday night massacre, inspector general, leaks, michael atkinson, retaliation, whistleblower protections, whistleblowers

Buried Whistleblower Report Apparently Involves President Trump's Conversations With A Foreign Leader

from the all-very-above-board-and-not-worrying-at-all dept

At the very last minute of last week -- prime government news-dumping time -- Rep. Adam Schiff announced the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was (perhaps unlawfully) refusing to turn over a whistleblower report to House Intelligence Community.

That the ODNI would blow off its oversight isn't unusual. The Intelligence Community has long treated its obligations as mere suggestions, leaving it to whistleblowers and leakers to expose wrongdoing. What was a bit more unusual were the allegations being buried: what was forwarded to the ODNI by the IC Inspector General suggested the Trump Administration itself was involved.

The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials. This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible “serious or flagrant” misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.    

Whatever is contained in the unseen report, the ODNI definitely does not want to talk about. Not even behind closed doors with the House Intelligence Committee. The New York Times reports the head of the ODNI has blown off Rep. Schiff's demands.

The acting director of national intelligence will not testify before Congress this week or immediately hand over a whistle-blower complaint to lawmakers, escalating a standoff between Capitol Hill and leaders of the intelligence agencies.

What little information has surfaced is still pretty much detail-free, but the ODNI's general counsel sent a letter to Schiff that adds a bit more to the theory these still-buried allegations involve top-level White House officials.

The complaint involves conduct by someone “outside the intelligence community” and does not involve intelligence activity under the supervision of Mr. Maguire, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Jason Klitenic, wrote in a letter on Tuesday to Mr. Schiff that was obtained by The New York Times.

It is definitely someone outside of the intelligence community. The Washington Post blows the lid off the report the ODNI doesn't want to hand over to Congress. It indeed goes all the way to the top.

The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

One of the officials said the communication was a phone call. Given the time frame, it appears to be one of several phone calls to world leaders Trump made in the preceding weeks, including a July 31 call to Vladimir Putin and communications with Kim Jong Un during the summer. Given the troubling things Trump has said publicly about these two, it doesn't stretch the imagination much to assume he's said some legitimately worrying things to them behind the scenes.

This would fit into the DNI's claims the whistleblower report can't be handed to the House Oversight Committee because it contains "confidential and potentially privileged communications." However, it does appear Rep. Schiff and the Committee will at least finally be hearing something about the buried report. The Washington Post report says acting ODNI Joseph Maguire -- along with IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson -- will be testifying at a closed Congressional hearing about the whistleblower complaint, contrary to the earlier New York Times reporting.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the public will hear much about the details. Whatever Trump said to whatever foreign leader will remain under wraps, even if the alleged "promise" has the potential to affect all of us.

Filed Under: adam schiff, donald trump, inspector general, national security, odni, whistleblower, whistleblower protections, whistleblowing

Senators Demand Investigation Of Intelligence Community's Refusal To Implement Whistleblower Protections

from the incentives-unperverse;-rejected dept

When the Snowden leaks dropped, plenty of people rushed to criticize his actions, saying he should have brought his concerns to officials via the proper channels. Always assumed to be mostly worthless, the intervening four years have proven nothing shoots messengers faster than the "proper channels." Despite periodic legislative attempts to institute better whistleblower protections, working within the system rarely produces positive changes. It does, however, subject the whistleblower to plenty of retaliation.

This sad fact is personified by Dan Meyer -- the former official whistleblower channel for the Intelligence Community. Meyer blew the whistle himself, pointing out wrongdoing by top IC officials. Now, he's being forced out of office, clearing the path for the IC's attempt to rebrand whistleblowers as "insider threats." Meyer is facing an ad hoc Star Chamber of IC Inspector Generals, all of them apparently gunning for his swift removal.

Meyer, who for the past four years has served as executive director of Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection, has come under fire amidst a move to reduce his role in educating employees at the 17 intelligence agencies about their rights and obligations in reporting alleged waste, fraud and abuse.

A special executive review board composed of an unusual grouping of IGs from other agencies has been hearing from witnesses concerning management’s decision not to certify Meyer after his probationary period as program manager. That decision could result in his firing. Meyer has many years of experience working with whistleblowers in Defense Department agencies.

Meyer's whistleblowing concerned IC agencies' apparent refusal to shield whistleblowers from retaliation. The irony likely isn't lost on Meyer, but leaving the government with all the irony you can carry isn't much of a severance package. Meanwhile, officials accused of retaliation are jockeying for top spots in the new administration.

The nominee for CIA inspector general, Christopher Sharpley, has several outstanding retaliation complaints against him that could delay his confirmation. Sharpley is mired in ongoing reprisal cases from at least two former CIA Office of Inspector General employees, Jonathan Kaplan and Andrew Bakaj.

The inspector general at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Kristi Waschull, is plagued by retaliation complaints by former employees who argue she is too deferential to her former colleagues and friends in management at the agency, and that she has softened internal reports and neutered the agency, as FP reported.

Meanwhile, George Ellard, the NSA inspector general who was placed on administrative leave after he was found by a panel of other IGs in 2016 to have retaliated against a whistleblower, got his job back in the new administration.

Whatever whistleblower protections have been erected over the past several years are being methodically stripped away, even as the Intelligence Community talks a good game about "rigorous oversight" and "unprecedented transparency." This isn't sitting well with a few legislators, including longtime advocates of whistleblowers.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) of the Intelligence Committee, along with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, penned a letter to the Government Accountability Office on Dec. 7 demanding that the oversight agency conduct a far-reaching review.

[...]

“The Inspectors General within the Intelligence Community have the responsibility to oversee the protection of whistleblowers, ensure that whistleblower protection policies and processes are properly adhered to, and guarantee that claims made by whistleblowers are investigated in a timely and fair manner,” the senators wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by Foreign Policy.

It's going to be a mess of acronyms if everything goes to plan. The Government Accountability Office will audit the whistleblower protection efforts of the NSA, NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), CIA, and the IC Inspector General. That's a lot of secretive entities with zero desire to share their internal behavior with outsiders. But given the long history of whistleblower retaliation in these agencies, there's no way they can be trusted to investigate themselves.

In the meantime, one of the best whistleblower outlets in the Intelligence Community is being kicked out of the inner circle, if not out of the government entirely. Replacing him won't be a priority for the IC, which has harbored several enemies of whistleblowers for several years. As this administration continues to root out leakers, the situation is only going to get worse.

Filed Under: congress, dan meyer, intelligence community, whistleblower protections, whistleblowers

Legislators Want Better Whistleblower Protections, Forget To Include Their Own Staff Members

from the Ohhh,-THOSE-unprotected-government-employees dept

This administration hasn't been big on protecting whistleblowers. It often talks about increasing transparency and accountability, but its actions have been the complete opposite. The same goes for the rest of the government. Agencies institute whistleblower protections, often in response to Inspector Generals' reports detailing violations of existing policies, but still remain much more interested in nabbing "insider threats" than protecting whistleblowers from retaliation.

Various bills have been introduced to strengthen protections for whistleblowers. But, as Marcy Wheeler (writing for Expose Facts) points out, legislators fighting for whistleblowers are leaving behind a lot of people very close to them.

When Congress passes good governance laws — most notably FOIA — they tend to exempt themselves.

They’ve done the same with a series of Whistleblower Protection laws. While they’ve amended the Whistleblower Protection Act and added protections to employees in the private finance industry, they have not offered the same protections to their employees.

Sadly, this seems to be the case far too often. Lawmakers tend to write laws for other people. But accountability shouldn't just apply to other entities. Congress needs whistleblowers just as much as the rest of the government does. In this case, however, it doesn't appear to be intentional. It appears to be that some of these legislators are simply unaware they're pushing for something they've already exempted themselves from having to follow.

Roll Call -- a DC-focused new site -- confronted some of the legislators who approved a resolution naming July 30th "Whistleblower Protection Day" about the unprotected potential whistleblowers working for them.

Asked about the [Whistleblower Protection Caucus] report, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, one of the caucus’s founders, said federal workers are protected. When informed about the OOC report that stated protections did not extend to legislative branch workers, Grassley said, “We’ll take a look at it.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., another of the caucus’s founding members, was shocked to learn congressional employees are not protected.

“They should [be protected],” McCaskill said. “I’ll go right back to the office and say, ‘Draft that legislation!'”

“Whistleblowers should be allowed to operate and have protections everywhere in our government,” McCaskill added. “Everywhere.”

Hindsight has been adjusted to roughly 20/20, give or take an ongoing blindspot. Now, instead of congratulating themselves on crafting healthier whistleblower protections while their respective staffs look on in concern, they'll be performing the civic duty of "getting right on that." Hopefully, this will result in the institution of the currently-missing protections. But it can just as easily result in this being yet another law Congress doesn't have to follow -- especially if the numerous legislators currently unconcerned with the lack of strong whistleblower protections decide their interests are more important than the public's.

A few legislators were aware of the missing protection, however. Senator Barbara Boxer is already working on legislation that will encompass federal employees not currently covered by existing laws, and Senator Ron Johnson has already set up his own whistleblower "hotline."

“I would say that is news to me,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., when told that legislative workers were not protected. “I think they should be. And certainly we’ve [set up] a website, whistleblower@ronjohnson.senate.gov, and I hope they would take advantage of that.”

“I’ll protect ‘em,” he added.

It's not clear how much protection Johnson can offer anyone not currently covered by whistleblower protections, but a senator's office likely offers a bit more of a shield than going it alone.

Filed Under: congress, congressional staffers, whistleblower protections, whistleblowers

Whistleblowers Urge UN To Strengthen Protection For Those Revealing Abuses

from the echoes-of-Snowden dept

Aside from the extraordinary information that he revealed about massive yet unsuspected surveillance programs, Edward Snowden has produced several other collateral benefits through his actions in 2013. For example, recently we learned that the DEA's phone tracking program was cancelled as a direct result of the revelations and the ensuing uproar. Other leakers have started to come forward, apparently inspired by his actions. And as the press has pored over Snowden's actions, it has become clear that support for government whistleblowers is woefully inadequate -- indeed, that they are regarded by the Obama administration pretty much as traitors.

More generally, the debate around Snowden has highlighted the important part that whistleblowers play in sustaining the rule of law and defending democracy. Now a group of whistleblowers has written a letter calling on the United Nations to recognize that role (pdf), and to improve protections within the organization (via Intellectual Property Watch):

As our experience shows, retaliation against whistleblowers affects the entire UN system and goes largely unchecked at all levels, including in the Executive suites. Some UN whistleblowers have been fired or demoted; others have been subject to more subtle forms of abuse like non-renewal of contracts or sudden transfer to duty stations on the other side of the globe; many face plain, simple harassment and intimidation.

The problems they have to deal with are very similar to those encountered by Snowden when he sought to use official channels to raise his concerns:

UN whistleblowers are forced to go through lengthy, and often expensive, internal appeal processes in which the burden of proof, as a practical matter, rests on the whistleblower to demonstrate retaliation (the usual standard in national systems requires the employer to justify their actions were not retaliatory).

As a result, they often end up taking the same route that he did:

Put simply, the UN system of justice fails whistleblowers, and most of us have been forced to leave the UN to save our livelihoods, our health and our reputations.

The letter's signatories go on to call for the UN to review whistleblower protection at the organization, and they make concrete suggestions on improving the lot of those revealing abuses, including recognizing that:

Whistleblower rights are human rights, which must be promoted and protected within the UN, as well as in affiliated specialized agencies and international organisations with immunity from national laws.

And extending whistleblower protections to:

UN peacekeepers, police officers, contractors, victims and any other person who provides information about misconduct that could undermine the organisation’s mission. The key to receiving protection should be the content of the information disclosed, not the identity of the person disclosing it.

Like much of the letter, that last point is applicable generally. It underlines the fact that a completely new framework for whistleblowers is required at every level, both nationally and internationally. The letter to the UN is part of an important move towards making that happen, in what could prove to be a key aspect of Snowden's long-term legacy.

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Filed Under: un, whistleblower protections, whistleblowers

FBI Abruptly Walks Out On Senate Briefing After Being Asked How 'Insider Threat' Program Avoids Whistleblowers

from the because-the-whole-program-is-about-whistleblowers dept

While we've been disappointed that Senator Chuck Grassley appears to have a bit of a double standard with his staunch support for whistleblowers when it comes to Ed Snowden, it is true that he has fought for real whistleblower protections for quite some time. Lately, he's been quite concerned that the White House's "Insider Threat Program" (ITP) is really just a cover to crack down on whistleblowers. As we've noted, despite early promises from the Obama administration to support and protect whistleblowers, the administration has led the largest crackdown against whistleblowers, and the ITP suggests that the attack on whistleblowers is a calculated response. The program documentation argues that any leak can be seen as "aiding the enemy" and encourages government employees to snitch on each other if they appear too concerned about government wrong-doing. Despite all his high minded talk of supporting whistleblowers, President Obama has used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers twice as many times as all other Presidents combined. Also, he has never -- not once -- praised someone for blowing the whistle in the federal government.

Given all of that, Senator Grassley expressed some concern about this Insider Threat Program and how it distinguished whistleblowers from actual threats. He asked the FBI for copies of its training manual on the program, which it refused to give him. Instead, it said it could better answer any questions at a hearing. However, as Grassley explains, when questioned about this just 10 minutes into the hearing, the FBI abruptly got up and left:

Meanwhile, the FBI fiercely resists any efforts at Congressional oversight, especially on whistleblower matters. For example, four months ago I sent a letter to the FBI requesting its training materials on the Insider Threat Program. This program was announced by the Obama Administration in October 2011. It was intended to train federal employees to watch out for insider threats among their colleagues. Public news reports indicated that this program might not do enough to distinguish between true insider threats and legitimate whistleblowers. I relayed these concerns in my letter. I also asked for copies of the training materials. I said I wanted to examine whether they adequately distinguished between insider threats and whistleblowers.

In response, an FBI legislative affairs official told my staff that a briefing might be the best way to answer my questions. It was scheduled for last week. Staff for both Chairman Leahy and I attended, and the FBI brought the head of their Insider Threat Program. Yet the FBI didn’t bring the Insider Threat training materials as we had requested. However, the head of the Insider Threat Program told the staff that there was no need to worry about whistleblower communications. He said whistleblowers had to register in order to be protected, and the Insider Threat Program would know to just avoid those people.

Now I have never heard of whistleblowers being required to “register” in order to be protected. The idea of such a requirement should be pretty alarming to all Americans. Sometimes confidentiality is the best protection a whistleblower has. Unfortunately, neither my staff nor Chairman Leahy’s staff was able to learn more, because only about ten minutes into the briefing, the FBI abruptly walked out. FBI officials simply refused to discuss any whistleblower implications in its Insider Threat Program and left the room. These are clearly not the actions of an agency that is genuinely open to whistleblowers or whistleblower protection.

And yes, it's equally troubling that the FBI insists that as long as someone "registers" as a whistleblower, the FBI will suddenly, magically agree to stop investigating them as a "threat." We already know that's almost certainly bullshit. The stories of Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou are both clear examples of whistleblowers, who then had the DOJ search through basically everything they'd ever done to try to concoct some sort of Espionage Act case against them. In both cases, the eventual charges were totally ridiculous and unrelated to the whistleblowing they had done, but clearly the only reason they had been investigated was because of their status as whistleblowers. Drake was charged with having a classified document, which was just a meeting agenda and was both improperly classified and then declassified soon after. Kiriakou was charged with revealing the name of a CIA operative to a reporter, where the person in question was already widely known to journalists as working for the CIA.

Meanwhile, while Grassley still hasn't come out in support of Snowden as a whistleblower, he does seem reasonably concerned that James Clapper's plans to stop the next Snowden will have severe consequences for whistleblowers:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seems to have talked about such procedures when he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 11, 2014. In his testimony, he said:

We are going to proliferate deployment of auditing and monitoring capabilities to enhance our insider threat detection. We’re going to need to change our security clearance process to a system of continuous evaluation. . . . What we need is . . . a system of continuous evaluation, where . . . 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. . . .

Director Clapper’s testimony gives me major pause. It sounds as though this type of monitoring would likely capture the activity of whistleblowers communicating with Congress.

As Marcy Wheeler notes in her post (linked above, which called my attention to all this), by declaring war on whistleblowers, the administration is almost guaranteeing that many fewer will use "official channels" to blow the whistle. That just makes them targets with the likelihood of getting no results. Instead, all this does is incentivize people to go the Chelsea Manning/Ed Snowden route of going directly to journalists to make sure the stories get out.

Filed Under: chuck grassley, ed snowden, fbi, insider threat program, leakers, whistleblower protections, whistleblowers