IBN Live (India): Whistleblower’s Niece Attacked in Bikaner

Summary: The four-year-old niece of an Indian whistleblower was attacked and thrown against a wall in order to “get even” with her uncle. She has suffered permanent damage to her nervous system. Her whistleblower uncle has been trying to expose corruption and irregularities in a rural employment scheme.

Labeling Push for Tenderized Steaks … What About Meat Glue?

Summary: GAP and several of our coalition partners are calling on the USDA to label mechanically tenderized meat – a non-intact product that allows topical bacteria to penetrate the surface during processing. GAP's Food Integrity Campaign explains the need to keep consumers informed, and draws parallels with steaks containing so-called "meat glue" that may be ordered unknowingly at restaurants.

Relevant Article: Food Ingredients First

Orlando Sentinel: Feds Join Whistleblower Lawsuit against Hospice of the Comforter

Summary: The Department of Justice has joined a whistleblower suit against a Hospice of the Comforter, alleging the hospice nonprofit regularly overbilled Medicare for patients who did not qualify as terminally ill.

WECT TV 6 (NC): Nuclear Plant Employee Files Federal Whistleblower Lawsuit against GE-Hitachi

Summary: An employee of a North Carolina nuclear plant has filed a whistleblower suit against her employer, alleging he was threatened and demoted after raising safety concerns.

Seven Years after Katrina, New Orleans Still Has Defective Pumps Revealed by Whistleblower

Summary: A US Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower revealed, years ago, major safety and reliability issues with the hydraulic pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack blogged about it this morning.

International Business Times: HSU Wants to Oust Whistleblower Kathy Jackson

Summary: The acting head of the Australian Health Services Union (HSU) is filing charges against the HSU National Secretary-turned-whistleblower who claimed a former HSU official and current Member of Parliament had spent union funds for personal uses, like hiring sex workers. Charges were later filed against the MP and an investigation launched into other top officials at HSU.

Emirates 24/7 (United Arab Emirates): Legal Protection for Whistleblowers Proposed in Dubai

Summary: The Dubai Land Department has proposed a whistleblower protection clause in its newest draft of Corporate Governance for Developers. The clause would enact a policy that prohibits retaliation or termination of an employee who reports wrongdoing or corruption.

CBC (Canada): Whistleblower Claims RCMP Targeting Him

Summary: A man has alleged that he was “terrorized” by Canadian police during a raid on his home after he reported to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that one of their officers had posted bondage photos online.

Hannah Johnson is Communications Associate for the Government Accountability Project, the nation's leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.

Tropical Storm Isaac, on the verge of becoming a hurricane, is headed toward Louisiana. Officials have pronounced New Orleans ready, while at the same time the governor urged people in low-lying areas and places outside of levee protection to leave for safe ground.

The Army Corps of Enginerrs built a $14.5 billion flood protection system. But they have failed to address an independent evaluation by the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in 2009 that there are serious safety and reliability issues with hydraulic pumps that were installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. A tenacious whistleblower and former client, Maria Garzino, is US Army Corps of Engineers ("the Corps") mechanical and civil engineer who revealed the inadequate state of New Orleans' floodwater pumps built by the Corps after Hurricane Katrina. The disclosures, which both the Department of Defense Inspector General’s (DoDIG) office and the Corps fought for years, showcase how New Orleans residents are still in great danger if flooding occurs again. (Also captured vividly in the film The Big Uneasy.)

As the OSC told President Obama in 2009:

There appears to be little logical justification for: (1) restricting the emergency pumping capability . . . to only the untested hydraulic pump systems, (2) not requiring the installation of a reliable pumping system which would adequately protect New Orleans, (3) spending hundreds of millions of dollars to install forty MWI hydraulic pumps which are scheduled to be replaced at a cost of $430 million within 3-5 years. . .    

(MWI is owned by J. David Eller, once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps.)

In February 2011, Garzino wrote a letter to President Obama detailing how the Corps knowingly installed equipment that cannot adequately protect the city of New Orleans from flooding; duplicated work that cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars; and deliberately deceived Congress as to the nature of and reason for this work.

GAP President Louis Clark recently authored the following entry on the blog of The Kindle Project, a Santa Fe-based grant-making entity which is a fiscally sponsored project of the Common Counsel Foundation. The Kindle Project's mission is to cultivate possibilities and support people and projects addressing a broad range of issues and avenues of change.

GAP’s Jesselyn Radack interviews SEC whistleblower Gary Aguirre on the American Whistleblower Tour.In today’s world, it’s difficult for David to triumph over Goliath. Hollywood loves to rewrite history by mythologizing heroes who are remembered as being single-handedly responsible for changing it. Essentially, the “power of one” storyline is more memorable than the “it takes a village” approach.

The truth of the matter lies elsewhere, as both are required to make progress. It takes courageous visionaries and legions of supporters to disrupt the status quo, build a movement, and implement enduring change.

The whistleblower phenomenon itself is a microcosm of societal evolution, where a problematic issue is raised, and measures taken to solve it. Typically, a whistleblower takes a moral stand: refusing to go along with a crooked scheme, follow illegal orders, remain silent in the face of specific public health dangers, etc. The question becomes whether this courageous person will drown beneath the waves they created. The answer rests with all of us. When confronted with evil, what do good people do? Whistleblowers either sow the seeds of their own destruction or become catalysts for reform. How society and individuals respond to truth-tellers make us either accomplices to wrongdoing or citizen activists on the right side of history.

Thirty-five years ago, as a young lawyer with a seemingly irrelevant divinity degree and church ordination, I met my first whistleblowing client. A computer wizard and quality assurance specialist, he had exposed defects in the Pentagon’s Worldwide Command and Control Intercomputer Network. He had lost his job, career, and 65 pounds that he could ill-afford. The computer network eventually crashed and was abandoned as dysfunctional. But the whistleblower was professionally overtaken by the hornet’s nest he had kicked, and I lost my first case.

Tainted Cantaloupe Underscores Important Safety Role of Food Distribution

Summary: The potential role of cantaloupe transportation in the recent Salmonella outbreak (that has sickened at least 178 people in 21 states) is a reminder of the importance of food distribution workers and their ability to blow the whistle when they witness food safety threats. GAP's Food Integrity Campaign explains.

Radio Free Europe: With WikiLeaks on Ice, What Has Happened to All those Digital Whistleblowers

Summary: This article argues that digital whistleblowers could be “the dawn of a bright new era of radical transparency,” while acknowledging ongoing problems they often face in trying to get information out. WikiLeaks, for example, has numerous legal troubles – particularly those of its founder Julian Assange – and many other digital submission-style websites are now dormant or defunct, facing privacy and security issues.

Chicago Tribune: Drug Firm to Settle Whistleblower Suit over Alleged Nursing Home Kickbacks

Summary: Major pharmaceutical company Omnicare is likely to agree to settle a whistleblower case that alleged millions of dollars in kickbacks were being provided to nursing home facilities. The terms of the settlement have not yet been publicly disclosed.

Relying on Conflicting Reports from Afghanistan about the US Drone Program

Summary: GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack blogged this morning about the conflicting reports about the US drone program and how it is talked about by the government.

Associated Press reported on the conflicting reports of suspected al-Qaeda leader Badruddin Haqqani's death:

The son of the founder of the powerful Haqqani network was been killed in an airstrike in Pakistan, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said Sunday, providing the first public confirmation of rumors that have been swirling for days about the key member of a militant group the U.S. considers one of the most dangerous in the region.

The Taliban rejected reports of Badruddin Haqqani’s death, however, saying that he was alive and well in Afghanistan.

The US has refused to comment on the reports that Haqqani was killing in an "airstrike"  – read "drone strike"  – in Pakistan. Ironic, considering U.S. officials had plenty to say when a US citizen (Anwar Al-Awlaki) and then his innocent American son were killed in drone strikes in Pakistan.

Now, even though it appears that - unlike al-Awlaki's son, who was by all reports innocent of terrorist activity - Badruddin Haqqani, son of terrorist network founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, was actually an operational leader in the terrorist network.

Badruddin is considered a vital part of the Haqqani structure and is believed to have played an active role in kidnappings, extortion and high-profile operations in Afghanistan.

The US drone program has international relations consequences beyond even the dire constitutional consequences of killing Americans without a shred of due process, but the American public is relegated to conflicting reports from Afghanistan about the drone program because:

... the US does not comment publicly on its drone program, which is widely reviled by the Pakistani public and has been a source of tension with Islamabad.

The New York Times: The Program

Summary: NSA whistleblower and GAP client William Binney is interviewed by documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras for this New York Times op-doc about the agency’s domestic spying and profiling. Binney has been speaking out about Stellar Wind, the NSA project to intercept and store massive amounts of American electronic communications. 

Key Quote: “NSA’s charter, and it was a legitimate one, was to do foreign intelligence and I was with that all the way and I did the best I could in that job. Unfortunately, they took those programs that I built and turned them on you and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t intend that, but they did that.”

Kindle Project: Grantee Feature – The Government Accountability Project

Summary: This blog post from GAP President Louis Clark talks about GAP’s mission and our upcoming second iteration of the American Whistleblower Tour, which will begin over the next couple of months. The first stop is the University of Houston and will feature Kathryn Bolkovac, a whistleblower who revealed UN complicity in sex-trafficking in Bosnia and was the subject of the recent film The Whistleblower.

Talk Nation Radio: The War on Whistleblowers with Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack

Summary: On Tuesday's Talk Nation Radio broadcast, GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack & NSA whistleblower/GAP client Thomas Drake spoke about the Obama administration's war on intelligence whistleblowers.