Ottawa Citizen: Integrity Commissioner Says Criticism Deters Whistleblowers

Summary: GAP’s Canadian counterpart, the Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform (FAIR), has been critical of that country’s agency designated to protect whistleblowers – the Office of the Public Sector. FAIR Director David Hutton, in a recent "letter to the editor" in a Canadian outlet, has called the agency a “black hole” where government whistleblower allegations often disappear. The letter came after a Canadian court condemned the investigative work done by the agency in a recent whistleblower case.

The agency’s Integrity Commissioner is now saying FAIR’s criticism is undermining the agency and the organization has been ordered removed from its advisory panel. However, two other panel members are threatening to boycott unless FAIR is reinstated as a member.

Pirate Times: Czech PP Celebrates First Pirate Senator

Summary: Noted Czech corruption whistleblower Libor Michálek has become the country's first elected Senator from the country's Pirate Party, a party dedicated to the improving state transparency and strengthening the right to privacy.

GAP’s Whistle Where You Work show interviewed Michálek last year in an episode dedicated to the state of whistleblowing in the Czech Republic.

RT: Government Wants to Jail Whistleblower for Revealing CIA’s ‘Prime Torturer’

Summary: Former CIA official and torture whistleblower John Kiriakou faces several years in jail for publicly acknowledging torture as agency policy and allegedly outing an undercover operative. As reported last week, however, the identity of the undercover agent has actually been known for years. He was one of the agency’s “prime torturers,” but faces no jail time for his deeds. 

DO NOT let this become the headline.

As reported over the weekend, (here and here) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower John Kiriakou is inches from being put in jail for allegedly "outing" a torturer. ("Outing" is in quotes because the allegations are not that Kiriakou told the public the torturer's name, just that Kiriakou allegedly confirmed the name and eventually Guantanamo victims of torture learned the name and defense attorneys put the name in a sealed court filing.)

One of EmptyWheel's two must-read pieces on the Kiriakou case over the weekend:

I flat out guarantee the import of that is the court put the brakes on the entire case as a result of an off the record joint request of the parties to facilitate immediate plea negotiation. As in they are doing it as you read this. . . . What I hear is the current offer is plead to IIPA [Intelligence Identities Protection Act] and two plus years prison. This for a man who has already been broken, and whose family has been crucified (Kiriakou’s wife also worked for the Agency, but has been terminated and had her security clearance revoked). Blood out of turnips is now what the “most transparent administration in history” demands.

EmptyWheel drilled down on what the Kiriakou case is really about – covering up the CIA's torture program:

The CIA panicked because the subjects of CIA torture were learning the identities of their torturers. DOJ did an investigation to see whether any crime had been committed, and determined it hadn’t. CIA then started politicizing that decision, which led to Fitzgerald’s appointment.

Fitzgerald confirmed what DOJ originally determined: the defense attorneys committed no crime by researching who their clients’ torturers were.

But along the way Fitzgerald gave the CIA a head–John Kiriakou’s–based partly on old investigations of him. And, surprise surprise, that head happens to belong to the only CIA officer who publicly broke the omerta about the torture program.

This entire case was an attempt to punish someone to restore the omerta on CIA’s illegal activities.

Largely under the public radar, the last decade has seen a legal revolution in the United States in the area of corporate freedom of speech.

Although a hodgepodge of 57 laws protecting corporate and government whistleblowers remains, 11 private sector laws passed since the turn of the millennium have established consistent principles for a modern law of dissent. For the first time, US corporate employees have a fair chance to defend themselves legally when they defend the public. While the new paradigm may be an obstacle for corporate lawyers, it is an exciting opportunity for corporations.

The breakthrough began in 2002 with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”), which protects shareholders of publicly traded corporations from unscrupulous managers who risk investments through illegal means. It has since spread to 10 other laws covering the vast majority of the economy – all retail commerce, plus the financial, transportation, health care, contractor, nuclear and food industries.

These new laws consistently protect workers who publicly or privately challenge wrongdoing; provide recourse through fair rules of play with realistic legal burdens of proof; offer jury trials if there is no speedy administrative decision; provide compensatory damages to make reprisal victims whole; and shield against gag orders or the waiver of legal rights that many firms require as a job prerequisite.

The potential public benefits of these new whistleblower provisions are staggering.

Even without rights, courageous whistleblowers have forced the withdrawal of dangerous prescription drugs such as Vioxx; shut down toxic incinerators burning dioxin, arsenic and other poisons next to churches and schoolyards; prevented countless food poisoning epidemics at the hands of a deregulated government inspection regime; and abated nuclear power plant accidents and massive releases of radiation into urban water supplies.

Wall Street Journal: SEC Whistleblower Office Gets Nearly 3,000 Tips

Summary: The SEC whistleblower program, which opened in August 2011, has already received nearly 3,000 tips. In addition, the SEC Commissioner said this week that there’s been a “noticeable difference” in the quality of information the office has received since the implementation of the whistleblower program (part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act).

Business Week: NCR Says It Received SEC Subpoena Over Whistleblower’s Claims

Summary: The SEC has subpoenaed NCR Corp, an ATM maker, over whistleblower allegations that the company violated anti-bribery laws. The allegations regard the company’s business practices in China, the Middle East, and Africa.

Huffington Post: Inside the Mind of a Whistleblower

Summary: In a follow-up to his first post on being a big bank whistleblower, a former Countrywide/Bank of America employee talks about the solidarity he has found since posting about his experiences, finding people “who really understood [him] and what [he’s] gone through.”

The Daily Telegraph (UK): BBC Whistleblower ‘Was Forced Out After Raising Alarm about Sexual Discrimination’

Summary: A former BBC human resources employee claims he was forced out after alleging one of his bosses was trying to get rid of women in senior roles. This allegation comes after a number of female BBC presenters have said they were regularly groped by male colleagues.

Torturers Roaming Free, John Kiriakou Tried for Espionage

Summary: Former CIA officer and GAP client John Kiriakou, who publicly acknowledged that waterboarding constituted torture, suffered a setback recently when a federal judge ruled that the government does not need to prove Kiriakou intended to harm the US. Kiriakou has been charged under the Espionage Act – the sixth intelligence whistleblower to be charged under the act by the Obama administration. This development is a setback for Kiriakou’s defense, who had “asked the judge to insist on the stronger level of proof.” 

This development comes on the heels of increased media scrutiny of the Obama administration’s overzealous use of the Espionage Act to silence national security whistleblowers, having charged more of them than all previous administrations combined. But, to date, none of the actual committers of torture have been prosecuted. Recent articles from Business Week, Bloomberg, and Utne Reader highlight this serious problem, also detailing how these prosecutions are an attack on journalistic freedom. Another whistleblower who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, Thomas Drake, talked to Business Week about what he went through during his indictment, until the case against him fell apart in the summer of 2011. 

Key Quote: Radack said the Obama administration crackdown is part of an effort to shut down investigations into the workings of the national-security apparatus.

“At first I thought these Espionage Act prosecutions were to curry favor with the national security and intelligence establishments, which saw Obama as weak when he entered office,” Radack said. “It became abundantly clear the more people were indicted, when you read their indictments, that this was a way to create really terrible precedent for ultimately going after journalists.”

A recent flurry of media coverage (here, here, here, and here) on the Espionage Act case against Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower John Kiriakou brings new light to case and the impact the Obama administration's unprecedented use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers has on free press.

In addition to facing what are shaping up to be increasingly flimsy Espionage Act charges, Kiriakou is also accused of confirming a name of a torturer to Matthew Cole, which eventually through Kevin Bacon-style degrees of separation ended up in a SEALED defense filing in a Guantanamo Bay tribunal - not in the press.

According to Cryptocomb,

The CIA officer listed as "Officer A" in the John Kiriakou complaint has been revealed to be Thomas Donahue Fletcher.  Born in 1953. Fletcher is currently a resident of Vienna, VA.

I explained yesterday that even if the allegation about Kiriakou confirming the name were true, he didn't actually "out" a CIA agent, whom I would argue was not properly under cover because 1) supposedly the government can't put people undercover shield their war crimes, 2) Mr. Fletcher was only under "nominal cover" (not the deeper "integrated cover" or "non-official cover"), and 3) his name was known (prior to Kiriakou's alleged "outing" in late 2008) by a huge swath of the human rights community, one of whom is willing to testify to this at Kiriakou's trial.

Also from Cryptocomb:

Further – source states journalists have known identity of this person prior to August 2008, when Kiriakou allegedly confirmed the identity in an email to Matthew Cole, formerly of ABC News.

Nonetheless, Kiriakou is the only person to be criminally prosecuted in connection with torture, and he refused to engage in torture and helped expose it in a 2007 ABC interview. One journalist elaborated:

Former CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou is inches away from pleading away years of his life to jail while the former chief of the CIA headquarters-based RDI (Rendition, Detention, Interrogation) group is sitting pretty enjoying his retirement in Virginia.

As described by Dana Priest, this is how the innocuous-sounding "RDI Program" works:

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip . . . [to] "black sites,"

in countries that torture.

What sort of monster would be responsible for ensuring the execution of the worldwide RDI program, be on the plane shuttling between black sites, and even torture? According to Cryptocomb,

The CIA officer listed as "Officer A" in the John Kiriakou complaint has been revealed to be Thomas Donahue Fletcher.  Born in 1953. Fletcher is currently a resident of Vienna, VA.

The government does not deny "[t]he association of Covert Officer A with the RDI Program," Kiriakou Indictm't P 11. The government just claims it was "classified," though supposedly it's improper to classify a person or program to hide illegality.

Yesterday, Kevin Gosztola of FDL published an explosive piece on how

the CIA is counting on the Justice Department to, at a minimum, convict Kiriakou on the charge of allegedly leaking an agent's identity to not only send a message to other agents but also to continue to protect on of their own.