by Alan Maimon

Robert MacLean, a former Las Vegas-based air marshal, was fired in 2006 after revealing Transportation Security Administration plans to reduce security on long-distance flights. Lawmakers are asking the Obama administration to review the cases of MacLean and other Bush administration whistle-blowers.

Despite support from politicians and whistle-blower advocates, Robert MacLean has had little luck challenging his 2006 dismissal from the Transportation Security Administration. And though the former Las Vegas air marshal still has plenty of fight in him, he is running out of ways to keep his case alive.

"I've never doubted that I did the right thing," MacLean said of his public disclosure six years ago that the TSA sought to reduce armed security on long-distance flights at a time when the government was warning of another 9/11-style attack.

"I'm not giving up, because I don't want to see what happened to me happen to someone else."

by Ken Stier

By now most Americans are all too used to the dispiriting reports of the security situation in Afghanistan. But the graphic images of U.S. embassy guards engaged in all manner of obscene, drunken behavior that emerged last week were still shocking. The revelations were presented in detail by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight (POGO), which sent a letter on Sept. 1 to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exposing an alleged atmosphere of fear and coercion among guards at the embassy in Kabul, which involved bacchanalian parties, hazing, prostitution and drunkenness.

by Molly Peterson

This is part three of a four-part series. Click here to go to the homepage of the series.

We continue a story today about hurricane protection equipment, pumps installed in New Orleans after Katrina. A Los Angeles-based Corps engineer says they won’t protect the city in a major storm. To this day no public records indicate that these pumps will work as designed. KPCC’s Molly Peterson reports on how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies have listened to this whistleblower’s concerns.

by Peter Eisler

Huge flood-control pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina don't protect the city adequately and the Army Corps of Engineers could have saved $430 million in replacement costs by buying proven equipment, a federal investigation finds.

by Tom LoBianco

White House attorneys have backed away from an effort to weaken legal protections for FBI whistleblowers in a bill now before Congress, according to advocacy groups in negotiations with the Obama administration.

Officials from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said this week that they were given guarantees that protections for FBI whistleblowers - federal employees who uncover fraud and waste - would be restored in a Senate bill when Congress returns in September.

by Noel Brinkerhoff

Whistleblowers did not fare well during the Bush administration. Government employees disciplined or fired for calling attention to illegal or unethical practices can appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, but the board, led by Bush-appointee Neil McPhie, ruled against whistleblowers in 44 out of 45 cases, according to an analysis by the non-profit Government Accountability Project.

by Nick Schwellenbach

One of two whistleblowers to win even a temporary victory before a government whistleblower review board under a Bush administration appointee lost last week after the board’s February reversal was upheld by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision underscored the difficulties whistleblowers faced under the Bush administration. Under Neil McPhie, the Bush-appointed chairman of the three-person Merit Systems Protection Board, whistleblowers had a 1-44 win-loss track record, according to a tally by the non-profit Government Accountability Project (before the February reversal, the track record was 2-43). In the original ruling on the whistleblower Kenneth M. Pedeleose’s case, McPhie dissented from the decision that favored Pedeleose and voted against him in the second decision as well.

In late July, President Obama nominated a new chair and vice chair for the board, who have won praise from whistleblower protection advocates. The nomination for chair is Susan Grundmann, formerly the general counsel for the National Federation of Federal Employees. Anne Wagner is the nominee for vice chair, and has spent time as a lawyer with the American Federation of Government Employees and more recently with the Government Accountability Office. Bush appointee Mary D. Rose will continue on the board as its third member until March 2011.

With Thursday’s loss, whistleblowers have won only three cases out of 202 at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, where they can appeal board rulings, since October 1994, when Congress last strengthened the Whistleblower Protection Act. Both chambers of Congress have been moving forward on legislation to improve whistleblower protections. House and Senate versions of the legislation end the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals monopoly on appellate review. The House version gives all government whistleblowers access to trial courts, whereas the Senate version restricts the access national security whistleblowers have to those courts.