by GAP Legal Director Tom Devine

Congress wisely included "best practices" whistleblower rights for all employees of contractors, state or local governments receiving the $787 billion stimulus. But it included nothing to protect federal workers in a position to expose stimulus fraud. What happened, and what can be done?

What happened was simple: Key Senate offices objected that the full scope of expanded federal rights only had been subjected to House hearings and not processed through the regular order. There was no time to argue. But the whole law was passed out of "regular" order. The same rules should apply to accountability decisions as to spending.

Written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack.

It's one of the nasty little secrets of Washington that everybody claims to dislike but nobody does anything about. It's called burrowing--the insidious phenomenon of political appointees, who should leave with the outgoing president or be forced to compete for positions to stay, instead frantically converting to career posts at the end of a presidential administration.

In nature, animals burrow into the ground to protect themselves from predators and harsh weather. In the government workplace, people burrow into the bureaucracy to protect themselves from the proper outcome of the democratic process. And that's outrageous.

This op-ed was written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack, with contributions by Keri Nash.

Nearly a month after Hurricane Ike devastated the Texas Coast, major media outlets reported that over 300 people were missing. The first organized search for bodies did not take place until October 2, nearly three weeks after the hurricane made landfall. The local and state searchers were working with the Laura Recovery Center, a Texas-based missing children organization.

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) in Washington, D.C. has been tracking this information since the hurricane struck, and our numbers of missing are more than double those being reported publicly. GAP used two separate missing persons lists – Houston’s ABC 13 Person Locator and the Laura Recovery Center list – to determine how many people remain unaccounted for. After correcting for persons duplicated on both lists (30), GAP compiled a single missing persons list. Using the Red Cross “Safe and Well List,” GAP’s missing persons list was then updated to reflect survivors. In total, GAP estimates that 683 people remain missing as of November 19.

Written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack

Recent reports from the Justice Department’s watchdog agencies focus on politicized hiring, but not politically motivated firing. Unfortunately, the department under President George W. Bush has engaged in both. I know. I have the scars to prove it.

The report released on July 28 by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the department had systematically and illegally inserted politics into its hiring process for career prosecutors and immigration judges. That report follows another that looked at partisanship infecting the honors and intern hiring programs. The focus of media coverage has been on actions taken after Alberto Gonzales became attorney general in early 2005.

I’ve no interest in defending Gon­zales, but it didn’t start with him. It started with his predecessor, John Ashcroft.

These days Ashcroft is enjoying a flurry of favorable notice, a function of historical amnesia. It should be remembered that he was the one who first decided that the honors program—long overseen by career attorneys and viewed as highly competitive and apolitical—would benefit from more direct participation by himself and other political appointees.

written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack

It is no surprise to me that the Justice Department systematically and illegally inserted politics into its hiring process. This was glaringly obvious to me when I was forced out of the DOJ upon blowing the whistle on DOJ violations in the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh in 2002.

In my 2006 book, The Canary in the Coalmine, I wrote about how the Attorney General’s Honors Program, founded by President Eisenhower’s first AG and long overseen by career attorneys, was first hijacked by Attorney General John Ashcroft. When I started at Justice after graduating from Yale Law School, the Honors Program was highly-competitive, well-regarded, and had the laudable distinction of being apolitical. Ashcroft decided in 2002 that the program would benefit from more direct participation by him and other political appointees. This continued during the tenure of his successor, Alberto Gonzales, and extended beyond the Honors Program into political hiring for the Department’s most senior career positions, which were soon populated by graduates of the likes of Regents University and Bob Jones University. It eventually climaxed in what I refer to as the 2007 “U.S. Attorney Massacre,” when nine United States attorneys were fired, according to the Justice Department, for their “poor performance” despite stellar records.

Being politically purged from Justice and subject to a pretextual investigation by the DOJ Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility myself, I’m glad that the DOJ has finally seen the light. But I am grossly disappointed that it took six years, countless destroyed careers, and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to reach the conclusion I highlighted for them all the way back in 2002.

Written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack

Late last month, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General issued a positive report on the FBI's involvement in detainee interrogations in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Iraq.

I applaud the OIG's recognition of a handful of career Justice attorneys and FBI officials who challenged abusive interrogation techniques - and warned correctly that torture would likely taint any legal proceedings against suspected terrorists. But praise for OIG's demi-candor in an atmosphere of absolute secrecy obscures the whitewash that the report really is. The report finds, "We believe the FBI should be credited for its conduct and professionalism in detainee interrogations." But to reach this conclusion, the OIG omits one of the earliest and most obvious cases of torture and FBI misconduct - that of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh.

In 2001 (a period covered by the report), Lindh, an American citizen, was found shot in the leg and barely alive. U.S. soldiers threatened him with death, blindfolded him, duct-taped him naked to a board, scrawled expletives on him, and posed with him for pictures - before holding him in an unlit metal shipping container for two days. Yet, the OIG report states in its executive summary: "We found no instances in which an FBI agent participated in clear detainee abuse of the kind that some military interrogators used at Abu Ghraib prison."

Written by GAP President Louis Clark

President Bush has joked about wanting to torture whistleblowers, stating he would like to string them “up by their thumbs. The same way we do with prisoners in Guantanamo!” Now that whistleblowers have exposed the torture that his administration essentially condoned at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other places, Bush’s joke now seems ironic. But a greater irony exists surrounding the president’s core position that his national security practices have kept America safe. Whistleblower disclosures have steadily eroded this assertion.

Despite bad jokes and rhetoric, he has failed to shut national security whistleblowers up. Veto threats for Congressional bills that would protect whistleblowers, and “signing statements” pledging to ignore similar provisions of enacted legislation have not succeeded in imposing the kind of massive secrecy he sought. In fact, one whistleblower after another has torn holes in the fabric of his legitimacy and legacy, exposing incompetence, illegality, and massive privacy violations.

Society is fortunate that these whistleblowing patriots with national security concerns refuse to remain silent despite threats of retribution. Such courageous individuals are responding positively to their own inner voices of conscience and personal sense of justice. They will not be complicit in allowing unchecked abuses of authority and illegality to triumph. Consider the cases:

The following op-ed was written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack

One of the most viable challenges to the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program is a lawsuit brought in federal court in Oregon by an Islamic charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, that alleges that it was subject to secret surveillance. In this case, unlike in the other National Security Agency (NSA) cases, the plaintiffs can demonstrate that the government actually listened to their conversations. That's because, as the Treasury Department was preparing to freeze the organization's assets, it inadvertently sent Al-Haramain attorneys an NSA log, classified as "Top Secret," of intercepted calls.

The case involves the controversial and much-discussed "state secrets privilege" – the topic of an April 28 New Yorker piece by Patrick Radden Keefe.However, little attention has been paid to the serious legal ethics issues raised by the Al-Haramain case – which I will consider in this column.

The Rulings in the Al-Haramain Case on the State Secrets Issue

The Justice Department initially moved to dismiss the Al-Haramain case on the ground that it was foreclosed by the state secrets privilege. The district court denied the motion, but held that the NSA call log was protected by the privilege, even despite its inadvertent disclosure. However, the district court allowed Al-Haramain to file in camera affidavits in which the attorneys who had received copies of the document attested to its contents.(An "in camera" submission is for the court's eyes alone, not the public's.)

Op-ed by GAP client Babak Pasdar

In October 2003, I led a rapid deployment team for a major wireless carrier responsible for overhauling its security system. For the past year and a half, I have anonymously briefed Congress and nongovernment organizations about my observations, going public last month with crucial public interest information: An unknown third party using a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" has provided the federal government with unfettered access to everything on the carrier's network.

Recognizing this critical security breach and taking preliminary correction steps, my attempts at implementing controls and logging were blocked and rebutted with threats and admonishments by carrier executives. Despite ready capabilities, the company had opted not to protect itself and its customers.

Unfettered access to the carrier's systems offers powerful information. All calls and data communications including e-mail, Web, text messages, pictures and videos are attainable in real-time. Any person could be physically located, and billing records including names, financial information, contacts and behavioral data, are accessible. Tracking abilities have expanded to subscriber desktops with new "smartphones" -- unnecessarily requiring personal log on credentials to business and personal computers to deliver e-mail, contact and calendaring information. This entrusts private information with the carrier that goes far beyond mobile phone usage.

Written by GAP Legal Director Tom Devine and GAP Legislative Representative Adam Miles. Versions of this op-ed also appeared in: The Roanoke Times, Amarillo Globe-News, Philly Burbs, Northwest Arkansas Times, Scranton Times-Tribune, and Sheridan Press (WY).

Congress is about to get serious about attacking government corruption sustained by secrecy and enforced by fear. Before Christmas, the Senate unanimously matched House approval of legislation reviving the moribund Whistleblower Protection Act. The House and Senate versions need to be speedily reconciled and enacted. This would give federal employees genuine legal rights to be honest public servants on the job. Currently, they too often face the daunting choice of acting conscientiously, risking their career and livelihood, or towing the bureaucratic line, turning a blind eye to waste, fraud and abuse. It’s the public that will be the real winner when the reconciled bill becomes law. This is why the reform is nicknamed the “Taxpayer Protection Act.”

Whistleblowers use freedom of speech to challenge abuses of power that betray the public trust. They change the course of history by refusing to sacrifice their own principles, unwilling to go along with corrupt practices. By exercising their freedom to warn, they prevent avoidable disasters before all that is left is damage control.

Consider examples of how they have made a difference for America’s families. FDA scientist Dr. David Graham’s disclosures forced market withdrawal of the painkiller Vioxx, which caused over 40,000 fatal U.S. heart attacks after our government officially labeled it safe. Climate change whistleblowers like the White House’s Rick Piltz and NASA’s James Hansen exposed how gags, censorship and oil industry collusion turned some $2 billion of climate change research into anti-scientific propaganda and delayed urgently needed action. The Marines’ Franz Gayl demonstrated that hundreds of American combat fatalities in Iraq may be traceable to Pentagon mismanagement, which unnecessarily delayed delivery of mine resistant armored vehicles.