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.

by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack

Hurricane Ike is being hailed by some as a victory for disaster preparedness, but it should really serve as a warning. Local congressmen on both sides of the aisle have accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of botching the response in Texas, just as it did with Katrina. The storm made landfall early on Sept. 13. Yet FEMA did not begin to open any relief centers, necessary to provide critical supplies, until Sept. 15.

FEMA blamed the delay on logistics and . . . bad weather.

Thousands have been left homeless. Millions were without electricity for days. People are still desperate to find food, water, ice and gasoline. They are trying to locate family members through disorganized “survivor lists.”

Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which now contains FEMA, toured flooded areas and then held a news conference during which he tried to shift responsibility for delays in receiving meals and supplies to the local city and county government. He said it was the fault of state officials, who handed his department the “unexpected challenge” of having to prepare distribution points in addition to delivering supplies.

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 National Security Director Jesselyn Radack. Versions of this op-ed also appeared in: Fall River Herald News (MA), Anchorage Daily News, Sheridan Press (WY), Key West Citizen, Standard-Examiner (Utah), Albuquerque Journal, Daily Sun News (WA), San Marcos Daily Record (TX), The Keene Sentinel (NH), and the Charleston Gazette (WV).

When I recently learned that a CNN reporter was put on the federal "No-Fly List" shortly after his investigation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) aired, my first reaction was, "Welcome to the club!"

If it is of any consolation to CNN Investigative Correspondent Drew Griffin, he stands in good company with the likes of Sen. Ted Kennedy and other congressmen, singer Cat Stevens, ACLU attorneys, peace activists, and even Nelson Mandela. But this is of cold comfort to those of us who have had the dubious distinction of being on the secret terrorist watch list.

In March 2006, the "No-Fly List" contained 44,000 names. This month, according to a tally maintained by the ACLU, based upon the government's own reported numbers, it hit one million.

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 Telecom whistleblower Mark Klein and whistleblower and GAP client Babak Pasdar

In 2005, the exposure of a sprawling domestic spying program shocked the nation. President George W. Bush directly authorized the violation of the law and the Constitution by spying on citizen phone calls and e-mails without a warrant. People were shocked and appalled at the flouting of our civil liberties. The backlash against this perceived "Big Brother" world we were entering was palpable; sure enough, the next election cycle saw great turnover of the president's party.

However, the scandal may end on July 8, with no one held responsible, when the U.S. Senate is expected to ignore the corporate violation of civil liberties and approve a bill that provides retroactive immunity to the telephone companies that allowed the Bush administration to spy on customers without a warrant.

By letting the Bush administration continue to spy on innocent citizens, by legalizing the illegal spying regime he secretly ordered in 2001, by expanding secret surveillance powers even further and by granting telecoms retroactive immunity, Congress is set to deal a blow to the Constitution itself.

Underlying this debate is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which was enacted to curb Watergate-era abuses. The act created a special secret court to which the government had to apply for individualized surveillance warrants involving foreign intelligence, thereby providing some very limited oversight of eavesdropping and upholding the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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."