Today, GAP released a report on one of the most effective ways to undermine the disclosures of a whistleblower: retaliatory investigations. Whistleblower Witch Hunts follows 12 federal employees into Kafka’s The Trial, as they undergo underhanded tactics that run the gamut of indecency, including:

• Denying the existence of active but secret investigations;
• Classifying or restricting information years after the fact, and then imposing ex post facto liability for blowing the whistle with it;
• Making unsupported accusations of whistleblowers being suicidal, violent or otherwise mentally disturbed, without providing any medical basis;
• Raiding whistleblowers’ homes and scaring their families, confiscating personal property
• Enacting blacklisting campaigns for several years

It’s no wonder that retaliatory investigations are used to silence whistleblowers: Framing the messenger kills the message. Unfortunately, this approach ultimately harms the public, the messenger and the agency while whistleblowers’ warnings remain unheeded.

The whistleblowers profiled in this new report exposed national security risks including: the attempted cancellation of all Air Marshal coverage during a confirmed terrorist plan for a more ambitious rerun of 9/11, fraudulent certifications for mechanics who vouch for commercial aircraft safety, and the failure by the Air Force to conduct required inspections and maintenance for over a decade on intelligence and cargo aircraft, which could lead to mechanical failures that endanger servicemen’s lives, delay critical missions, and cause national security breaches.

But it doesn’t stop there. Public safety disclosures detailed in the report include the stonewalling of lifesaving military equipment for U.S. troops and civilians abroad, corrupt diversion of all funds reserved to treat dramatic brain injury for over 400,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and losing track of a significant amount worth of plutonium. Plus, civil liberties abuses spanned the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance, and the Justice Department’s lying to court about a dress rehearsal for Abu Ghraib tactics on American citizen John Walker Lindh.

Legislation currently pending in Congress, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, empowers whistleblowers to stop retaliation in its initial stage, rather than have to live indefinitely with investigations or dossiers that are used as smoke screens to cloud genuine threats. Click here to sign a petition to demand the Act be passed!

Shanna Devine is Legislative Coordinator for the Government Accountability Project, the nation's leading whistleblower advocacy organization.

If folks feel conflicted about WikiLeaks, the answer is to pass meaningful whistleblower reform. Otherwise, whistleblowers have no alternative, as detailed in this Whistleblower Witch Hunt report released today.

I've been saying that quite often here at Kos. Now, following the latest WikiLeaks spill, Congress is poised to pass legislation giving employees in the most sensitive government jobs--national security and intelligence employees--a way to report corruption, waste, mismanagement and illegality without resorting to WikiLeaks, which for better or for worse, has been the only viable avenue available to whistleblowers.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, and it is viewed by supporters as a way to discourage leaks of classified information. It would give intelligence agency whistleblowers a way to raise concerns internally instead of giving classified materials to WikiLeaks or other outlets.

As highlighted by the Associated Press and NPR this morning, in order to draw attention to the risks whistleblowers now face, my organization, the Government Accountability Project, prepared a report detailing the ordeals of 12 government officials whose employers sought "to enforce secrecy though repression."

Among them is Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency official who reported "massive fraud, waste and abuse" in agency surveillance programs to the Department of Defense Inspector General's office. Drake's reward was an indictment in April under the Espionage Act for allegedly making unauthorized contact with a newspaper reporter after he had exhausted all other means for disclosing the problems he witnessed. (He is actually only charged with "willful retention for purposes of disclosure," which is not a real crime, but rather the bizarre parsing of the Espionage Act and other federal statutes in order to manufacture a crime that fits the facts of Drake's case.

Without protections spelled out in law, whistleblowers risk being demoted, fired, or in Drake's case, put in jail.

Until the law is passed, WikiLeaks will continue to be the safest option for whistleblowers unwilling to engage in professional suicide. Blowing the whistle leaves people broken, bankrupted and blacklisted.

More than 60 public interest and advocacy groups support this bill. The Senate is expected to approve the bill this week and send it to the House, where Democrats are planning to pass it quickly. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the bill

landmark legislation

that the Obama administration

hopes will be passed promptly.

The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act bars workplace reprisals against employees at the CIA and other intelligence organizations for telling their superiors about illegal activities, abuses of authority and dangers to public health or safety.

It also requires the director of national intelligence to set up a special review board to resolve cases involving whistleblowers who believe their security clearances were suspended or revoked as punishment for speaking out, and gives expanded whistle-blower protections to civil service employees outside the intelligence agencies.

Whistleblowers outside the intelligence agencies would also be able to seek a jury trial in federal court to appeal dismissals or demotions.

Whistleblower should not have to choose their conscience over their career, or in Tom Drake's case, over their very liberty.

Jesselyn Radack is Homeland Security & Human Rights Director for the Government Accountability Project, the nation's leading whistleblower advocacy organization. This post originally appeared in her Daily Kos column.