S. 372, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) currently awaiting Senate passage, is a solid down payment on meaningful reform of whistleblower law for government workers, in terms of rights, due process, remedies and resources. Many of the institutional changes it incorporates into law will be the foundation on which we can build additional reforms in the coming years. It restores a solid infrastructure of rights, due process and remedies. More significant, for the first time it begins a paradigm shift to normal court access. The law does not roll back any preexisting whistleblower rights.

Specifically, this reform

• Closes judicially-created loopholes to the law’s protection
• Creates specific protection in the law for scientific freedom
• Extends whistleblower rights to some 40,000 airport baggage screeners
• Codifies and provides a remedy for the anti-gag statute
• Provides Title 5 workers jury trial access to challenge major disciplinary actions
• Ends the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals monopoly on appellate review, and restores all-Circuit review
• Outlaws security clearance harassment as a WPA violation and establishes minimum due process standards for agency clearance actions
• Provides government contractors the right to make classified whistleblowing disclosures to Congress, and protects government employees who make classified disclosures to relevant congressional committees after first going through the relevant Office of Inspector General
• Requires the Administration to issue corresponding enforcement regulations customized for the IC context but equivalent to the WPA
• Bars retroactive national security exemptions that deprive employees of Title 5 WPEA rights
• Provides compensatory damages, with a $300,000 damages cap for court and security clearance actions
• Expands the Office of Special Council’s (OSC) authority to discipline individuals who retaliate against whistleblowers

A complete list of enhanced rights can be found here.

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

Dear GAP Supporters:

This is it. Congressional leaders have a chance to finally pass the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 372, H.R. 1507) during this final session of Congress. If they don’t, GAP and our partners will have to start from scratch next year with the new Congress.

Tomorrow, leaders are expected to set their agenda for the lame duck session. But they need to hear from you that whistleblower rights for federal employees are important!

Please take 30 seconds to sign this online petition and demand government accountability!

We can’t overstate the importance of this legislation. Countless whistleblowers continue to be the targets of retaliation, without having any credible rights to defend themselves. These protections have been years in the making, and are truly an absolute necessity for government accountability and transparency.

The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act would provide solid protections to all kinds of federal workers. The range of whistleblowers that would be directly affected is incredible – that is, you would already think these employees could safely tell the truth! Just to provide a few examples of who these protections would apply to:

· FDA drug scientists who are harassed for wanting to report killer drugs
· Food safety inspectors being muzzled about unsafe practices
· Climate scientists being suppressed from reporting data
· Air Marshals exposing unsafe practices or uncovering vulnerabilities to our safety

It's clear that providing a safe method for people to tell the truth – and expose serious public safety threats before it’s too late – is essential to keeping Americans safe. Half a minute of your time could result in a safer country and more accountable government. Please support federal whistleblowers today. Sing the petition that has been posted by the Make It Safe Coalition, which GAP spearheads.

Please take 30 seconds to sign this online petition and demand government accountability!

Please also consider calling the Obama administration and Congressional Leadership as well. Our suggested message to leadership is: “If you're serious about reducing the debt and deficit by fighting waste, fraud and abuse, complete passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act during the lame duck. Don't delay again on protection for those who risk their careers to defend the taxpayers.”

Obama administration: 202-456-1111
Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid: 202-224-3542
Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell: 202-224-2541
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: (202) 225-0100
House Minority Leader John Boehner: 202-225-6205

Yesterday, the Government Accountability Project, in conjunction with the Make It Safe Coalition, released a letter urging Congress and President Obama to complete enactment of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. The bill’s purpose is to restore credible free speech rights for federal workers who challenge government illegality, fraud, waste or abuse. In the letter, supporters for this reform swelled to 404 organizations and corporations, which represent over 80 million members.

Whistleblowers’ roles are to fight abuses of power sustained by secrecy. Ironically, however, the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA) has degenerated into an efficient hammer to increase secrecy, by rubberstamping nearly every reprisal claim that whistleblowers challenge through exercising their rights. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the only court which can hear federal whistleblower appeals of administrative decisions, has consistently ruled against whistleblowers, with whistleblowers winning only three cases out of 211 since October 1994 when Congress last strengthened the law. The track record at the administrative level, the whistleblowers only chance for a hearing, is similarly dismal.

Congress has been working on legislation for ten years to overhaul federal whistleblower rights, and the signers urged them to finish. “Every month that passes has very tangible consequences for federal government whistleblowers, because none have viable rights. Last year, on average, 16 whistleblowers a month lost initial decisions from administrative hearings...”

Congress unanimously has passed and strengthened the Whistleblower Protection Act before, but the free speech mandate on paper consistently failed in practice because it was not backed by normal due process rights. This time the signers called for a law with teeth, starting with normal access to court for all employees paid by the taxpayers to enforce their rights, as Congress has done in ten laws for corporate whistleblowers since 2002. The letter also calls for national security workers to receive equal rights. These employees currently have the fewest protections. They have been harassed, investigated, and fired for exposing government breakdowns that put our combat troops in danger and impair our ability to prevent acts of terrorism.

Support to complete a genuine reform is swelling as the election approaches. The number of groups signing the letter have increased from 391 to 404 in the last two weeks, including – the Affiliation of Christian Engineers, Alliance for Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, Consumer Federation of America, Earth Day Network, Fleur de Lis Film Studios, Foreign Policy in Focus, Greenpeace USA, National Forum on Judicial Accountability, OAK: Organizations Associating for the Kind of Change America Needs, Sunlight Foundation, Texas State Community Council, and US Justice Watch.

Politicians campaigning against government waste, misspending and abuses of power are not credible, unless they do their share to deliver rights for those who fight it on the front lines. Whistleblowers live political rhetoric by risking their careers to challenge government misconduct internally, and to warn Congress and taxpayers about cover ups that betray the public trust. The message to Congress from these voters about whistleblower reform is clear: “Don’t come home for more campaigning without it!”

Tom Devine is Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization.

A recent Washington Post column sheds much-needed light on long overdue federal whistleblower reform currently pending in Congress. America is at the climax of a major campaign to overhaul the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), which has been gutted after years of hostile judicial activism. A federal whistleblower’s only legal recourse is a costly administrative hearing at Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and an option to appeal to the Federal Circuit. Yet, as the column points out, these forums rule against the whistleblower on the merits over 95% of the time.

This offers little light at the end of the tunnel for employees who put the public interest before their own when they make the brave decision to report waste, fraud, abuse, or public safety threats. Common forms of retaliation include demotion, security clearance removal, blacklisting, isolation to a storage room or house arrest, and termination. Harassment compounded by legal fees invariably results in economic duress for the whistleblower, and even isolation by friends and family. Still, whistleblowers proceed anyway, unable to turn a blind eye to contaminated meat, nuclear waste in the backyard of a school, or mistreatment of veterans.

They deserve better.

The Government Accountability Project has a long, storied history of working with whistleblowers within the nuclear industry to bring public awareness to the most serious of safety threats.

With that in mind, GAP is partnering with other public interest organizations to raise awareness about an important new film. Countdown to Zero is a documentary about the escalating global nuclear arms crisis, making clear that the nuclear threat is very real – and not a bygone issue that died with the Cold War.

The Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency charged with protecting federal employees from retaliation for whistleblowing, has been without a leader for almost 18 months. This issue deserves more media attention, and it’s good that GovExec is recognizing that. Without a director, the agency has been unable to implement major policy changes or program initiatives, or support upcoming whistleblower protection legislation.

Several Government Accountability Project clients have found success with the OSC. Gabe Bruno, former Federal Aviation Administration Manager of the Orlando Flight Standards District Office, blew the whistle on certain failures of the FAA to promote security. The OSC informed Bruno in 2009 that it found his disclosures revealed a “substantial likelihood that serious safety concerns persist in the management and operation of the certification and management programs at FAA.”

Bogdan Dzakovic was a former leader of the FAA’s counter-terrorism unit ‘Red Team’ which, prior to 9/11, tested aviation security in airports around the world. The security systems failed around 75-90 percent of the time, but the FAA censored any written records of the failures, and banned retesting. After the attacks, the Red Team was grounded. Dzakovic filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the OSC, which eventually ruled in favor of his allegations, stating that the FAA executed its civil aviation security mission in a manner that “was a substantial and specific danger to public safety.”

ProPublica presents a list of involved people who are denying any knowledge of Lehman Brothers controversial usage of an accounting trick that allowed the company to hide its financial troubles before eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2008. Included is Lehman Brothers CEO, who claims that he didn't know about the issue because he doesn't use a computer and couldn't open attachments on his BlackBerry. The article has a nice video explaining the accounting trick.

New court filings in the case of Federal Air Marshal whistleblower and GAP client Robert MacLean argue that MacLean's direct supervisor was engaged in “an illicit affair with a female subordinate, on whom he bestowed numerous professional favors.” However, the supervisor was protected from punishment for this violation of agency rules because he made a dirty deal to carry out the director of the air marshal program's instructions to fire MacLean. GAP legal director Tom Devine is quoted in the article, from the Orange County Register:

MacLean’s attorney, Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project, responded to the government’s response: “The development about Mr. Donanti was not offered to impugn his character,” it says. “It demonstrates that he had a conflict of interest, because his professional survival depended on acting as the agency’s hatchet man against a problematic Federal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association (FLEOA) leader."

The article also discusses the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which would give whistleblowers many more rights and protections. The act was likely to pass the Senate by unanimous consent last year but two Republican senators (Jim Bunning and Kit Bond) put holds on the bill. Bunning has since removed his hold.