The Whistleblogger

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) has joined on as an amicus party opposing egregious partisan gerrymandering by Wisconsin lawmakers, as part of the case Gill v. Whitford, one of the most important Supreme Court cases of the year.

In a speech to the National Petroleum Council, an oil industry group, Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior accused one-third of his staff of disloyalty. "I got 30 percent of the crew that's not loyal to the flag," he said on September 25, according to the New York Times.

On Friday, September 29, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) issued a new policy to protect its whistleblowers: Office Instruction N° 33/2017.

Fights over pipeline construction are not new, but they have become central of late to the debate between safe, sustainable energy and extractive, polluting, fossil-fuel reliance. While many factors contribute to the increased focus on pipelines, chief among them is the boom in natural gas production in the US, brought about via developments in fracking techniques, technology, and deregulation, which has led to a demand for new pipeline construction.

In recent days, the Secretary General of the United Nations and the US president have both made statements about the need to protect whistleblowers at the UN.

On September 18, President Trump explicitly demanded that the United Nations adopt and enforce effective whistleblower protections as part of a reform package at the Organization. On September 19, he implicitly reiterated this demand. He specifically asserted that the US will exact from the United Nations a commitment to the outcomes of UN programs, and argued that the United States is not interested in bureaucratic foot-dragging and process.

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement (ICE) struck a new blow against transparency by refusing to release blank copies of forms their agents use to record the detention and deportation of non-citizens.

ICE denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) for copies of 14 commonly used immigration enforcement documents, saying the information GAP requested was “not under the purview of ICE.”

The Honorable Sonny Perdue
Secretary of Agriculture
United States Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20250

Dear Secretary Perdue,

Chalk up a small victory for a whistleblower who spoke up about environmental protection breaches at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI)—and was fired for doing the right thing. On August 2, 2017, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) granted a stay to GAP client Jeffrey Missal, putting him back to work while the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) completes its investigation.