The Whistleblogger

Part 2: Coal, Fracking, Pruitt, and NEPA

"We know that it is impossible for humans to flourish without clean air, land, and water. We also know that a strong, market-driven economy is essential to protecting these resources."

President Donald Trump, April 22, 2018

Information is power. It gravitates toward those who are able to contain the flow of information. Whistleblowers disrupt that power dynamic, redistributing the power outward toward those groups and individuals who care deeply about the subject matter of the disclosures.

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) has expressed serious concerns about the situation of whistleblowers at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for many years. GAP is now extremely concerned about the escalating retaliation against Mr. Wei Lei, who reported the corruption of a procurement process involving the Director General of WIPO, Francis Gurry. Lei is facing the irregular and illegal termination of his employment on 17 May 2018.

President Trump’s alarming assault on science and truth-telling continues unabated. The Environmental Protection Agency barred three scientists from participating in a conference about the effects of climate change on the Narragansett Bay.

On Tuesday, April 10, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before Congress and address how the social media giant intends to ensure that its users’ private data is protected from third parties. Just a few weeks ago, a striking story broke that chronicled how Cambridge Analytica, a British data mining and analysis firm, harvested information from 87 million Facebook users without their consent for commercial purposes.

This article was originally published by Public Citizen.

Today, the Government Accountability Project joined dozens of good government organizations in demanding the U.S. Senate not advance the nomination of Gina Haspel until all records of her past involvement in a CIA torture program are declassified and released to the public. You can read the full letter here!

March 16, 2018

Dear Senator,

In a statement delivered February 20 to the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, the Secretary of State for Development in the UK, addressed the deepening mistrust between the UK government and the United Nations: 

The correspondence linked below relates to the case of United Nations whistleblower Emma Reilly. Ms. Reilly, a human rights officer, disclosed to senior officials in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that she had been instructed to provide the names of Chinese human rights defenders (HRDs) to the Chinese Government ahead of Human Rights Council meetings. Ms. Reilly believed that such exposure would endanger Chinese human rights dissidents by exposing them to detention before they could leave China. As a whistleblower, Ms.

As whistleblowers and their advocates, we write into a void. Once a UN staff member becomes the bearer of unpleasant news, he or she is dismissed, demoted or silenced in one way or another.