The Motive Behind Whistle Blower Prosecutions

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/14-9

Published on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 by Salon.com
The Motive Behind Whistle Blower Prosecutions

by Glenn Greenwald

One of the more flamboyant aspects of the Bradley Manning arrest was the claim that he had leaked to WikiLeaks 250,000 pages of "diplomatic cables." Those were the documents which anonymous government officials pointed to when telling The Daily Beast's Philip Shenon that the leaks "could do serious damage to national security." Most commentary on the Manning case has tacitly assumed that the leaking of "diplomatic cables" would jeopardize national security secrets. But a new BBC article today contains this quote from former UK intelligence analyst Crispin Black:

Diplomatic cables don't usually contain huge secrets but they do contain the unvarnished truth so in a sense they can be even more embarrassing than secrets.

As usual, government concern over leaks is about avoiding embarrassment and other accountability; national security harm is but the fear-mongering excuse. Similarly, a new Washington Post article today details the Obama DOJ's prosecution of NSA whistle blower Thomas Drake, whose disclosures resulted in no claimed national security harm, but rather, was evidence of "waste, mismanagement and a willingness to compromise Americans' privacy without enhancing security" (leaked only after his use of the official channels resulted in nothing, as usual). As is true for virtually every whistle blower prosecution or threatened prosecution, there is no actual national security harm identified from that leak. Other than when a covert agent's identity is blown (as happened to Valerie Plame), has anyone ever heard of any actual, concrete national security harm from any of the high-profile leak cases, whether it be the illegal NSA eavesdropping program, the network of CIA black sites, the release of the Apache helicopter attack video, or the corruption and privacy infringements revealed by Drake?

The Post today quotes Obama DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller's justification for the administration's escalated war on whistle blowers as follows: "We have consistently said that leaks and mishandling of classified information are matters that we take extremely seriously." There's no doubt that they take such acts "extremely seriously," but what's the reason for it? There's been no identified harm to national security from any of these leaks.

What these leaks have actually accomplished is to "embarrass" the Government by revealing what the intelligence analyst quoted by the BBC calls "the unvarnished truth" about the illegal, corrupt, and embarrassing acts it undertakes. In all of these cases where the Obama DOJ is persecuting whistle blowers, they're punishing the greatest sin there is -- exposure of high-level government wrongdoing -- not harm to national security. Amazingly, that was even the explicit rationale used by Obama when he and the Democratic Congress re-wrote FOIA to shield photographs of detainee abuse from court-ordered disclosure: these photos would reflect poorly on the U.S. government and therefore harm national security. And, of course, the administration's repeated, Bush-replicating invocation of the "state secrets" privilege has been justified with vague appeals to National Security but actually motivated by a desire to shield government crimes of detention, surveillance and interrogation from disclosure and accountability.

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http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/07/14-0


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 14, 2010
10:08 AM


CONTACT: PEER
Kirsten Stade [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Whistleblowers Still Run Daunting Gauntlet Under Obama
Miniscule Chances of Success, No New Policies and Key Slot Remains Unfilled

WASHINGTON - July 14 - The fate and treatment of whistleblowers has not materially improved under the Obama administration, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). President Obama has staked out no policy differences from the Bush administration and has yet to even nominate a Special Counsel, a key position that is supposed to defend and advocate for whistleblowers.

The absence of any whistleblower initiative from the Obama administration is critical because the prospects for whistleblowers successfully challenging retaliatory actions by their agencies are bleak:

* An examination of decisions from Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) judges who hear whistleblower cases reveals that, on average, federal employees won less than one in 50 hearings (1.6%) in 2008, the latest year for which statistics are available;

* For those cases that are appealed to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the odds are even worse with whistleblowers winning only one in 200 cases (0.5%) in the last 15 years; and

* President Obama has not nominated a Special Counsel, a position vacant since President Bush fired his own appointee for cause in December 2008. That previous Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, subsequently pled guilty to criminal obstruction charges stemming from his effort to block congressional inquiries into reprisal against whistleblowers inside his own office.

"Protection of whistleblowers does not appear on the Obama administration's radar," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "The White House has taken the time to name National Endowment for the Arts advisory committee members but has not found time in 18 months to select a Special Counsel."

Significantly, the Obama administration has also not settled many of the whistleblower cases emanating from the Bush administration, including cases cited as abuses by Obama officials, such as the dismissal of U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers for honestly answering questions from the Washington Post.

While new Obama appointees to the MSPB show signs of reversing dismal trends for whistleblowers, the cadre of administrative judges remains unchanged. The evaluation criteria for those judges (which PEER obtained under the Freedom of Information Act) reveal a priority on volume and speed: judges are expected to render between 80 and 120 decisions per year, 95% of which are expected to be completed within "relevant time limits"(generally 110 days from the filing of the initial complaint). Even the "Quality of Decisions" standards appear to give equal weight to elements such as proper spelling and citation versus "consideration of relevant facts, evidence and authority bearing on the issues."

"The chances for whistleblowers winning in the federal civil service system remain remote at best," commented PEER Staff Counsel Christine Erickson. "We have not found any evidence to support the counterargument that 'all the good cases settle' before MSPB must make a decision." Besides legal services, PEER provides channels for federal employees to blow the whistle anonymously, so their message is delivered without revealing the identity of the messenger.


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2. K&R

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7. certainly can't let ourselves be embarrassed, gee golly.

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