Title: How Politicians Disqualify Whistleblowers
Show: Kevin Gosztola (The Dissenter)
Date: 2020-07-31
URL: https://youtu.be/zABTCtNuOFc
Duration: 8:00

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[00:00] so help me flesh out some of these contradictions i think that on the whole it's really good that we have national whistleblower appreciation day and i would say overall that i'm glad that there's someone like senator chuck grassley who has pushed forward and stood up for at least the modest whistleblower protections that we've been able to win both chuck grassley and ron wyden have been two of the only senators who stand up on

[00:31] whistleblower issues in the past 10 years they're one of the only two or three senators you can point to who have challenged the way an insider threat program has been ruled out and instituted in the fbi and other intelligence agencies that being said the resolution for establishing whistleblower appreciation day is incredible to me because it contains um so many caveats i i'd like to just

[01:03] take a moment to read it to you so you can see um uh the resolution they passed for this year this particular year from chuck grassley what he decided uh needed to be in here was this this very clear-cut statement i don't resonate with you because he's excluding you from whistleblower appreciation day it says in the resolution whereas it is the public policy of the united states to encourage in accordance with federal law and

[01:35] consistent with the protection of classified information including sources and methods of detection of classified information honest and good faith reporting of misconduct fraud misdemeanors and other crimes to the appropriate authority at the earliest time possible now therefore be it and then it goes on to outline what they're doing but as i'm pointing out there there are these disqualifiers for whistleblowers yes there always are uh you know chuck grassley

[02:05] is probably the best friend that whistleblowers have on capitol hill and that's not saying a lot uh he's certainly not my friend um chuck grassley's not done anything for me a couple members of congress had my own congressman at the time jim moran lloyd doggett of texas senator john mccain they were all great and i appreciated the help very much chuck grassley was not a help and chuck grassley speaks at the national whistleblower day lunch in every single year oftentimes

[02:37] another congressman will stop by and wave and you know bask in his applause but this year the speaker is michael horowitz who's the justice department's inspector general i wrote a piece in consortium news a couple of days ago in which i said that i was boycotting the the event this year because it's horowitz and horowitz in my view is a fraud i have a friend an fbi whistleblower named darren jones and darren jones has gone through a nightmare for the past eight years

[03:08] plus thanks in large part to michael horowitz and i don't think we should be honoring the man i think we should be criticizing him and demanding that he respect whistleblower rights which he doesn't and the other thing that i want to add here to this broadcast before we get on to celebrating individual whistleblowers is that i'll never forget that chelsea manning was convicted on national whistleblower day that she was uh that

[03:39] uh on the same day that we were celebrating um you know there's there's this case that involves um a soldier who stood up to torture i believe is the actual case that sparks uh that that if you read chuck grassley's um establishment of the national whistleblower appreciation day it goes back to the time period of the revolutionary war so that's the case and on the same day on on july 30th

[04:11] that's the day that the u.s military court at fort meade found chelsea manning guilty of violating the espionage act which i think just brings out one of the more glaring contradictions and i think you know to you i say what are your thoughts about how there really aren't any and i think to flip this around it's really on us to do something to agitate and try to win more protections but there's no mechanism for people like you to blow the whistle on

[04:44] war and war crimes and malfeasance in war zones and it's so easy to be found and labeled a traitor because there's not very good channels set up for anybody who wants to expose that kind of waste fraud and abuse right um senator roy blunt of missouri called me a traitor uh and he wasn't the only one who called me a traitor but you're exactly right and you point out exactly what the problem is

[05:15] the problem is that the whistleblower protection law says that you have to uh report malfeasance that is waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety through channels and through channels means to your boss to the inspector general maybe to the general counsel finally to the oversight committees that doesn't work tom drake the nsa whistleblower went through channels went to the oversight committees went to the inspectors general

[05:47] and was rewarded with nine felony counts including seven counts of espionage now the case fell apart but not before he was ruined financially and personally if you work in the intelligence community if you work in the military you can't go through channels because it's your channels that are violating the law it's the oversight committees who are complicit in it for example i wanted to blow the whistle on the torture program i worked in the

[06:19] cia's counterterrorism center my bosses created the torture program the inspector general ignored the torture program the general counsel legally approved the torture program and the oversight committees secretly funded the torture program so the only way but the only place for me to go was to the media and that's true of many most maybe uh national security whistleblowers of course when you go to the media you take your

[06:50] future in your hands because you're probably looking at an espionage charge or multiple espionage charges even though that's not espionage that's what the obama administration did they set a precedent by charging people with espionage for speaking with the media so it's it's very dangerous you know with some regularity i get calls from people who are considering becoming whistleblowers and i always tell them think long and hard before you make this

[07:20] decision because your friends are going to walk away from you your co-workers will never speak to you again in many cases it'll split your family it may wreck your marriage you'll never ever work in government again you'll probably never work in corporate america either because of the background investigation necessary so you have to really believe in your heart that you are doing the right thing it's the right thing for you it's the right thing for the country

[07:50] it's in defense of the constitution and then act and the other thing that i always tell them is don't make the mistake that i made and be reactive be proactive and engage an attorney who specializes in whistleblower defense before you go public then at least you can partially control the narrative
