Congress wants to give whistle-blowers greater protection -- but President Bush vows to stop it

The war on whistle-blowers | By James Sandler

U.S. officials have long retaliated against employees who speak out, burying the dangers they expose. Now, Congress wants to give whistle-blowers greater protection -- but President Bush vows to stop it.

If there is any doubt about how the Bush administration treats government whistle-blowers, consider the case of Teresa Chambers. She was hired in early 2002, with impeccable law enforcement credentials, to become chief of the United States Park Police. But after Chambers raised concerns publicly that crime was up in the nation's parks, she was rebuked by superiors and fired. When Chambers fought to regain her job through the legal system meant to protect whistle-blowers, government lawyers fought back, and associated her with terrorists. Despite a multiyear legal struggle, she is still fighting for her job.

Whistle-blowers have faced hostility not only under Republican administrations. During President Clinton's tenure, Bogdan Dzakovic, an undercover security agent with the Federal Aviation Administration, suffered retribution for speaking out about weak airport security -- three years before Sept. 11, 2001. Dzakovic was passed up for promotion time and again, and today, he says, he remains consigned to data entry duties for the Transportation Security Administration.
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But a six-month investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, in collaboration with Salon, has found that federal whistle-blowers almost never receive legal protection after they take action. Instead, they often face agency managers and White House appointees intent upon silencing them rather than addressing the problems they raise. They are left fighting for their jobs in a special administrative court system, little known to the American public, that is mired in bureaucracy and vulnerable to partisan politics. The CIR/Salon investigation reveals that the whistle-blower system -- first created by Congress decades ago and proclaimed as a cornerstone of government transparency and accountability -- has in reality enabled the punishment of employees who speak out. It has had a chilling effect, dissuading others from coming forward. The investigation examined nearly 3,600 whistle-blower cases since 1994, and included dozens of interviews and a review of confidential court documents. Whistle-blowers lose their cases, the investigation shows, nearly 97 percent of the time. Most limp away from the experience with their careers, reputations and finances in tatters.
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... And legal precedents created by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington -- the sole appeals court that hears and interprets the law for the special whistle-blower system -- have made it virtually impossible in recent years for whistle-blowers to win their cases.
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Joseph D. Whitson Jr. was a civilian chemist in the Air Force who spoke out about superiors falsifying drug test results. His desk was moved to a room in the basement and his job duties stripped.

Vernie Gee Sr. was an agricultural inspector who sounded the alarm about tainted meat in the U.S. food supply and inspectors taking bribes from slaughterhouses. Gee was beaten up by a plant worker during an inspection -- and then reprimanded by superiors for fighting.

George Randall Taylor, a chief of police at a Navy base in Bermuda, exposed coverups of rapes on the base. He was then forced into a psychiatric hospital.

Before Teresa Chambers was fired from the Park Police, she found used condoms on her car, and someone pepper-sprayed her office door. ...
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Government managers and attorneys almost always argue that measures taken against whistle-blowers were justified because of bad behavior or poor performance by the employee.
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Prior to becoming chief of the Park Police, Chambers had a distinguished 28-year career in law enforcement. She was a Republican, was eager to serve the nation in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and would be the first woman to lead the force. But her pedigree apparently would no longer matter once her public comments created political embarrassment for the Bush administration.
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The two judges had in fact battled for more than three years over the Johns case, the court documents show, clashing over, among other things, how to address Johns' claims of anti-homosexual harassment. Discrimination laws do not cover sexual orientation, but Slavet felt Johns' case underscored such a need and drafted a decision that would grant Johns' case a new hearing. But Marshall disagreed, and she used a procedural tactic to stall the case until an incoming Bush-appointed judge arrived to replace Slavet, whose term was almost over.

Slavet wrote a scathing memorandum to Marshall in response: "It is fundamentally unfair to the parties and destructive of the process to hold up these cases pending my departure and Mr. McPhie's confirmation," Slavet wrote in the memo dated Feb. 25, 2003, referring to the incoming Bush appointee, Neil McPhie. Soon after, McPhie joined the court and Slavet's term ended. Marshall and McPhie decided the Johns case that August: "Corrective Action Denied."
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But the Bush administration has vigorously opposed stronger whistle-blower protections. In a confidential e-mail from 2006, obtained by CIR and Salon, the White House registered strong objections to a congressional committee that was reviewing a similar law to protect whistle-blowers drawn up last year, saying the "excessively overbroad definition of whistleblowing ... forbids using any common sense." And President Bush has said he will veto the new legislation moving through Congress, saying in a two-page Statement of Administration Policy that the new law would "increase the number of frivolous complaints and waste resources" and could "compromise national security." ...