Friday, September 01, 2006

‘Whistleblowers suck

yesterday i mentioned the whistleblowers conference call - i'm still waiting on the audio recording so that i can write a full post about it.

of course, it's ridiculous that Duncan Hunter is trying to block the bill - it's like Porky Byrd and Toobz-Stevens blocking the pork-transparency bill - but at the same time, Sibel and the NSWBC hate the Collins-Akaka bill that Hunter is trying to block. As Sibel said when i interviewed her:
SE: That bill is S494 - it came out of the Homeland Security Committee - so Senators Collins, Lieberman and Akaka. They said 'OK - these whistleblowers are making a lot of noise, let's give some whistleblower protection' so they drafted the bill - of course, there is this chunky paragraph there saying 'however, the following agencies are all exempt for any Whistleblower protection. FBI, NSA - every National Security and law enforcement agency!'

Not only that - we also caught this one deadly paragraph which says that any agency, not just National Security agencies has the right to open an investigation against any government employee who goes to congress and discloses any information - classified or unclassified! Basically it's giving carte blanche to the executive branch to investigate anyone who goes to congress! Well - this actually legitimizes retaliation - it is such a dangerous thing!

We sent Collins and Lieberman a letter saying 'please take out that paragraph, this is very dangerous, please don't do this - it's worse to have a bill like this, under the mask of ‘Whistleblower protection’ than having no bill at all - because this legitimizes retaliation.'

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You gotta love a "pork-transparency bill". What is that? A licence to take it out and wave it around? Sign me up!