Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Senator Charles Grassley supports whistleblowers!

National Whistleblower Center

SENATOR GRASSLEY URGES FBI TO DISCIPLINE AGENTS FOUND GUILTYOF RETALIATING AGAINST JANE TURNER

Senator’s Letter Follows Up on Unanimous Jury Verdict

Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 27, 2007. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a letter today urging FBI Director Robert Mueller to discipline the supervisors responsible for retaliating against former FBI Special Agent Jane Turner.

In a statement released today, Senator Grassley stated:
“The high standards of the FBI do not allow for anything less than the truth. It’s time for the supervisors who retaliated against Jane Turner, and other whistleblowers for that matter, to be held accountable. This jury verdict is vindication for Agent Turner. She had the courage to stand up alone, in the face of resistance, and say what happened was wrong.”
On February 5, 2007 a federal court jury unanimously held that the FBI illegally retaliated against Jane Turner, a 25-year veteran FBI agent, and awarded her $565,000.00 in damages.

Among the FBI officials who participated in the retaliatory actions against Ms. Turner were James Burrus, the current Assistant Director of the FBI's Criminal Division and James Casey, a high level “Section Chief” in the FBI’s counterintelligence program.

Stephen M. Kohn, one of Jane Turner’s attorneys, and the President of the National Whistleblower Center, issued the following statement: “The FBI has refused to reform itself. We hope that aggressive oversight by Congress can put an end to the retaliatory culture that undermines the FBI’s law enforcement mission.”

A copy of Senator Grassley’s press statement and letter to Director Mueller can be found here
wow. let's hope that support continues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm hoping my former senator (Grassley) is asctually returning to his earlier more honorable stances in helping folks like Sibel.

However part of me wonders how much he's motivated by doing the right thing in helping whistleblowers, and how much there perhaps is a motivation of a personal grudge he has with the FBI and other intelligence apparatus at the federal level. If you look back in time, his efforts to counteract or take issue with FBI actions doesn't start with Sibel, but reaches back to the Clinton era too.

I'm hoping that his intentions are honorable and not the latter, as the latter would be someone that one might be more concerned with supporting you when the chips are down for a really important issue that he might not help with if he doesn't feel he can get his "pound of flesh" from.

I don't want to put down Grassley and do want to commend him for this gesture, but just hoping he's got good intentions for it. Wish he'd been more inquisitive of Alito's and Roberts' stances on state secrets privilege usage instead of praising them so much during their approval hearings which might have helped Sibel get her case heard by the Supremes if he'd brought more attention to that issue. Had he done that, I'd not have been posing this concern at all.