All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

White House Censoring is the Same Old Story

Late yesterday, news broke that the White House “watered down” Senate testimony from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a Senate hearing, also taking place yesterday. Why? Because the director was going to discuss the negative links that climate change is having on public health.

So someone in the White House is censoring information regarding global warming in an attempt to tone down the scale of it. Sound familiar? It should.

GAP and Rick Piltz blew the whistle two years ago when a White House official was caught editing climate science documents, in an attempt to play down the link between human activity and global warming. Besides being headline news everywhere, this was also a partial focus of a 60 Minutes piece. Oh, and the gentleman who did was caught editing back in 2005? Former oil lobbyist Phil Cooney, who left the White House a few days later to join ExxonMobil.

Piltz now runs Climate Science Watch, a GAP program focused on holding public officials accountable for the ways climate science data is used. Earlier this morning, CSW posted the CDC Director’s original testimony prior to being censored.

-- Dylan Blaylock

NASA's Folly

In an effort to find out just how safe our nation’s airlines are (in terms of near-collisions and other close calls airplanes have had), NASA funded a thorough $8.5 million study back in 2005, gathering information from 24,000 of the industry’s ultimate insiders – pilots.

Sounds like a good idea, right? It was.

One big problem: NASA didn’t release the results of the survey because serious safety problems occur far more often that they expected, or wanted the public to know about. Not only have they made the decision not to release the report’s finding, but now NASA officials want to destroy all traces of the project. From an Associated Press article yesterday:

 “Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.”

Today’s New York Times is reporting that a House committee is set to hold hearing on the matter in the near future. Specifically:

“The panel asked the agency to hand over an electronic copy of the data to ensure that it would not be destroyed.”

Thank goodness. It says a lot about the state of NASA when the agency can’t be forthcoming about its own report findings with the American people.

-- Dylan Blaylock

On Transportation...

Paul Taylor, a friend of GAP’s, who represents whistleblowers in the trucking industry, passed along the following note.  Apparently, the Department of Labor is an astonishing (even for this government) seven years behind in issuing a congressionally required report with DOL’s recommendations for strengthening the surface transportation (trucker, bus, etc.) whistleblower protections implemented by DOL. 

Thank goodness Congress didn’t wait for DOL to act.  In August, President Bush signed into law the most complete whistleblower protection legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress.  It amended the surface transportation whistleblower statute and added corresponding protections for rail and public transit employees. 

As Paul notes below:

“These are changes that truck safety advocates wanted made to the [law] and they were implemented with no help from DOT or DOL.

I have to wonder whether some of these changes might have been to the STAA years ago if DOT and DOL had done their job and had the report issued by June 2000 as directed by Congress.

Lives might have been saved if the provisions implemented on August 3, 2007, had been implemented 7 years ago.”

Please read the note below and thank the Members of Congress, particularly Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii for taking action where two consecutive administrations failed.

On June 9, 1998, Congress passed legislation requiring, among other things, the Secretary of Transportation, "in conjunction with the Secretary of Labor" to investigate whether the statutory employee protections for truck drivers (49 U.S.C. Sec. 31105) and to report back to Congress concerning the results of the investigation and "include recommendations to address any statutory changes necessary to strengthen the enforcement of such employee protection provisions."

The report by DOT was due June 9, 2000.  It has not yet been issued.

For some unknown reason, the Department of Transportation or the Department of Labor, or both, either do not care about the Congressional mandate, or they do not want the results of the study conducted more than 7 years ago to be released.

Since 2002 I have been trying to find out when the report would be issued.  I enlisted the help of aides to my Congressman, John Kline (D-Minn.), and Congressman James Oberstar (D-Minn), Chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

I wrote letters to John Hill, FMCSA Administrator, on October 5, 2006, and April 4, 2007, asking when the report could be expected.  Mr. Hill did not answer my letters until July 12, 2007, after I called his office twice and asked to speak with him personally.  When Mr. Hill finally responded by letter to me, he asked me to deal with Carol Zok in his office (I have no problem with dealing subordinates so long as they are responsive).

Today I was informed that the mandatory report that was due from DOT nearly 7 1/2 years ago will be issued within the next 60 to 90 days.  Apparently the report is being reviewed by the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health.

I am not holding my breath.

It should be noted that in May 2007, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing to address the Department of Labor's failure to timely decide whistleblower cases including cases filed by truck drivers.  The Committee also addressed whether or not whistleblower protections need to be strengthened for employees in the private sector.

On August 3, 2007, President Bush signed the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act, Public Law 110-053…The amendments to the STAA expand the scope of activities that qualify for protection under the STAA including, but not limited to, a protection for commercial drivers accurately recording their activities on their records of duty status...

…The procedural amendments to the STAA also allow an employee/truck driver to pull his case away from the Department of Labor and put it in U. S. District Court with a jury trial.

These are changes that truck safety advocates wanted made to the STAA and they were implemented with no help from DOT or DOL.

I have to wonder whether some of these changes might have been to the STAA years ago if DOT and DOL had done their job and had the report issued by June 2000 as directed by Congress.

Lives might have been saved if the provisions implemented on August 3, 2007, had been implemented 7 years ago.

Notwithstanding the new amendments to the STAA, the mandatory report on the effectiveness of the STAA's whistleblower provisions and recommendations for strengthening the STAA should still be issued.  Additional changes for strengthening the STAA's whistleblower protections for truck drivers should include a provision vesting OSHA with administrative subpoena powers in STAA cases so that unscrupulous trucking companies cannot just thumb their noses at OSHA and frustrate their investigations.  Additionally, a provision should be implemented where the recommended decision and order of a DOL administrative law judge become the final order of the Secretary of Labor where the DOL's Administrative Review Board fails to issue a final order within one year after the case is fully briefed.  Right now the Administrative Review Board is taking more than 3 years to issue final orders after the ALJ's recommended decisions and orders are issued in cases fully tried on the merits.  That is unconscionable.

Paul Taylor
Truckers Justice Center
www.truckersjustice.com

We’ll keep you posted on the status of the report.  But, in the meantime, if you want to give the Department of Labor a call to find out what’s going on…

-- Adam Miles

Who's Lying?

Over the last few weeks, the Federal Times has conducted an op-ed debate between GAP and leadership of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. In a September 17 op-ed, GAP Legal Director Tom Devine and Legislative Representative Adam Miles called for Special Counsel Scott Bloch's resignation or removal. On October 9, Bloch responded that GAP's attacks were "unfounded" and "based on their own facts."   

So far nearly all the evidence on OSC's performance has come from the OSC. The factual basis for GAP's attacks was a review of the OSC annual reports. Bloch did not actually present any facts to back his assertions that GAP was dishonest in the article.   

We think in either case it is time for the focus to shift to a factual record from those who have lived through the reality of trying to seek help from Special Counsel Bloch. If you email your past experiences, we will use them for congressional advocacy in two areas. 

• New legislation to overhaul the rules for how OSC operates, including the right to know OSC's evidentiary record from investigating your case. Your comments on trying to learn what happened to your rights when you sought help -- whether and what OSC did with the evidence you presented, and whether they investigated independently -- would be particularly helpful.  

• Mr. Bloch's removal. At GAP we do not believe it will be possible to restore the OSC's credibility as long as Bloch remains in office, and it is essential to set a precedent of accountability for Special Counsels who abuse their public trust. An upcoming report by the OPM Office of Inspector General could accomplish that goal, but it is unlikely in isolation because the OIG running the case is highly political, and the probe itself has become a political football. Quite likely, the tipping point will require a record created directly by whistleblowers that reflects the reality behind both sides' rhetoric. That's the opportunity and challenge from this posting.

Please email, do not post, your experiences directly to us at either whistle47@aol.com or adamm@whistleblower.org. We are worried about possible retaliation against those who post their stories publicly here. Thank you.

"State Secrets" Abuses

The Supreme Court this week declined to take up the case of Khaled el-Masri, the German citizen who alleged he was abducted and tortured by the CIA in a case of mistaken identity.  Lower courts also passed on the case, caving to Executive Branch claims that holding a trial would expose "state secrets." 

As Steve Aftergood, who runs the Secrecy Project for the Federation of American Scientists, notes:  “[The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case] means that even if all of el-Masri's allegations are true, there is no legal remedy available to him. The courthouse doors are closed in the United States. That is bad law and bad policy."

The Bush administration increasingly has abused the so-called "state secrets" privilege to deny due process to alleged terrorists, in immigration and deportation cases, and to whistleblowers. Aftergood's blog posts to a letter from law professors, scholars, and activists, including FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and former GAP client and Library of Congress icon Lou Fisher, urging Congress to end such abuses. 

In March, the House of Representatives took a preliminary step toward curbing state secrets abuses in passing landmark whistleblower protection legislation, H.R. 985. The bill authorizes inspectors general to decide on issues of fact when the administration cites "state secrets" in an effort to deny a whistleblower's claim in court. The Bush administration threatened to veto H.R. 985, in part because of this provision. Despite the threat, half of the House Republicans and all the Democrats voted for H.R. 985, giving it a veto-proof majority in that chamber.

-- Adam Miles

 

Getting it Really, Really Wrong

NASA Climatologist James Hansen was attacked last week in an editorial by Investor’s Business Daily for taking money from George Soros – specifically from his Open Society Institute. A claim was made that Hansen received over $700,000 from OSI, some of which was supposedly laundered through GAP, as Hansen was a client of ours in early 2006.

Blogs everywhere seem to have picked up on the story, which happens to be dead wrong. The Seattle PI discovered this when it started investigating the situation, and its lead paragraph was right on point:

The blogosphere was in a churn this week over NASA scientist James Hansen's receipt of $720,000 from the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute. There's just one problem: The story's completely wrong.

 The piece continues:

GAP's president Louis Clark and Rick Piltz, director of GAP’s climate science watch program, say they helped Hansen in about February to April of 2006. Their 15-page grant proposal to the Open Society Institute in late July of that year had 15 lines that referred to Hansen, with seven lines recounting what they'd already done for him and two more that said they “remain available to defend Dr. Jim Hansen's job and to offer legal advice upon request.”

The story is simply wrong. GAP never paid a dime to Hansen, and to insinuate such is a complete falsehood.