All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

Another Nut Contaminated with Salmonella; Worker Compensation; Stimulus Fraud Hotline

In the latest national food safety concern, a California processor has recalled one million pounds of pistachio nuts over salmonella contamination. Hopefully this won’t turn into a wide-ranging, long-lasting problem like peanuts did, but these things do tend to start small…

Other than that, a few good stories today detailing the state of worker compensation claims (and struggles) in America. First, this NYT piece details problems with the process of that state’s Workers’ Compensation Board. An 18-month examination by the paper found that the system “struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the workplace.” The Times found that, “after reviewing cases and interviewing participants, virtually none of whom defended the system as efficient.”

Also, ProPublica details the story of a recently deceased man who fought for years to receive compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation program for his brain cancer (stemming from work at a nuclear site), but failed in his six-year quest before succumbing. Colorado Senator Mark Udall is trying to improve the dysfunctional system.

Lastly, the GAO has created a hotline for citizens to report “waste, fraud and mismanagement of government stimulus funds.” This is very, very good.

-- Dylan Blaylock

In the News Today...

The Washington Post has some solid pieces that relate to GAP programs. First, new studies show that popular drugs prescribed for children to treat hyperactivity or ADD “do little beyond 24 months.”

Also related to public health, the WP editorial board highlights a truly important issue - the House of Representatives may vote on a measure Monday which would finally provide the FDA oversight regarding cigarettes. Right now, tobacco companies “peddle a noxious mix of chemicals with impunity.” More:

“…[C]igarette makers don't even have to disclose what is in their products. The legislation would make such disclosure mandatory by creating a new agency within the FDA tasked with regulating tobacco products. Full disclosure would help health officials more accurately assess the dangers of smoking. The FDA would then be able to order tobacco companies to remove harmful additives and to make other changes that could make cigarettes less lethal.”

The piece is worth checking out. Finally, in what is becoming un-shocking news (when dealing with the context), an internal U.N. investigation has found that an official embezzled $500,000 intended for Afghan infrastructure projects and used the money to pay for his lavish lifestyle:

“The U.N. Procurement Task Force accused Gary K. Helseth, an American who headed the U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, in December of using the funds for lavish purchases, including first-class flights to Las Vegas and meals in posh restaurants in Copenhagen, Dubai, Florence and New York. Helseth oversaw more than $1 billion in reconstruction funds contributed by the United States and other international donors after the fall of the Taliban.”

-- Dylan Blaylock

Roundup: State Secrets, Anesthesia in Kids-Learning Disabilities Link, Mountaintop Removal Getting Tougher

This Washington Post article details how President Obama and the Department of Justice are being criticized for invoking the “state secrets” privilege which allows the federal government to “exclude evidence in a civil case on grounds that it jeopardizes national security.” President Obama is being accused of hypocrisy, as he criticized the Bush administration for its overuse in asserting this privilege.

Even more troubling, the Obama administration is attempting to take the privilege farther than the Bush administration did with a couple of cases. With regards to a specific case involving an Oregon Muslim charity, “President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated ‘state secrets,’ but also escalated the standoff -- proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them.”

Also in the news, this NPR report details a troubling new study has found that there appears to be a correlation between multiple uses of anesthesia in children under 4, and the development of learning disabilities in those children later in life (More coverage - Time, US News & World Report)

Lastly, in good news from Greenwire, in a fantastic development, the EPA has announced it will place greater scrutiny in its reviews of mountaintop-removal mining permits (specifically with regards to water quality ramifications of the projects). This highly controversial practice, which expanded greatly under the Bush administration, wreaks havoc on surrounding communities with a multitude of health ailments (especially children), and severely (and permanently) damages the environment.

White House Statement on Signing Statement

The Washington Times is doing a good job in covering the Obama-signing statement issue involving federal employee whistleblowers’ congressional communications. This latest article provides a quote, and for the first real time, somewhat of an explanation, for Obama’s actions (from a White House spokesman):

White House spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged the administration didn't follow its rules this time on working with Congress, but disputed Mr. Grassley's stance, saying the administration is committed to whistleblower protections but the spending bill "goes too far."

Mr. Burton said under the spending bill's language, administration officials who talk about classified or national security material or issues covered by executive privilege would be protected. He said the White House's more limited interpretation is consistent with how former President Bill Clinton construed whistleblower protections, and pointed to a signing statement Mr. Clinton issued Sept. 29, 1999, as evidence.

"The president's signing statement does not purport to control or limit legitimate whistleblowing activities. Nor is it intended to break new ground on this issue," Mr. Burton said.

Then, another article from the WT (this one on the front page) mentions the controversial signing statement. This article focuses on the differences that Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) has with President Obama on several issues, but mentions the signing statement several times, as Grassley is one of the leading whistleblower rights champions of the Senate:

The senator said he had not received a response from Mr. Obama to a letter he wrote complaining about the whistleblower signing statement.

"We've heard nothing," he said. "I don't know if he's backtracking or whether he's just legitimately so busy with the economy that he doesn't have time to consider what I have to say."

-- Dylan Blaylock

UN Watchdog Unit Under Fire

According to a Fox News story, the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) – the United Nation’s only independent oversight body with the authority to conduct system-wide investigations and evaluations – is under fire by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. A recent JIU report describes the Secretary-General’s interference with the normal procedures for appointing the JIU’s Executive Secretary, a post that has been vacant since December 2007. (It should be noted that JIU is not unique in this regard, as the SG has not named a permanent Director of the Investigations Division of the Office of Internal Oversight Services – the UN Secretariat’s investigative body – either, despite a two-year long search process). The report describes how the Secretary-General violated the JIU’s statutes and 40 years of practice by modifying appointment procedures after JIU recommended a candidate for Director.

The report also details how the UN bureaucracy has proposed supplanting JIU with the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG). It appears that UNEG is less independent and impartial than JIU, as it ultimately reports to the top executives of the various UN funds, agencies and programs, and its budget and agenda comes directly from these organizations. The JIU, on the other hand, reports to the UN General Assembly, although (in a less than ideal situation) it depends on the Secretariat for financing and administrative support. As a result, JIU has “stretched resources,” despite the thorough and impartial nature of many of its reports.

Two particularly noteworthy JIU reports are “Oversight Lacunae in the United Nations System,” and “Corporate Consultancies in the United Nations System Organizations.” The “Lacunae” report identifies deficits in UN investigative bodies: many lack independence, resources and the capacity to conduct thorough investigations. The “Corporate” report found a “lack of accountability in the use of consultancy throughout the system” (click here for a story about this report).

JIU is slated to conduct several much needed and controversial accountability studies in 2009, including a review of UNESCO and the World Food Programme (two organizations about which GAP has received serious complaints).  Among the anticipated issues to be examined are the selection and conditions of service of executive heads in UN system organizations; the evaluation function in the UN system; and the extent to which management’s treatment of UN staff complies with international labor law and norms. GAP attaches special importance to this last investigation as whistleblowers routinely report violations of international labor laws at the UN.

-- Shelley Walden

The Post's (Welcome) About-Face

This Washington Post masthead editorial praises the actions of a city-employee whistleblower that exposed a $50 million scheme in the Washington, D.C. tax office – one that reeked on several levels of blatant corruption. The piece, which lays out why whistleblowers are effective and needed, ends with “Nothing is more effective than having workers willing to blow the whistle on wrongdoing.”

Right on. This is absolutely correct. One can only wish that the same outlet was this forthcoming about whistleblower rights, or even smimila-minded about them, just last month. You see, this is almost an about-face from an editorial from the same board some months back.

In February, the outlet ran this piece, which attacked whistleblower advocates for trying to attach long-overdue federal employee whistleblower protections to the stimulus package. Even though these protections would have better allowed federal employees to expose wrongdoing involving stimulus money.

What accounts for the discrepancy? Yes, the February editorial did spend some time talking about the intelligence employee provisions and why they shouldn’t be attached – but they still attacked the whole bill, stating –

“…attaching the bill to the stimulus package under the pretext that stronger whistleblower protections will enhance fiscal accountability is disingenuous.”

No, it wasn’t. Just because these protections were advocated before for years didn’t make them irrelevant to the stimulus package.

Still, it’s a good thing for the Post to support the actions a whistleblower so publicly. Let’s see what they think of Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s (and others) re-introduction of the whistleblower protection legislation, which isn’t attached…

-- Dylan Blaylock  

Signing Statement on Whistleblowers?

Last week, in a possibly troubling development, President Obama issued his first signing statement, attached to a spending bill, with concerns over federal employee whistleblower protections for those who report issues to Congress. From the NYT:

He also raised concerns about a section that establishes whistle-blower protections for federal employees who give information to Congress.

“I do not interpret this provision,” he wrote, “to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control and correct employees’ communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.”

There’s more coverage here: WSJ, Washington Examiner

As Congressional Quarterly pointed out over the weekend, this signal is contradictory from previous ones:

After all, Obama not only promised during the campaign to protect federal whistleblowers, he also included a directive to that effect in a memorandum to federal departments and agencies earlier this week aimed at preventing political interference in science. Obama told the departments to design procedures, “including any appropriate whistleblower protections,” to avoid the kind of interference that reportedly took place during the Bush administration.

GAP is monitoring the situation and will report back soon.

-- Dylan Blaylock