All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

Australian Whistleblowing Study

To interested parties:

A PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, Australia is searching for participants (former whistleblowers) to take part in an online survey about wrongdoing in the workplace. 

GAP does not endorse this study in any way, but in the interest of academic pursuit and the study of whistleblowing, All Things Whistleblower has decided to post the description of the study & its call for participants. Any questions should be directed to the study’s author, Marissa Edwards (see below). This would assuredly involve questions of retained anonymity for those employee still at their workplace:

Specifically, the study focuses on how employees respond emotionally and behaviorally when they become aware of apparent wrongdoing (e.g., as targets of wrongdoing, observers, etc).  Common examples of wrongdoing include bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination, abusive supervision, fraud, and theft.

In the survey, participants are asked to think of a single episode they may have come across within the last seven years, and then to answer a series of questions about it. Marissa is interested in the experiences of participants who reported the wrongdoing (i.e., whistle-blowers) as well as those who remained silent, or who may have confronted the perpetrator, etc. Since she is studying a range of behaviors following wrongdoing, it does not matter how people responded, and all survey responses are completely anonymous and confidential.    

Additional information and a link to the survey are available at: http://www.business.uq.edu.au/display/~medwards/

-- Dylan Blaylock

Most Whistleblowers aren’t in it for the Money; Obama Reviews Secrecy

This article from the Washington Examiner details how some whistleblowers who bring forth qui tam actions receive significant percentages of large monetary settlements between the government and company found in the wrong.

However, the great majority of whistleblowers, in GAP’s long and learned history, do not proceed with their actions for potential financial gain. The great majority do so because they have uncovered a wrong that they feel compelled to correct or expose, as it is a moral issue. This often involves protecting the public health, or safeguarding against public fraud.

Switching gears, yesterday President Obama ordered a review of government secrecy practices regarding the classification of documents. The Bush administration was highly criticized by transparency activists for over-classifying materials and creating or overusing pseudo-classification levels for documents such as “Sensitive but Unclassified,” “For Official Use Only,” and “Law Enforcement Sensitive.”

GAP’s television program, Whistle Where You Work, covered this topic late last year in an episode focusing on national security whistleblowers and their rights in the federal government. You can watch that episode by clicking here.

-- Dylan Blaylock

Qui Tam Settlement; Whistleblowing British Nurses Need More Protection

Just some general whistleblower news today. First, in response to a qui tam action brought by a whistleblower, a national defense contractor has settled with the federal government for overcharging the Air Force for aircraft parts and other services.  

In England, an editorial in the British Medical Journal, a highly influential medical publication in that country, is urging for health workers to be granted stronger whistleblower protections, in light of a major whistleblower case involving nurses who exposed rampant hospital wrongdoing and mistreatment of patients.

Last, although President Obama has criticized the way that the Bush administration invoked the “state secrets” privilege, a federal judge is criticizing the president’s use of it in a California courtroom (in a case involving and Oregon charity and warrant-less wiretapping). The way in which the Obama administration responses may signal how it intends to use the privilege in the future.  

-- Dylan Blaylock

Lack of Justice for U.N. Sexual Harassment Victims

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, sexual harassment cases plague the United Nations. As the WSJ reported, “many U.N. workers who have made or faced accusations of sexual harassment say the current system for handling complaints is arbitrary, unfair and mired in bureaucracy.” GAP’s blog covered this issue in February (see here and here).

According to the WSJ article, the new UN internal justice system, which is set to launch on July 1, will seek to “create a more independent and professional system for resolving disputes, including sexual-harassment claims.” Although the new justice system will be an improvement over the current one, it unfortunately still falls short of both the recommendations made by a panel of independent experts and international human and labor rights standards.

It should be noted that employees at intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations are starting to challenge the immunities of these institutions in national courts (the Brzak case mentioned in the WSJ article is just one of several examples). If an IGO does not offer aggrieved individuals independent, third party dispute resolution, waiver of sovereign immunity is unavoidable to overcome the inherent, structural conflict of interest that occurs when an organization is both the defendant and the judge.

-- Shelley Walden

WWYW Episode 13 - Obama's Signing Statement on Whistleblowers; Protecting Patients from Faulty Medical Devices

This is the page to leave comments about Episode 13 of Whistle Where You Work, GAP’s television program. To view the show online, visit www.whistleblowertv.org. Here’s a description of the program:

In March, President Obama signed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill, but in so doing, he attached a signing statement asserting that certain provisions of the legislation raised constitutional concerns that Congress was stepping on Executive powers. Specifically, the president stated he was not waiving his authority to control communications by federal employees to Congress involving information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential. What are the ramifications of this statement for federal employee whistleblowers who wish to take concerns to Congress? Guests include Sharon Bradford Franklin of The Constitution Project and Tom Devine, Government Accountability Project

Then, we sit down with Lisa Hayes of Alliance for Justice, who is fighting for legislation that would allow patients injured by medical devices to sue the manufactures of such faulty products. If patients harmed by prescription drugs have legal recourse against manufacturers, why shouldn’t medical device producers be held accountable too?

This program was filmed in late April 2009.

Wyeth Wrongdoing; Global Warming Denied

Drug behemoth Wyeth Pharmaceuticals is being accused by the federal government of cheating the Medicaid system of hundreds of millions of dollars. The case was initially brought by whistleblowers. From the AP:

The court papers claim that between 2000 and 2006, Wyeth offered steep discounts to thousands of hospitals for two versions of Protonix, a drug that suppresses stomach acid.

By law, manufacturers of brand-name drugs are required to offer the same rebates to state Medicaid programs that they provide to other customers.

The government claims the maneuver helped the company avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates to Medicaid, a health care program for the poor that is funded by state and federal money.

"By offering massive discounts to hospitals, but then hiding that information from the Medicaid program, we believe Wyeth caused Medicaid programs throughout the country to pay much more for these drugs than they should have," Assistant Attorney General Tony West said in a statement.

Also, in perhaps a last gasp of hot air, this Wash Post article details how prominent Republican leaders have actively spoken out recently in a unified voice to deny that human induced-global warming is occurring. These leaders include GOP Chairman Michael Steele and House Minority Leader John Boehner. From the Post:

"We're cooling. We're not warming," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele said on a radio show in March.

"The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) -- although nobody is on record as saying carbon dioxide causes cancer.

-- Dylan Blaylock

Last Week's Congressional Hearing on the WPA

Last Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the 2009 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, legislation that GAP has been working to pass for several years. A deputy assistant attorney general gave key testimony on the matter, relaying the Obama administration’s perspective. While the whistleblower community is quick to note how (generally) supportive the president is of such protections, questions remain about how strong the support is. For example, the official refrained from offering the administration’s “full endorsement” of the legislation. GAP was mentioned here in the Washington Post article:

Sometimes, the importance of an issue to an administration can be gleaned by the rank of the person sent to talk about it. As a deputy assistant attorney general, De is at least five rungs from the top of the Justice Department's ladder. His testimony ignored some points in the legislation that are important to advocates, leaving Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, to say, “The jury is still out on the position the administration will take on the hard issues.”

GovExec also covered the hearing, specifically focusing on the issue surrounding national security employee whistleblowing rights within the legislation:  

As a matter of public policy, I think this is a truly horrible idea that will materially undermine our national security, weaken our ability to obtain sensitive information from intelligence services in other nations, probably get a lot of innocent Americans killed, and conceivably endanger the liberty of all Americans," Turner said.

Thomas Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy group, disagreed, arguing that the secretive nature of intelligence work makes whistleblower protections even more critical.

“While there may be animus against whistleblowers in all domestic institutions, at the FBI and intelligence agencies it is more likely to be obsessive hostility,” Devine said. “The code of loyalty to the chain of chain of command is the primary value at those institutions, and they set the standard for intensity of retaliation.”

Several witnesses, including Devine, advocated the expanded protections as a way to prevent leaks. In the past, whistleblowers have turned to the press because they had no internal avenues for reporting concerns, witnesses said. By providing them protection through internal channels, classified information could be kept among those with the proper clearances.

-- Dylan Blaylock, GAP Communications Director