All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

The Cover-Up of Murders at Guantanamo

This thorough investigative report relies on the several eyewitnesses (turned whistleblowers) who were guards, or worked in some capacity, at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay. Their disclosures point out multiple discrepancies regarding the official versions of the deaths of three detainees being held there in 2006. According to the government, these deaths were suicides by hanging. The disclosures/interviews of individuals working there strongly suggest that the three men died as a result of torture, making the acts homicides, which were then followed by a massive cover-up. Key points of the story/disclosures include:

• According to official documents, the three men bound their own hands, one his own feet, stuffed rags deep into their own throats, began to choke on them, and then hung themselves in their own cells (simultaneously) at Camp Delta (the primary holding area).
• The existence of a secret site, unnamed and unacknowledged officially by military personnel, located one mile north of Camp Delta. This site, according to witnesses, was used by (assumed) CIA operatives to harshly interrogate detainees. The site, was known as “Camp No,” because “the idea being that anyone who asked if it existed would be told, ‘No, it doesn’t.’” A series of screams coming from the direction of the compound was once heard.
• The night of the three deaths, three prisoners were taken, one at a time, to Camp No, hours before the deaths supposedly occurred. A van returned after several hours form Camp No, and then according to the whistleblower and other sources, a large commotion began.
• Other individuals’ accounts suggest that no bodies were brought from Camp Delta to the clinic (where they would go) that night along the walkway, which they would have had to, suggesting the deaths did not occur at Camp Delta, as the official report states.
• The instruction of superiors to guards/staff that the media would be reporting something different then what the guard were being told happened (guards were being told the prisoners choked to death on rags, while the media would be reporting death by hanging). The superior instructed all staff that “It was important … that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored.”
• NCIS investigators may have failed to review key pieces of information, or reference them in their report. Including, alarmingly, the “footage from the camera that continuously monitored activity in the hallways” which would have effectively proven the individuals died in their cells (if they had).
• Marks on the corpses of the deceased indicated severe beatings had occurred.
• The neck organs were removed in each of the prisoners before being released to their families – which would prove death by hanging (if that had occurred).
• The Justice Department’s, under the Obama administration, failure to adequately investigate the case in 2009 (the whistleblower came forward after a new administration was in place).
  

But this summary doesn’t really do the piece justice. Read for yourself the story that may be one of the most important whistleblower disclosures of the year.

FBI Sidesteps Law to Obtain Phone Records of Americans, Journalists

This post was written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack for her Daily Kos Blog.

According to e-mails obtained by the Washington Post, the FBI operated outside the law for years conducting phone records searches.  Big surprise: the issue was first raised by a whistleblower, Bassam Youssef, back in 2004.  We don't know everyone whose phone records were breached, but we know journalists from the Washington Post and New York Times are among them.

I have a particularly personal interest in this issue. Back in 2002, the government mysteriously obtained my phone records with Newsweek journalist Michael Isikoff.  This worried journalists so much that Douglas McCollam wrote an article for the Columbia Journalism Review warning journalists of my "creepy" situation, appropriately titled, "Who's Tracking Your Calls? And How Far Will the Department of Justice Go to Burn a Leaker?"

The newly revealed emails confirm that FBI officials ignored the 4th Amendment and their own internal procedures intended to protect civil liberties in obtaining phone records.

How the FBI got to this point is a cautionary tale in how extending surveillance powers with no meaningful checks and balances invites waste and abuse.

For years prior to 9/11 the FBI has had the power to obtain phone records using grand jury subpoenas or National Security Letters (NSLs), which carried the weight of a subpoena.  Post 9/11, the (un)PATRIOT Act vastly expanded the NSL power, making NSLs far easier to obtain, and the number of NSLs skyrocketed accordingly from 8,500 NSLs issued in 2000, to 39,346 in 2003, to 47,221 in 2005. (See Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Report, March 2007). 

Even with this increased, unchecked power, the FBI developed a scheme to circumvent the process by broadening it so much as to make it meaningless.  First flagged by the a DOJ IG Report in 2007, the FBI began using so-called "exigent letters," in which an FBI official would declare an emergency, get a hold of the phone records, and, supposedly, issue an NSL after the fact.  Unsurprisingly, thanks to the e-mails obtained by the Washington Post, we now learn straight from the FBI itself that the "emergencies" were not actually emergencies and that after-the-fact NSLs were sometimes never issued.  A 2003 internal FBI memo warned that the use of "exigent letters:"

has the potential of generating an enormous amount of data in short order, much of which may not actually be related to the terrorism activity under investigation.

Worse, the abuse struck right where we need freedom the most: reporters Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post and Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez of the New York Times were among those whose phone records the FBI breached.

What has the FBI done to rectify these problems?  Well, Nakashima, Bonner, and Perlez got an apology from FBI Director Mueller.  The FBI claims to have stopped using "exigent letters" in November 2006, when the DOJ IG began nosing around. And, the FBI devised a bunch of internal procedures to stop the abuse of the NSL power.  The FBI said any violations of the law were not deliberate, but how can something that happened 2,000 times not be deliberate? 

While these are all fine – perhaps even commendable – reforms, the fox is still guarding the hen-house.  There has been no legal change in the FBI's overbroad NSL power, and too many questions remained unanswered: Whose phone records were illegally obtained? What happened to that information?  What is an American’s recourse if her phone records have been breached? 

At this point, not reigning in the NSL power is inexcusable.  The FBI's use of "exigent letters" to avoid even the post 9/11 flimsy procedures for obtaining an NSL demonstrate what we all should have learned in our middle school history classes: that a lack of meaningful, outside-the-agency, checks on increased police powers invites waste and abuse. 

To this day, I do not know how the government obtained my phone records, but seeing as how the FBI treats its unprecedented NSL powers so flippantly and the IG's 2007 findings about widespread abuse appear to have been just the tip of the iceberg, we will probably never know what "authority" the government used to get my records.

That's why I now work at the Government Accountability Project--representing whistleblowers.  This issue dovetails four areas of my concern--whistleblowers, individual privacy, and government transparency and accountability.

 

OSC Honors Katrina Pumps Whistleblower with 2009 Public Service Award

GAP client Maria Garzino, United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) mechanical and civil engineer, will be awarded the 2009 Public Servant Award of the Year by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Wednesday, December 16.

Garzino is credited with revealing the inadequate state of New Orleans floodwater pumps built by the USACE after Hurricane Katrina. The disclosures, which both the Department of Defense Inspector General’s (DoDIG) office and USACE fought for years, showcase how New Orleans residents are still in great danger if flooding occurs again.

The award will be presented to Garzino this Wednesday at the OSC San Francisco Bay Area Field Office (in Oakland), at 1301 Clay St., Suite 1220N.

Click here to read the press release.

TSA Accidentally Posts Secret Security Procedures Online

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has experienced an enormous breach of security, as its airport screening procedures manual was posted online to a government website. The manual was improperly redacted, allowing computer savvy individuals to easily read the document, which contains some of its most closely guarded secrets. GAP client Robert MacLean is quoted in the article:

“Screening is like a big puzzle and this SOP [Standard Operating Procedures] gives you directions on putting the puzzle together," said Robert MacLean, a former Federal Air Marshal who was fired for revealing holes in TSA's security after the 9/11 attacks. MacLean added that TSA's assertion that the documents posted are old holds no merit. "How much in screening procedure changes in 17 months?" asked MacLean. "It's a one-dimensional process."

Last month, MacLean’s case was finally heard before the Merit Systems Protection Board. He was fired for blowing the whistle on actions taken by the TSA to cancel Air Marshal service on cross-country flights during a Code Red hijacker alert period. Years after revealing this disclosure, which resulted in the canceling of the unsafe order, MacLean was fired for his part in revealing sensitive security information – a pseudo-classification level that was retroactively applied to the information in MacLean’s disclosure.

In both the firing of MacLean and the posting of the manual, the TSA seems to be working very hard to endanger the lives of American citizens by their blatant disregard for the promotion of safety.

MacLean appeared on GAP’s television show Whistle Where You Work in March 2009. Click here to view the episode.  

Army Corps Found Liable For Katrina Damage

A federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers is liable for “gross negligence” in maintaining key navigation channels in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina – negligence which resulted in the catastrophic levee breaches that killed well over one thousand Americans.

While this has immediate ramifications for a small group of individuals that brought the claim, it also opens the door for future, probably massive, lawsuits. From the LA Times:

[The judge] awarded a total of $719,000 to a small group of flood victims that sued the government in April 2006.

But according to Pierce O'Donnell, the lead plaintiff's counsel, roughly 100,000 New Orleans-area residents and businesses who have filed flood-damage claims with the Army corps were now potentially eligible for payment.

The piece continues, providing what may become the accepted stance on how Katrina will be viewed in the future:

In a phone interview, O'Donnell hailed what he called a historic ruling, one that backed the widely held contention in New Orleans that the 2005 catastrophe was not just the fault of Mother Nature.

"The judge agreed with us that Katrina was not a natural disaster," O'Donnell said. "Katrina was a man-made disaster caused by the Army Corps of Engineers."

The New York Times also agrees with this synopsis:

It was the first time that the government has been held liable for any of the flooding that inundated the New Orleans area after Aug. 29, 2005, vindicating the long-held contention of many in the region that the flooding was far more than an act of God.

This blatant substandard and shoddy work produced by the Army Corps involving Katrina issues is no surprise to GAP. GAP client Maria Garzino, a Army Corps mechanical and civil engineer, twice was substantiated (most recently in August) by a government agency regarding her claims that the hydraulic pumps installed in New Orleans by the Corps after Hurricane Katrina are faulty and will not work in the event of future hurricanes.

Therefore, the Army Corps failed to safeguard New Orleans in the event of a hurricane prior to Katrina, and they’re failing to safeguard New Orleans from a future hurricane.  

Breaking Justice Dept. Corruption in Birkenfeld Case: U.S. Gave UBS Kingpin Immunity

This post was written by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn Radack for her Daily Kos Blog.

It's gone from bad to worse.  I've written previously about how Brad Birkenfeld, the whistleblower who shattered 75 years of Swiss bank secrecy, is the only one going to jail in this multi-billion dollar scandal.  But now my dyspepsia has turned to projectile vomiting.  I have asked in previous diaries why, when the U.S. had UBS kingpin Martin Liechti in its claws, it set him scot-free back to Switzerland.

Well, we now know why.  Consistent with a disturbing trend, the United States granted the worse of the worst immunity, and is imprisoning not just a bit player, but the whistleblower... and an American.

If you don't know about financial whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld already, then I recommend you watch this:

In Le Temps today, Switzerland's leading daily newspaper, http://www.bilan.ch/...
it states that Martin Liechti received immunity.  I know it is in French, but the relevant part translates as follows:

Despite incriminating documents pointing to LEICHTI, he was granted immunity.

But the U.S. would have had nothing on Liechti (as evidenced by the fact that it searched his place some five years ago and couldn't make a case), but for Brad Birkenfeld, who blew the whistle on Liechti and other top UBS executives.

So, it is especially shocking to find that the U.S. granted immunity to Liechti, the mastermind, when it wouldn't grant immunity to Birkenfeld, and actually prosecuted him!  

There is no justice.  What can you do?  Watch the YouTube video, rate it, and post a comment.  Spread this wretched story.

GAP Client Robert MacLean has MSPB Trial Today

Today at 11 a.m., the case of GAP client Robert MacLean will be heard before the Merit Systems Protection Board. MacLean was fired for blowing the whistle on actions taken by the Transportation Security Administration to cancel Air Marshal service on cross-country flights during a ‘Code Red’ hijacker alert period. Years after revealing this disclosure, which resulted in the canceling of the unsafe order, MacLean was fired for his part in revealing “sensitive security information” – a pseudo-classification level that was retroactively applied to the information in MacLean’s disclosure.

Click here to read a letter from GAP to the Obama administration detailing MacLean’s case

Currently, legislation that would stop this atrocity from occurring in the future (Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act) has passed the House and is being debated in the Senate. Two major issues the legislation addresses are the unjustified use of retaliatory investigations against federal whistleblowers, and the retaliatory action of stripping certain whistleblowers of the security clearances – effectively ending their job duties, and requirements to fulfill obligations.