The Project On Government Oversight is proud to announce our latest victory for whistleblower protections: in direct response to a letter we sent, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) released two memos calling on all federal agencies to ensure their communication monitoring policies and non-disclosure agreements do not interfere with or discourage lawful whistleblower disclosures. OSC has also taken down posters at the Department of Energy that potentially violated the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act.
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“OSC is grateful for watchdog groups such as POGO that are vigilant about whistleblower protection and bring incidents that could undermine whistleblowing to our attention. This is a valuable public service and helps OSC fulfill its mission.”
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Presidents of both parties have, at times, threatened to undermine the authority of the third branch. So the question is: are President Trump’s attacks on the judiciary part of the rough and tumble of politics, or do they cross a dangerous line?
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A SIGAR report revealed that the United States is unable or unwilling to stop funding units that engage in torture, summary execution, and other serious human rights violations, despite Congress’s efforts to restrict that aid. A dramatic illustration of this is the case of Lt. Gen. Abdul Raziq.
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If congressional offices cannot get through a boring report… then it hardly matters whether the IG has produced groundbreaking major work. One of the most powerful tools IGs have is the language they choose to convey serious problems.
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For FY 2019, defense agencies are asking taxpayers to pay nearly $1.2 trillion for our national security. But the Pentagon just doesn't need that kind of money—it needs to be smarter with taxpayer dollars.
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Our Sixth Amendment right to counsel is one of our chief defenses against the power of the government to take the property, the liberty — and in some cases, the life — of the accused. Yet it is sadly and routinely abused by the government.
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The U.S. military has skillfully juggled thousands of on-alert nuclear weapons for 75 years without dropping a single one. Now, President Trump wants to toss more into the air for them to handle, even as the command-and-control network grows increasingly creaky and unreliable.
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POGO in the News
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(Pars' lawsuit was first reported last year by the Project on Government Oversight.)
Though the whistleblower report never appeared, last October the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight got ahold of a leaked copy of one of the inspection memos. They quoted from it in an article. “A complainant alleging reprisal for making a protected disclosure has a minimal chance to have a complaint processed and adjudicated in a timely and complete manner.”
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Liz Hempowicz, director of policy for the Project on Government Oversight, says Quantock’s rage is misplaced. As a reminder, reprisal cases are when whistleblowers have already come forward and then are punished by a superior for spilling the beans.
“The idea that people are claiming whistleblower status to make it easier for them inside DoD is laughable. It’s not easy to be a whistleblower. There are severe career consequences for coming forward and reporting wrongdoing,” Hempowicz said.
The military is unique in that it is the whistleblower’s responsibility to prove he or she was retaliated against and not the agency. In the military, the whistleblowers must own up to poor performance in the past and then show they were retaliated against because they reported the misbehavior of a senior official and not because of the poor performance. That makes it harder for whistleblower reprisal cases to get substantiated because the whistleblower must show the reprisal punishment is not being conflated with a punishment for poor performance, Hempowicz says.
“The way he characterizes this is that people are misusing the system and they’re trying to fall back on their status as a whistleblower to buttress and soften the blow of legitimate actions against [the whistleblower],” Hempowicz said.
Hempowicz pointed to a 2012 Government Accountability Office report that stated 36 percent of complaints don’t have any basis in a protected disclosure that started the whole reprisal process. As for the 4 percent substantiation rate, Hempowicz said that number can be misleading.
“A 4 percent substantiation rate is better than the whole Department of Defense’s substantiation rate, but that’s not the sign of a healthy process. The office of special counsel, which handles a lot a whistleblower retaliation complaints on the civilian side, one of their estimates is that a good substantiation rate that shows that the process is working and the system is being implemented well is 6 [percent] to 8 percent,” Hempowicz said. “We’re not saying it should be a 100 percent or 90 percent substantiation, we understand that it’s difficult to substantiate these cases and that not all of them are going to be substantiated.”
Hempowicz noted the number of cases closed without a full investigation is important too because it contributes to the lower substantiation rate. Hempowicz said the six-fold increase in reprisal cases is actually a good thing.
“It’s funny to say that, the people in these [IG] offices, I see why it increases the burden because their workload is going up, but an increase in disclosures is where this is coming from. Those initial whistleblower disclosures then leads to whistleblower reprisal complaints and that’s good because you want people to come forward and blow the whistle on waste, fraud, abuse and illegality in the system. When those initial complaints go up there’s almost a direct correlation that those reprisal complaints go up,” Hempowicz said.
House Armed Services Committee Personnel Subcommittee Ranking Member Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) had similar sentiments as Hempowicz.
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But the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight and other whistleblower advocates cried foul, pointing to the posters’ failure to distinguish between illegal leaking and employees’ rights to disclose waste, fraud and abuse.
On Thursday, an investigator for the special counsel responded to a complaint by POGO to both OSC and the department, confirming that the posters have been removed for risking violation of the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act.
[...]POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian in a statement said, “I am glad to see that POGO’s recommendations regarding the placement of these posters and their inappropriate and noncompliant wording has led directly to their removal. Even more so, I am encouraged by the legal message that this removal will send to Energy Department employees, and by the explicit policies that OSC has laid out for all federal agencies in these memos. Whistleblowers are the nation’s first line of defense against waste, fraud, abuse and illegality within the federal government, and when they are adequately protected, their disclosures can lead to important reforms.”
Kerner said in a statement: “OSC is grateful for watchdog groups such as POGO that are vigilant about whistleblower protection and bring incidents that could undermine whistleblowing to our attention. This is a valuable public service and helps OSC fulfill its mission.”
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"It's hard in today's age to say you're unaware that this is something that people want to know," Sean Moulton, the open government program manager at the Project on Government Oversight, says. "To not be posting it, or to be posting it with very little information, does seem to be almost a conscious decision to withhold information."
[...] Moulton says that in every administration, some departments do a better job than others in making schedules transparent. The public schedule of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he says, is one of the best in the Trump administration, allowing the public to search past and future schedules by month, week and day. That's not an option available for DeVos' schedule.
"Quite honestly, you can be more open in a number of ways that wouldn't necessarily compromise your security," Moulton says. "There are ways to do it without giving away your exact time and location, but still giving people a better sense of what the secretary of education is doing each day. I would think the secretary of state has a pretty high security profile and level of cover and yet they seem to be able to make this information available."
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CQ Roll Call — CQ on Congress Podcast, Episode 91
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Congress' budget deal gives the Pentagon the money it says it needs to deter the world's other great powers. CQ defense reporter Andrew Clevenger and Mandy Smithberger of the Project on Government Oversight discuss lawmakers' reasoning in approving the big budget boost.
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In a Thursday commentary, the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight highlighted broader procurement deficiencies at Homeland Security-based agencies, based on January inspector general’s report on the department’s insufficient record of suspending and debarring flawed contractors.
POGO commented that it is “encouraged that the department is increasing its usage of suspension and debarment, and that it is making improvements where necessary.”
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A group of good government organizations write to U.S. Special Counsel Henry Kerner asking he look into a gag order at the Justice Department. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo last month preventing Justice attorney, officers and others from communicating with members of Congress without first consulting with the department’s Legislative Affairs office. A move the organizations say violates the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. The Government Accountability Project, Project on Government Oversight, and Public Citizen all signed the letter.
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“Congratulations, again!” Crowley wrote in a note to Gottlieb attached to his case for a review. “As discussed, the hopes and well being of so many living with rare, devastating diseases rests now with your great leadership and wisdom. Thanks for your attention to the attached.”
Gottlieb’s staff told me that the commissioner never saw that packet, redirecting it to other senior officials at the FDA. Officials, though, declined to explain what Crowley meant by the word “again,” or if Gottlieb had discussed the issue with the CEO.
That note, along with Crowley’s assertions on the timeline to respond, were obtained under FOIA by the Project on Government Oversight.
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Certainly, Republicans on the committee have received the strongest criticism. DemandProgress and the Project on Government Oversight, both known for their willingness to work with conservative groups on government openness and accountability, called on Ryan to fire every Republican member of HPSCI save one — Gowdy — from the committee. Their reason? The other committee Republicans, including Nunes, had voted to release the memo without seeing the underlying classified information on which it was based.
In their letter, the groups assert that the Republicans’ vote “constitutes such a severe lack of judgment” and demonstrates “an inability to fulfill their constitutional oversight obligations” or “to maintain public trust in their findings and recommendations” that they should be replaced.
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Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, said “he couldn’t get a waiver for that, that would have required outright recusal.” Making it potentially even worse than failing to recuse, Ohr’s pressing the Trump case appears to be something he decided to do on his own, rather than something assigned to him.
[...] Amey said, “As a lawyer and a top Justice official, Ohr should know that he can’t participate in anything related to his wife’s work … Ohr should have been upfront about his wife’s employment and not touched anything related to Steele, the dossier, and Fusion GPS.” The DOJ’s judgment is only as good as the information volunteered to them by Ohr, he said, and because he didn’t list the name of his wife’s employer, they likely had no reason to suspect it might have impacted his work.
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Critics say the move would give ICE access to an array of raw intelligence data that could lead to further abuses as ICE carries out President Trump’s mass deportation efforts. This is Jake Laperruque, of the independent watchdog agency, the Project on Government Oversight.
Jake Laperruque: “Well, I think if we’ve seen in the last year ICE demonstrate a willingness to be more severe and more arbitrary in its arrests, deportations and actions, this would enable them to a much higher degree. It’s really like taking someone who you’re not comfortable giving like a kitchen knife to and handing them a grenade.”
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LancasterOnline — Letter to the Editor from Harold A. Penner
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Contrary to Mattis’ warning, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Project on Government Oversight says increased military spending will only make U.S. defense capabilities worse. Writing for the project’s publication The Defense Monitor, Mandy Smithberger and Dan Grazier indicate that “history tells us we will actually get a force even less prepared and less capable as a direct result of a bigger budget. The reason is simple: The United States does not spend its military money well.”
[..] Smithberger and Grazier conclude that more money for defense “will only reward continued bad behavior. If President Trump wants to truly rebuild the military, he should actually slash its budget. That would force the Pentagon and Congress to make difficult choices necessary to produce a more effective fighting force.”
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