A story in Saturday's Washington Post illustrates the absolute inadequacy of whistleblower protections. In 1989, Richard Barlow was fired after raising objections inside the Office of the Secretary about senior Pentagon officials lying to Congress concerning Pakistan's emerging nuclear weapons program and the threat of AQ Khan. Since then, the State Department Inspector General and the GAO have both largely vindicated Barlow and found that he was retaliated against. Barlow's security clearances were restored, but he could not get rehired by the government due to the incident; as a result, he could not get the annual pension and health insurance that he deserves.
Twenty Senators and eight legislative committees have looked at Barlow's case, only to discover that there isn't any avenue to compensate whistleblowers fired from the intelligence field. "There just isn't a venue for someone like him," said POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian to the Post. "He was trying to prevent lies to Congress about something of global importance. And he didn't even go to Congress -- all he did was suggest that Congress not be lied to." When Barlow tried to find a venue in the court system, government officials used the "state secrets privilege" to quash his case.
As reprehensible as it is that Barlow was retaliated for doing his job, the real failure is that his concerns about AQ Khan--an individual whose impact Congress is still examining--were not heard, and as a result, the United States missed an opportunity to stop Khan from building "the world's largest atomic black market." The specter of the AQ Khans of the world may not go away any time soon, but Congress can correct the harm done to Richard Barlow by passing legislation to compensate for Barlow's loss of his pension and fixing the whistleblower protection system to make sure that this kind of mistake will never happen again.
-- Mandy Smithberger
This is typical lately, and quite unforgiveable. Federal employees who are doing their jobs ethically and honestly, should not find themselves labeled whistleblowers the first time they uncover and report wrongdoing while doing their routine oversight duties. It is a part of their job responsibilities to stand up, report, and try to get the problems addressed and resolved. They should not find themselves being treated like public enemy #1 by their supervisors, the government in general, and sometimes the media or others. Once the system of how negative reports are handled in general is resolved, then the people who have been pretty much destroyed due to severe retaliation from wrongdoers must be "made whole again."
Posted by: flyover_27 | Jul 18, 2007 at 01:40 PM