The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

Lt. Col. Danny Davis, Camp Lejeune Documentary and Other Whistleblowers Honored at Ridenhour Awards

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis

By DANA LIEBELSON

Eileen Foster, a former senior executive for the national's largest mortgage provider, Countrywide Financial, didn't plan on getting labeled a whistleblower. She was hired to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by company employees. But when she did her job and revealed large-scale fraud within the company—the kind that led to the 2008 financial crash—she was fired for telling the truth.

Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis never set out to be a whistleblower either; he simply saw a discrepancy between what senior officers were telling Congress about the war in Afghanistan and the actual conditions on the ground. Refusing to abide by the idea that “the truth was negotiable,” he decided to go to Congress and the media to set the record straight.

Foster and Davis were just some of the truth-tellers honored yesterday at the 9th annual Ridenhour Prizes. The ceremony, hosted this year by POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian, recognizes those who champion the truth and uphold the spirit of Ron Ridenhour, the former U.S. Army helicopter gunner who exposed the My Lai Massacre based on accounts he had heard from fellow soldiers during the Vietnam War. Each prize comes with a $10,000 stipend.

 

TAKE ACTION

Tell Congress to Hear Afghan War Whistleblower

 

“This is the most threatening environment for whistleblowers in decades—this year’s prizewinners are heroes that demand to be heard” said Randy Fertel, President of the Fertel Foundation, which cosponsors the awards along with the Nation Institute.

One of this year’s prizes went to Rachel Libert and Tony Hardmon, the filmmakers behind Semper Fi, Always Faithful, which chronicles Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger’s quest to get to the bottom of the Marine Corps’ cover-up of the deadly water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

“There are factions that call people ‘unpatriotic’ for holding military leaders accountable,” Ensminger said at the event. “But telling the truth is many times harder than going along with the status quo.”

Here We Go Again: SEC Reveals Whistleblower's Identity to Company under Investigation

By MICHAEL SMALLBERG

UPDATE: The SEC has responded to this post below.

In an apparent case of history repeating itself, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has failed once again to protect the identity of a key whistleblower, even as the agency tries to encourage more whistleblowers to come forward with tips about financial industry misconduct.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday morning that an SEC attorney “inadvertently revealed the identity” of a whistleblower to his former employer during an investigation of Pipeline Trading Systems LLC.

The whistleblower, Peter Earle, worked at Milstream Strategy Group LLC, a Pipeline-affiliated trading entity. Pipeline recently paid $1 million to settle SEC charges alleging that the company failed to disclose to customers of its “dark pool” trading platform that Milstream was filling most of the orders.

Earle provided the SEC with a notebook in early 2010 after he had left the company that helped guide the agency's investigation. Later that year, Daniel Walfish—an attorney at the SEC’s New York Regional Office—provided Earle’s notebook to Gordon Henderson, who headed up Milstream. Henderson—who already had suspicions about Earle—was easily able to recognize Earle’s handwriting, according to the Journal.

Air Force Lifts Booz Allen Suspension, Contractor Admits to "Broader Systemic Ethical Deficiencies" and "Additional Improper Actions"

By NEIL GORDON

On Friday, Booz Allen Hamilton announced that its San Antonio office was removed from the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) and regained full eligibility to compete for new federal contracts. Booz Allen entered into a three-year administrative agreement with the U.S. Air Force. We strongly encourage you to read the agreement, which contains several astonishing admissions about the company’s ethics environment and business practices.

POGO blog readers may remember that Booz Allen’s San Antonio office was proposed for debarment in February because, in April 2011, an employee at the office disseminated protected, non-public procurement information in apparent violation of the Procurement Integrity Act. On his first day of work, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joselito Meneses shared with his co-workers sensitive pricing data he had obtained while at the Air Force that gave Booz Allen an unfair competitive advantage in an upcoming procurement. Meneses and four of the co-workers with whom he shared the data were also proposed for debarment. (A search of the EPLS today reveals that Meneses and two co-workers are still proposed for debarment. The other two employees’ suspensions were lifted in March.)

Booz Allen accepted responsibility for the incident and agreed to implement company-wide ethics reforms and other remedial measures. Booz Allen also agreed to pay the Air Force $65,000.

According to the facts outlined in the administrative agreement’s preamble, Booz Allen’s law department learned of the improper disclosure approximately six weeks after it occurred:

From Comfort Capsules to Human Trafficking, Schwellenbach's Investigations 'Ahead of the Curve'

By DANA LIEBELSON

The "comfort capsules," as the Air Force so aptly dubbed them, had everything a discriminating world traveler could want: swiveling leather chairs, couches, wall-to-wall carpeting and a 37-inch flat-screen video monitor with stereo speakers, as well as other amenities a four-star general might need when flying on Uncle Sam's dime.

Heck, the chairs were even re-upholstered from brown to “Air Force blue” at a cost to taxpayers of $21,000 per four chairs. While the Air Force was spending millions of taxpayer dollars on these capsules, men and women on the frontlines were flying on torn-up netting.

After a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) investigation exposed the details in the summer of 2008, top military officials sputtered denials, and the news outraged Congress, which had twice told the Pentagon that the money needed to be spent on “higher priority” needs. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Colbert Report all followed the story.

It was an investigation that further strengthened POGO’s reputation as a Pentagon watchdog and helped make a name for Nick Schwellenbach, the 26-year-old  POGO national security investigator who unearthed the scandal.

For Schwellenbach, whose last day as POGO’s director of investigations is this week, exposing the comfort capsules was one of the highlights of his career, which has included investigating the failures of the military whistleblower protection system, spurring reforms in how the U.S. deals with human trafficking, and exposing cost overruns in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—among other things.

New Op-Ed: Congress Needs to Listen to Lt. Col. Daniel Davis

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis returned from his second tour in Afghanistan determined to tell people that his time in the country had left him with a very different impression than military leaders had been giving the public. Davis put his analysis into two reports, one classified and one unclassified, and submitted them to the Department of Defense Inspector General. Davis then went to the media with his analysis, but despite all of the press, Congress has yet to call Davis to testify about what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan. POGO's Dana Liebelson has a new op-ed about why Congress should listen to Davis.

It's incredible that Congress has virtually ignored Davis' allegations that it's been misled. You might expect that the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, or Intelligence Committees would jump at the chance to hold hearings on Afghanistan and ask Davis to testify. But you'd be wrong.

Why should we listen to Davis? He's a soft-spoken, unassuming soldier who was described in one evaluation as someone whose "devotion to mission accomplishment is unmatched by his peers." Davis also made the point that he is no "WikiLeaks guy part II"— he's made a concerted effort to protect classified information.

You can read the entire article here.

Andre Francisco is POGO's Online Producer

Follow @andrefrancisco

Interview: Eyal Press, Journalist and Author of Whistleblower Book, "Beautiful Souls"

By DANA LIEBELSON

POGO spends a lot of time with whistleblowers: protecting them, reporting on them, and helping them get their voices heard by the powers that be. But one thing we don't meditate on often is America's culture of whistleblowing. What makes an employee go against the grain, and blow the whistle in this country? Is it something in the water, or something in the blood?

These are the kinds of philosophical questions that Eyal Press, journalist and former Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, has sought to answer in his new book: Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times. According to The New York Times, Press “splices his case studies with brief accounts of other dissenters, along with insights drawn from sociology, political theory, history, neuroscience, psychology, fiction and philosophy.”

Each of those topics deserves their own college course. So POGO caught up with Press and asked him instead about whistleblower traits, protections, and the recent effort by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) to hang financial whistleblowers out to dry. 

POGO: You have said that Americans’ relationship with whistleblowers is “schizophrenic”—on one hand the idea is romanticized, on the other we’re not likely to support real-life whistleblowers. Can you talk about this?

Eyal Press: Instead of schizophrenic, I would say that deeply ambivalent is a better description. On one hand, there is a kind of lore surrounding whistleblowers in American culture—we see it in Hollywood movies, and in the fact that Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience is taught in high schools. The idea of an individual standing up to institutional corruption really resonates with a lot of Americans.

On the other hand, when it comes to actually paying attention to whistleblowers and protecting their rights, the U.S. record is not so great. I think one way that can be changed is to increase awareness and knowledge of what whistleblowers do to make our democracy healthier. Healthy institutions and government agencies require the airing of alternative views, and the capacity for people on the inside who witness corruption and fraud to speak out about it. We can’t acquaint ourselves with the benefits if we don’t know the stories. The first part of is educational. The second part is political—we need better laws.

POGO: In demonstrating how whistleblowers are vital to saving U.S. taxpayer dollars and lives, is there a case in your book that particularly stands out?

Key Member of Congress Lends Support to Whistleblower Robert MacLean

By DANA LIEBELSON

Representatives Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) have submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on behalf of  Robert MacLean--a whistleblower who revealed wrongdoing in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Cummings, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (HOGR) and a long-time champion for whistleblower rights, is the most recent representative to join the cause.  

This terrific news comes on the heels of POGO’s recent action alert, which urged supporters to ask their Members of Congress to take a stand for whistleblower protections by supporting what will likely be MacLean’s final appeal.  

“Mr. Cummings’ entry is a powerful credibility booster shot, since he is the ranking member of HOGR that has jurisdiction over the Whistleblower Protection Act,” Tom Devine, legal director at the Government Accountability Project (GAP) told POGO.

SUNSHINE WEEK: Wonks, Journos, Former Feds Talk Government Secrecy

By BRYAN RAHIJA

Who needs college basketball when you could be debating government accountability? All eyes at POGO HQ this afternoon were fixed not on bracket-busting underdogs, but on a Sunshine Week panel moderated by POGO head honcho Danielle Brian on the balance between protecting national security and maintaining an open and accountable government.  

The all-star panel touched on over-classification of government records, congressional oversight, whistleblower protections, the proliferation of security clearances, and contractors' increasing role in core government activities.  

Jeffrey H. Smith, former general counsel of the CIA, said that the best solution for the current lack of congressional oversight is simply that Congress needs to use more of the powers it already has. 

Dana Priest, the Washington Post reporter behind the "Top Secret America" series and the book of the same name, pointed out that part of the reason for the massive expansion of the contracting community surrounding intelligence agencies was that Congress gave the agencies billions of dollars to ramp up their activities—but with an understanding that agencies wouldn't make the government any bigger.  

Big Trouble in the Big Apple: SAIC Settles NYC Contract Fraud Scandal for $500M

By NEIL GORDON

This week, it was announced that top 100 federal contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) agreed to pay a record $500 million to settle claims of defrauding New York City on the CityTime information technology contract. Under a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, SAIC agreed to the filing of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which the government will drop in three years if SAIC pays the money and cooperates with investigators.

The contract to build a computerized timekeeping system for the city was taken over by SAIC in 2000. Somewhere along the way, the project degenerated into a massive kickback and bill-padding scheme that has cost the city more than $650 million. The scandal has already brought down two high-ranking former SAIC employees, project manager Gerard Denault, who is charged with receiving at least $5 million in kickbacks, and chief engineer Carl Bell, who pleaded guilty in June 2011 to fraud and money laundering. It also prompted SAIC to fire three key executives last fall.

POGO would like to highlight three important aspects of the CityTime fiasco:

State Department Moves to Fire Whistleblower Peter Van Buren, Denies Retaliation

By DANA LIEBELSON

This week, the State Department moved to fire former Foreign Service officer Peter Van Buren, who published a book detailing the alleged waste and abuse he witnessed in Iraq. When POGO interviewed Van Buren back in January, the State Department had suspended his security clearance indefinitely, but he was still on payroll.

State based its actions on eight charges against Van Buren outlined in a 25-page investigation, according to The Washington Post. Among many other allegations in the report, which POGO has obtained, State accused Van Buren of “posting three hyperlinks to the WikiLeaks.org website” and refusing “to answer certain questions in a compelled [State Department] administrative interview.”

Van Buren alleges that State retaliated against him for whistleblowing actions like publishing a book, doing interviews with the media—including POGO—and putting information on his personal blog.

“It saddens me to see a once-great institution, the Department of State, reduced to crude retaliation against one of its own employees for writing a blog,” Van Buren told POGO. “If I did not tell you about the waste and mismanagement of billions of your tax dollars in Iraq, who would?”

Checking In with the Heads of the New SEC and CFTC Whistleblower Offices

Sean McKessy (top) and Vincente Martinez.

By MICHAEL SMALLBERG

On Wednesday, Securities Docket hosted a webcast with the heads of the new whistleblower offices at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

These offices are now offering awards and anti-retaliation protection to whistleblowers who provide the SEC and CFTC with original tips that lead to successful enforcement actions. POGO strongly supported provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that established the new whistleblower programs at these agencies, and we’ve been fighting against legislation introduced by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) that would effectively wipe out the incentives and protections afforded to whistleblowers under Dodd-Frank.

The following are edited excerpts from Wednesday’s webcast, hosted by Bruce Carton at Securities Docket, with Sean McKessy, head of the SEC’s Whistleblower Office, and Vincente Martinez, head of the CFTC’s Whistleblower Office.

On the quantity and quality of whistleblower tips…

Sean McKessy, Chief, Office of the Whistleblower, Securities and Exchange Commission: …[Our recent report to Congress] covers the period from August 12^th, when our rules went effective, through the end of the fiscal year, September 30^th of 2011. In that approximate seven-week period, we received 334 whistleblower complaints from people who actually filled out the form, both in hard copy and online. That averages out to about seven per calendar day…

Take Action: Tell Your Member of Congress to Conduct Hearings on Afghanistan and Invite Whistleblower Daniel Davis to Testify

By DANA LIEBELSON

POGO and a bipartisan group of representatives have already sent letters asking Congress to hold hearings in response to whistleblower Lt. Col. Daniel Davis's explosive disclosures on Afghanistan--now, it's your turn. Take action today and urge the appropriate congressional committees to conduct hearings and invite Davis to testify.

Davis alleged that senior military officials have given the American public and Congress a misleading portrayal of progress in the war in Afghanistan—an allegation that concerns every U.S. taxpayer. Six Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle sent a letter on February 14 asking House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to consider Davis’s analysis of the situation in Afghanistan by holding hearings and inviting him to testify.

POGO echoed this call in a letter sent on February 17 to the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate. POGO also called for the declassification of the December 2011 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan, a document prepared by the Director of National Intelligence that some Members of Congress have cited as evidence supporting Davis’s assessment.

As a taxpayer, you deserve full oversight of the war in Afghanistan. Don’t hesitate to contact your Member of Congress to request hearings and the declassification of the NIE.

Dana Liebelson is POGO’s Beth Daley Impact Fellow.

Follow @dliebelson

Image via Daniel Davis.