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whistleblowers
Why Congress Must Extend Whistleblower Protections to Government Contractors
If the Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act is passed, more contractors could feel empowered to stand up for what is right with crucial information.
Nov 15, 2024
With the recent presidential election, violence in the Middle East, and intense natural disasters prominent in the current news cycle, it’s understandable that major legislation is getting overlooked. However, there is one bill in particular that the public should keep its eyes on due to its potential impact on all aspects of our politics, like government accountability, immigration, and even public health: S. 1524, the Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act.
Although there is existing legislation aimed at protecting government contractors, it is lackluster at best. Contractors can still face roadblocks on the way to truth-telling, such as limited jury trials, blacklisting, retaliation, and even a dearth of protections for refusing to violate the law. However, the Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act increases protections for jobs funded by taxpayer dollars and closes these loopholes for federal contractors to build greater transparency in our government.
To find a case study on the importance of this legislation, one needs to look no further than the February 3, 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which sent forever chemicals and combustible materials, such as vinyl chloride (a toxic flammable gas), across the community and temporarily displaced 1,500 to 2,000 people. Three days later, authorities burned 116,000 gallons of vinyl chloride and other highly toxic chemicals from five tankers, sending a dense black toxic cloud over the entire region that could be seen from space. It was recently determined that the toxic fallout of materials from the derailment and burn have been detected in 16 states.
Less than a day after the derailment, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to follow procedures to fly its Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT) plane for data collection of chemical levels in the area. Had it done so, the agency could have determined that the chemicals in the unexploded tanks were cooling and no longer posed a threat of explosion, making the so-called “control burn” unnecessary and its fallout avoidable. In fact, the ASPECT plane remained grounded for five days until the toxic cloud had dissipated. In the aftermath of the derailment, Dr. Robert Kroutil, an EPA contractor with Kalman & Company and a key developer in the ASPECT program, was concerned about the inordinate and unnecessary delays.
With improved and stronger whistleblower protections, Dr. Kroutil would most likely not have been forced into retirement because of the threats. He could have stood his ground while still on the job.
When he finally received data to analyze, he was shocked that the plane only collected data for seven minutes when more typical flights would collect hundreds of minutes of data. He also learned that the sensors were turned off when the plane flew over creeks, waterways, and the crash site itself. He and his fellow scientists reported that the presence of contamination was inconclusive. A few weeks later, the EPA used this report to conclude that the data collection was a success, and it was safe for residents to return to their homes when in fact the reason the results were inconclusive was because the EPA failed to collect the necessary data. Dr. Kroutil was so upset about what was happening, he filed a Freedom of Information request for documents such as back-dated flight plans. When he was threatened with termination unless he withdrew his requests, he decided to retire and go public with his revelations. He had no faith in the current, inadequate legal protections. The EPA retaliated by calling his claims “false” within minutes of hearing about them. The Office of Inspector General has determined, however, that a full investigation of his concerns is warranted, supported by many other whistleblowers.
With improved and stronger whistleblower protections, Dr. Kroutil would most likely not have been forced into retirement because of the threats. He could have stood his ground while still on the job. Unfortunately, similar events have already occurred surrounding the failure to deploy the ASPECT aircraft.
Since his disclosure of EPA’s mismanagement, two train derailments in Illinois and North Dakota have resulted in the spill of hazardous chemicals and mirror problems with the response to the derailment in East Palestine. In both incidents, the EPA failed to deploy its ASPECT chemical sensing aircraft to collect data. Instead, ASPECT at the time of the derailments was performing a nonemergency assessment near Buffalo, New York, collecting data on a legacy contamination issue from World War II.
With thousands of government contractors working tough jobs for our protection—from ensuring our food is safe to eat and defending us from foreign attacks to mitigating the impact of disasters like the derailment in East Palestine—it’s time we start protecting them too. The laws aimed at allowing contractors to speak truth to power must be modernized and repaired to make whistleblowers less vulnerable to retaliation. That is why we should pay attention to the Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act of 2023, first introduced by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich) and Michael Braun (R-Ind.) and passed out of committee on a bipartisan basis, which would address the shortcomings in the current law.
Government contractors like these have a long history of saving thousands of taxpayer dollars, exposing our government’s wrongdoing, and, as in this case, saving countless lives; to be effective, laws that protect whistleblowers must encourage employees of conscience to speak up and deter employers from retaliating against them for doing so. If the Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act is passed, more contractors could feel empowered to stand up for what is right with crucial information. Government Accountability Project is committed to continuing advocacy for greater whistleblower protections for government contractors and a more fair and transparent government.
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Honoring Daniel Ellsberg’s Legacy One Year After His Death
While he can no longer speak to the world about the latest developments, Ellsberg will continue to speak directly to hearts and minds about the extreme evils of our time—and the potential for overcoming them with love in action.
Jun 10, 2024
On a warm evening almost a decade ago, I sat under the stars with Daniel Ellsberg while he talked about nuclear war with alarming intensity. He was most of the way through writing his last and most important book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Somehow, he had set aside the denial so many people rely on to cope with a world that could suddenly end in unimaginable horror. Listening, I felt more and more frightened. Dan knew what he was talking about.
After working inside this country’s doomsday machinery, even drafting nuclear war plans for the Pentagon during President John F. Kennedy’s administration, Dan Ellsberg had gained intricate perspectives on what greased the bureaucratic wheels, personal ambitions, and political messaging of the warfare state. Deceptions about arranging for the ultimate violence of thermonuclear omnicide were of a piece with routine falsehoods about American warmaking. It was easy enough to get away with lying, he told me: “How difficult is it to deceive the public? I would say, as a former insider, one becomes aware: It’s not difficult to deceive them. First of all, you’re often telling them what they would like to believe—that we’re better than other people, we’re superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world.”
Dan had made history in 1971 by revealing the top-secret Pentagon Papers, exposing the constant litany of official lies that accompanied the U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War. In response, the government used the blunderbuss of the World War I-era Espionage Act to prosecute him. At age 41, he faced a possible prison sentence of more than 100 years. But his trial ended abruptly with all charges dismissed when the Nixon administration’s illegal interference in the case came to light in mid-1972. Five decades later, he reflected: “Looking back, the chance that I would get out of 12 felony counts from Richard Nixon was close to zero. It was a miracle.”
Dan’s mix of deep humanism and realism was in harmony with his aversion to contorting logic to suit rigid ideology.
That miracle enabled Dan to keep on speaking, writing, researching, and protesting for the rest of his life. (In those five decades, he averaged nearly two arrests per year for civil disobedience.) He worked tirelessly to prevent and oppose a succession of new American wars. And he consistently gave eloquent public support as well as warm personal solidarity to heroic whistleblowers— Thomas Drake, Katharine Gun, Daniel Hale, Matthew Hoh, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, Mordechai Vanunu, Ann Wright, and others—who sacrificed much to challenge deadly patterns of official deceit.
Unauthorized Freedom of Speech
Dan often spoke out for freeing WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, whose work had revealed devastating secret U.S. documents on America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the end of a visit in June 2015, when they said goodbye inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, I saw that both men were on the verge of tears. At that point, Assange was three years into his asylum at that embassy, with no end in sight.
Secretly indicted in the United States, Assange remained in the Ecuadorian embassy for nearly four more years until London police dragged him off to prison. Hours later, in a radio interview, Dan said: “Julian Assange is the first journalist to be indicted. If he is extradited to the U.S. and convicted, he will not be the last. The First Amendment is a pillar of our democracy and this is an assault on it. If freedom of speech is violated to this extent, our republic is in danger. Unauthorized disclosures are the lifeblood of the republic.”
Unauthorized disclosures were the essence of what WikiLeaks had published and what Dan had provided with the Pentagon Papers. Similarly, countless exposés about U.S. government war crimes became possible due to the courage of Chelsea Manning, and profuse front-page news about the government’s systematic violations of the Fourth Amendment resulted from Edward Snowden’s bravery. While gladly publishing some of their revelations, major American newspapers largely refused to defend their rights.
Such dynamics were all too familiar to Dan. He told me that the attitude toward him of The New York Times, which won a Pulitzer Prize with its huge Pentagon Papers scoop, was akin to a district attorney’s view of a “snitch”—useful but distasteful.
In recent times, Dan detested the smug media paradigm of “Ellsberg good, Snowden bad.” So, he pushed back against the theme as rendered by New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote a lengthy piece along those lines in late 2016. Dan quickly responded with a letter to the editor, which never appeared.
The New Yorker certainly could have found room to print Dan’s letter, which said: “I couldn’t disagree more with Gladwell’s overall account.” The letter was just under 300 words; the Gladwell piece had run more than 5,000. While promoting the “Ellsberg good, Snowden bad” trope, The New Yorker did not let readers know that Ellsberg himself completely rejected it:
Each of us, having earned privileged access to secret information, saw unconstitutional, dangerously wrong policies ongoing by our government. (In Snowden’s case, he discovered blatantly criminal violations of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy, on a scale that threatens our democracy.) We found our superiors, up to the presidents, were deeply complicit and clearly unwilling either to expose, reform, or end the wrongdoing.
Each of us chose to sacrifice careers, and possibly a lifetime’s freedom, to reveal to the public, Congress, and the courts what had long been going on in secret from them. We hoped, each with some success, to allow our democratic system to bring about desperately needed change.
The truth is there are no whistleblowers, in fact no one on Earth, with whom I identify more closely than with Edward Snowden.
Here is one difference between us that is deeply real to me: Edward Snowden, when he was 30 years old, did what I could and should have done—what I profoundly wish I had done—when I was his age, instead of 10 years later.
As he encouraged whistleblowing, Dan often expressed regret that he hadn’t engaged in it sooner. During the summer of 2014, a billboard was on display at bus stops in Washington, D.C., featuring a quote from Dan—with big letters at the top saying “DON’T DO WHAT I DID. DON’T WAIT,” followed by “until a new war has started, don’t wait until thousands more have died, before you tell the truth with documents that reveal lies or crimes or internal projections of costs and dangers. You might save a war’s worth of lives.” Two whistleblowers who had been U.S. diplomats, Matthew Hoh and Ann Wright, unveiled the billboard at a bus stop near the State Department.
A Grotesque Situation of Existential Danger
Above all, Daniel Ellsberg was preoccupied with opposing policies that could lead to nuclear war. “No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane,” he wrote in The Doomsday Machine. “The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted for over half a century is a chronicle of human madness.”
It’s fitting that the events set for Daniel Ellsberg Week (ending on June 16, the first anniversary of when Dan passed away) will include at least one protest at a Northrop Grumman facility. That company has a $13.3 billion contract to develop a new version of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which—as Dan frequently emphasized—is the most dangerous of all nuclear weapons. He was eager to awaken Congress to scientific data about “nuclear winter” and the imperative of shutting down ICBMs to reduce the risks of nuclear war.
Five years ago, several of us from the Institute for Public Accuracy hand-delivered paperbacks of The Doomsday Machine—with a personalized letter from Dan to each member of the House and Senate—to all 535 congressional offices on Capitol Hill. “I am concerned that the public, most members of Congress, and possibly even high members of the Executive branch have remained in the dark, or in a state of denial, about the implications of rigorous studies by environmental scientists over the last dozen years,” Dan wrote near the top of his two-page letter. Those studies “confirm that using even a large fraction of the existing U.S. or Russian nuclear weapons that are on high alert would bring about nuclear winter, leading to global famine and near extinction of humanity.”
Dan’s letter singled out the urgency of one “immediate step” in particular: “to eliminate entirely our redundant, vulnerable, and destabilizing land-based ICBM force.” Unlike air-launched and sea-based nuclear weapons, which are not vulnerable to attack, the ICBMs are vulnerable to a preemptive strike and so are “poised to launch” on the basis of “10-minute warning signals that may be—and have been, on both sides—false alarms, which press leadership to ‘use them or lose them.’”
As Dan pointed out, “It is in the power of Congress to decouple the hair-trigger on our system by defunding and dismantling the current land-based Minuteman missiles and rejecting funding for their proposed replacements. The same holds for lower-yield weapons for first use against Russia, on submarines or in Europe, which are detonators for escalation to nuclear winter.”
In essence, Dan was telling members of Congress to do their job, with the fate of the Earth and its inhabitants hanging in the balance:
This grotesque situation of existential danger has evolved in secret in the almost total absence of congressional oversight, investigations, or hearings. It is time for Congress to remedy this by preparing for first-ever hearings on current nuclear doctrine and “options,” and by demanding objective, authoritative scientific studies of their full consequences including fire, smoke, nuclear winter, and famine. Classified studies of nuclear winter using actual details of existing attack plans, never yet done by the Pentagon but necessarily involving its directed cooperation, could be done by the National Academy of Sciences, requested and funded by Congress.
But Dan’s letter was distinctly out of sync with Congress. Few in office then—or now—have publicly acknowledged that such a “grotesque situation of existential danger” really exists. And even fewer have been willing to break from the current Cold War mindset that continues to fuel the rush to global annihilation. On matters of foreign policy and nuclear weapons, the Congressional Record is mainly a compendium of arrogance and delusion, in sharp contrast to the treasure trove of Dan’s profound insights preserved at Ellsberg.net.
Humanism and Realism to Remember
Clear as he was about the overarching scourge of militarism embraced by the leaders of both major parties, Dan was emphatic about not equating the two parties at election time. He understood that efforts like Green Party presidential campaigns are misguided at best. But, as he said dryly, he did favor third parties—on the right (“the more the better”). He knew what some self-described progressives have failed to recognize as the usual reality of the U.S. electoral system: Right-wing third parties help the left, and left-wing third parties help the right.
Several weeks before the 2020 election, Dan addressed voters in the swing state of Michigan via an article he wrote for the Detroit Metro Times. Appearing under a headline no less relevant today—“Trump Is an Enemy of the Constitution and Must Be Defeated”—the piece said that “it’s now of transcendent importance to prevent him from gaining a second term.” Dan warned that “we’re facing an authoritarian threat to our democratic system of a kind we’ve never seen before,” making votes for Joe Biden in swing states crucial.
Dan’s mix of deep humanism and realism was in harmony with his aversion to contorting logic to suit rigid ideology. Bad as current realities were, he said, it was manifestly untrue that things couldn’t get worse. He had no intention of ignoring the very real dangers of nuclear war or fascism.
During the last few months of his life, after disclosing a diagnosis of inoperable pancreatic cancer, Dan reached many millions of people with an intensive schedule of interviews. Journalists were mostly eager to ask him about events related to the Pentagon Papers. While he said many important things in response to such questions, Dan most wanted to talk about the unhinged momentum of the nuclear arms race and the ominous U.S. frenzy of antagonism toward Russia and China lacking any sense of genuine diplomacy.
While he can no longer speak to the world about the latest developments, Dan Ellsberg will continue to speak directly to hearts and minds about the extreme evils of our time—and the potential for overcoming them with love in action.
A free documentary film premiering now, A Common Insanity: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg About Nuclear Weapons, concludes with these words from Dan as he looks straight at us: “Can humanity survive the nuclear era? We don’t know. I choose to act as if we have a chance.”
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A Whistleblower’s First Post-Prison Trip Abroad Offers Personal and Collective Hope
I may have been imprisoned, but there I was in Italy trumpeting the call for awareness and reformation of the Espionage Act.
May 18, 2024
I had a palpable sense of nerves approaching the day I was to travel to Perugia for the International Journalism Festival. I was invited by Kathleen McClellan and Jesselyn Radack of WHISPeR who were invited to present on the impact of leak prosecutions on the free press. I was certainly honored to be asked, but those emotions of gratitude were quickly becoming overcome by not very slight feelings of dread.
This was to be my first trip abroad in a very long time, certainly the first time since being released from prison. Since January 2018, I had taken several trips domestically, but traveling abroad was a whole different animal for me. No one is ever told they are on a “no fly” list; you find out when it’s too late to do anything about it. Funny how the government is insistent on keeping those whose rights are being taken away ignorant of the fact that their rights have been taken away. Not having tested my viability to leave the country, I had to wonder if my right to travel had been restored like my right to vote. Of course, I had already had such an experience.
After being released in 2018, I immediately started taking whatever steps I could to regain at least some of what I had lost after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and spending time in prison. One thought I had was that having a passport would give a sense of freedom I hadn’t had throughout the long, exhaustive legal ordeal. At least knowing I had the ability to travel like I used to was worth whatever difficulties I had to go through to get to that point. Always skeptical, I did exhaustive “research” (ala Google) and I confirmed with my probation officer about my ability to apply for a passport. I was told that there were no “holds” on my ability to get a passport. Someone forgot to tell the passport office at the Department of State.
I wasn’t on that stage just to scare the audience about how horrible it will be to be charged under the Espionage Act, I was there to tell them that if I could stand up against it, so can the rest of the world.
Having not received my passport after the stated waiting period (and actually giving it an additional week), I reached out to the passport office to inquire about the status of my passport. I was told that there was a “hold.” The subsequent unsigned letter from the State Department was even less helpful. It made an outdated reference to an ancient court order (going at least back to 2011 when I was arrested) requiring me to gain permission to travel. Obviously the State Department opted to remain ignorant of my status and denied my application. But, they did graciously inform me of an appeals process and the fact that the application fee I paid was nonrefundable.
I guess I could have left it alone and resolved myself to not having a passport, not having even a scintilla of the freedom I once had, but I’ve never been one to settle. I once again reached out to my probation officer and let her know that someone somewhere still considered me a threat to national security. It took months of back and forths with various probation officers, a motion filed with the court to release my old passport from its vault and a blessing that I could get a new one, another application (and fee), unknown State Department officials, and inestimable patience, but I finally received my passport in the mail in mid-2019. It took another struggle, but I prevailed.
Back to the present, even with a passport, I never thought I’d be able to take a trip like this ever again; an exhaustive legal ordeal and prison can drain possibility out of your spirit. But, life is funny. Just when I was thinking nothing that I had would be possible again, doors from unexpected directions open. I was going to Italy!
I was absolutely nervous about making the trip to Italy, I didn’t even try to convince myself otherwise. I couldn’t help wondering, despite being able to get a passport, if I was on some sort of “no fly” list or if there remained some sort of “hold” on me that would prevent me from leaving the U.S. The time was fast approaching to see what my status was.
St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) is rarely busy, and I was thankful to have that convenience instead of a long wait before getting bad news. The first time I had to present my passport was when checking my bag. I nervously handed it over trying to gird myself for a quizzical look from her if something were to pop up on her screen. She looked at my document and handed it quickly back to me. “Oh no, here it comes” pounded through my mind, but it was quickly tempered when she noted that I hadn’t signed my passport. What an idiot! I went through so much to get the damned passport, I forgot to sign it!
That self-imposed fiasco was brief, and I felt could be a possible prelude of what was to come because I still had security to go through. Despite my apprehensions, there were no issues with security in STL nor boarding the international flight in Chicago. I never felt so grateful being able to settle my 6’4” frame into a cramped coach seat on a fully packed flight in my life.
The amount of relief I felt when actually sitting on the plane awaiting departure was tremendous. But, just when you feel relief at passing one obstacle, you can’t help but anticipate the next one. The imagination can be a killer. Shortly into the eight-plus hour flight, I was racked with whether I would be allowed into Italy. In addition, even if I was allowed into the country, I was reminded of what happened to fellow Espionage Act brother in arms, Thomas Drake. In 2021 he was slated to speak at a security conference in Australia only to be “disinvited” at the last minute. Whomever made the decision, and for whatever reason, his voice was effectively silenced, at least at that conference. I just had to continually tell myself that nothing like that had occurred at any of my other speaking engagements and it wasn’t going to happen on this trip.
It wasn’t until I checked into my hotel room that I let out one of the biggest exhales of my life. Passport control at Fiumicino airport in Rome was a non-issue, I was herded through just like everyone else and no blaring alarms went off. For the first time in a very long time, I felt not so trapped in a country that didn’t want me to serve. Being outside of the U.S., I felt like I was once again able to experience and be a part of the bigger world out there. With the time I had, I was eager to be in full tourist mode; I wanted to see everything. Perugia is a beautiful city full of stunning architecture and a vibrant culture that was a wonderful experience for me. With every step I took, I had to remind myself that I had spent two and a half years in prison, but that I certainly wasn’t there anymore.
Finally, down to business. I was in Italy to speak at the International Journalism Festival about the impact of leak prosecutions; mainly I would tell the corps of journalists from all over the world about what it means to be targeted and tried under the Espionage Act.
It was clear that the festival, which was in its 24th running, was going through a bit of Assange-fatigue, as not many sessions even touched on that pressing subject. I was told that there had been a focus on Julian Assange in a previous running of the festival and they wanted subsequent runs to center on other areas. Even though the main theme of the festival was artificial intelligence and its implications for freedom of the press, I could sense a pallor of apprehension and uncertainty looming over just about every journalist I interacted with. Speaking with the journalists there, I was reminded of my recent uncertainty about traveling outside the U.S. Though they were hopeful for a non-issue when ultimately confronted with the prospect of being targeted or stopped by the Espionage Act ala Assange, they couldn’t help but fear the worst. Much like if I had been stopped from either leaving the U.S. or entering Italy, once the worst happens, there may not be much that can be done about it. If Assange is ultimately extradited to the U.S. to face the Espionage Act, that will most definitely be the worst thing to happen to not only the journalists at the festival, but journalists and press freedom anywhere in the world. Those journalists at the festival were standing in the security line just like me, wondering if their rights were going to be taken away and not allowed to pass.
Surprisingly, I felt a hint of the same false sense of security that has permeated U.S. mainstream media in regards to Assange. They don’t see Assange as a journalist. They engage in a self-deception that they have nothing to fear from the Espionage Act. Endemic with Espionage Act and whistleblower prosecutions is character assassination that puts the focus squarely on the revealer and away from the government wrongdoings and illegalities revealed.
Prior to the festival, I would have found it hard to believe that the press out in the world wouldn’t see through that smokescreen. What I learned is that it wasn’t so much that the festival attendees in Italy didn’t see Assange as a journalist, they didn’t want to see him as just a journalist. He’s something in a potentially related, but an altogether different category. One of the best ways to deal with a potentially dangerous situation is to imagine that it can’t or won’t happen to you. I of course didn’t want to view myself as one of those who get put on no-fly lists, but the reality was that it didn’t matter how I viewed myself. Persecution is the sole province of the persecutor. The overall determining factor for me was and has been how my government saw me. It viewed me as a threat to national security in bringing an employment discrimination suit against the CIA and portrayed me the same way by falsely accusing me of espionage. Whether the U.S. government considers Assange a journalist or not is not the point. He will be potentially extradited and tried under the Espionage Act because they view him as a threat because of what he exposed. And that was a point I imagined trumpeting at the festival, imploring the festival attendees to “wake up!”
But, that was not my only purpose at the festival. Part of what I wanted to convey is that despite the terrible ordeal I went through and what Assange is currently going through at the hands of a vengeful U.S. government wielding the Espionage Act to quash dissent and silence whistleblowers, there is still hope that something can be done. I wasn’t on that stage just to scare the audience about how horrible it will be to be charged under the Espionage Act, I was there to tell them that if I could stand up against it, so can the rest of the world. I may have been imprisoned, but there I was in Italy trumpeting the call for awareness and reformation of the Espionage Act. No aggressor and no government, regardless of the power wielded, is beyond reproach. With Assange, the U.S. is threatening to assume a global reach in its ability to silence dissent. But, the more all of us, and especially journalists who can provide avenues of awareness and accountability for brave whistleblowers, stand up against unjust laws like the Espionage Act, not only will change be possible, it will be inevitable.
I don’t know if my message had any impact; the shock value alone of my ordeal can, unfortunately, be the real attention-getter. Regardless, my experience was further affirmation that, even though I went through hell, I would not be defeated. At the least, I wanted to be an image of perseverance and resilience that maybe could be a force, however slight, for awareness and change.
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