Whistleblower Act Falls Short of Protection
DONALD R. SOEKEN
JANUARY 7, 2002
FROM "FEDERAL TIMES"
TWELVE YEARS after Congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Act to defend citizens who report wrongdoing in government from on-the-job retaliation, there is overwhelming evidence to show that the law has failed dismally to accomplish its purpose.
The law, unfortunately, has proved to be essentially useless as a means of protecting whistleblowers who dare to speak out against waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. At the same time, the increasing tendency for federal agencies to kill the messenger who publicly reports public corruption, along with the chilling effect on criticism of government programs triggered by the war on terrorism, has made it extremely dangerous for concerned citizens to report mismanagement or outright theft anywhere in the federal bureaucracy.
As the president of Integrity International - the nonprofit and nonpartisan program I founded 20 years ago to provide psychological counseling and other services for whistleblowers - I am deeply alarmed about the way in which the court system is now stacked against those who seek to protect their rights by invoking the Whistleblower Protection Act.
Indeed, the political and psychological climate in which most potential whistleblowers must decide whether to risk their careers by speaking out is now so threatening that I have begun advising these brave Americans to remain silent, at least for the present. As a former Public Health Service officer who now specializes in counseling whistleblowers, I am convinced that our failure to protect them in recent years represents a great tragedy for this nation. We desperately need these courageous individuals to continue blowing the whistle on fiscal and management abuses that are costing the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
However, who could expect any potential whistleblower to risk his or her career, in a society where the reward for speaking out is often swift and devastating retaliation - by the very supervisors and government administrators who ought to be most grateful for the disclosures?
Who can blame whistleblowers for feeling betrayed and punished because the court system remains unwilling to enforce the provisions of the Whistleblower Protection Act? A compelling example of this can be found at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington where all 70 whistleblowers who appealed lower-court decisions denying them relief for alleged whistleblower-linked reprisals by government agencies between 1994 and 2001 were denied their claims and sent packing. As unlikely as it might sound, the judicial scorecard for whistleblower cases at the appeals court now reads: U.S. Government 70, Whistleblowers 0.
What should we make of this number? Are we to believe that every single one of those cases was without merit? Obviously, the appeals process for federal whistleblowers is badly skewed. Moreover, the impact on these struggling truth-tellers is devastating. Having counseled many of these brave citizens, I know all about the lost jobs, homes and savings, and sometimes even lost spouses, that many of them have endured as the price for speaking out.
America needs to know about intelligence failures, fiscal abuses and wrongheaded personnel-management strategies, in order to correct the problems as swiftly as possible and thus minimize their impact. Yet the federal establishment's continuing hostility toward whistleblowers can be seen everywhere. For example, the government announced that under the new federal airport security program, all federalized airport security workers will be "specifically excluded" from the protections of the Whistleblower Protection Act.
Congress must put some real teeth in the Whistleblower Protection Act. And the courts must live up to their judicial responsibility to enforce the law. If we lose our ability as a nation to speak out against wrongdoing in government, all of us will end up paying a terrible price.
Donald R. Soeken was a Public Health Service officer for more than 26 years until his retirement in 1994. He is the founder of Integrity International, a program of AMHS Inc., a nonprofit organization that assists whistleblowers.
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