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May 24, 2013
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 Silent State: Washington’s Campaign Against Whistle-BlowersPosted on Feb 9, 2012
By Peter Van Buren, TomDispatch (Page 2) Four employees of the Air Force Mortuary in Dover, Delaware, attempted to address shortcomings at the facility, which handles the remains of all American service members who die overseas. Retaliation against them included firings, the placing of employees on indefinite administrative leave, and the imposition of five-day suspensions. The story repeats itself in the context of whistleblowers now suing the Food and Drug Administration for electronically spying on them when they tried to alert Congress about misconduct at the agency. We are waiting to see the Army’s reaction to whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who documented publicly this week that senior leaders of the Department of Defense intentionally and consistently misled the American people and Congress on the conduct and progress of the Afghan War. And this remains the most partial of lists, when it comes to recent examples of non-judicial government retaliation against whistleblowers. Government bureaucrats know that this sort of slow-drip intimidation keeps people in line. It may, in the end, be less about disciplining a troublemaker than offering visible warning to other employees. They are meant to see what’s happening and say, “Not me, not my mortgage, not my family!”—and remain silent. Of course, creative, thoughtful people also see this and simply avoid government service. In this way, such a system can become a self-fulfilling mechanism in which ever more of the “right kind” of people chose government service, while future “troublemakers” self-select out—a system in which the punishment of leakers becomes the pre-censorship of potential leakers. At the moment, in fact, the Obama administration might as well translate the famed aphorism “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent” into Latin and carve it into the stone walls of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, or the main office of the State Department at Foggy Bottom where I still fight to keep my job. Advertisement I am told that, in its 223 years of existence, I am the only Foreign Service Officer ever to have written a critical book about the State Department while still employed there. We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People exposed what State did not want people to know: that they had wasted enormous amounts of money in Iraq, mostly due to ignorance and a desire for short-term successes that could be trumpeted back home. For the crime of writing this book and maintaining a blog that occasionally embarrasses, State Department officials destroyed my career, even as they confirm my thesis, and their own failure, by reducing the Baghdad Embassy to half its size in the face of Iraq’s unraveling. “The State Department was aware of Mr. Van Buren’s book long prior to its release,” explains attorney Jesslyn Radack, who now represents me. “Yet instead of addressing the ample evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse in the book, State targeted the whistleblower. The State Department’s retaliatory actions are a transparent attempt to intimidate and silence an employee whose critique of fraudulent, wasteful, and mismanaged U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq embarrassed the agency.” Without allowing any rebuttal or defense, State suspended my security clearance, claiming my blogging was an example of “poor judgment,” transferred me from a substantive job into a meaningless telework position, threatened felony conviction over alleged disclosure of classified information, illegally banned me from entering the building where I supposedly work, and continues to try to harass and intimidate me. My travel vouchers from as far back as the law allows have come under “routine” re-examination. My Internet activity is the subject of daily reports. My credit reports have been examined for who knows what. Department friends who email me on topical issues have been questioned by agents of Diplomatic Security, the State Department’s internal police. My Freedom of Information Act request for documents to help defend myself and force State to explain its actions has been buried. Without a security clearance, and with my Diplomatic Passport impounded, I will never serve overseas again, the lifeblood of being a Foreign Service Officer (FSO). A career that typically would extend another 10 years will be cut short in retaliation for my attempt to tell the truth about how taxpayer money was squandered in Iraq.
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By vector56, February 12, 2012 at 5:23 pm Link to this comment
Without informed “citizens who step up and take responsibility for their government Whistle-blowers are just whistling in the dark!
Like Sacco and Vanzetti, Bradly Manning and the other 6 Whistle Blowers Obama has doomed the Left will just watch at a safe distance as Gazelles watch lions devour their comrade.
Report thisBy berniem, February 11, 2012 at 4:10 pm Link to this comment
Is there something new here? Our own government, namely “elected” officials, the political flacks and appointees around them, as well as the military, all so nicely bought and owned by the corporate fascist economic system, are the true terrorists confronting our freedoms and way of life and the security state is solely for the protection of the ruling establishment. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution no longer are worth the parchment they’re written on because there is no system of enforcing their provisions as designed to protect us from our own despots and tyrants. Voting means nothing and those who run for office must pass muster with the corrupt establishment to even get on the ballot. If elected they quickly join the game or are jettisoned at the pleasure of one or another power group which is not comprised of the voters but the monied interests that truly run things. Elections are meaningless with results predetermined by those who work at Diebold. FREE BRADLEY MANNING!!!!!
Report thisBy gerard, February 11, 2012 at 3:10 pm Link to this comment
Quote-Unquqote: “[Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense, or any other entity of the U.S. government. The Department of State most certainly does not approve, endorse, or authorize this article.]”
Report thisTags like this one definitely, though they are aimed at pacification (I suppose), nevertheless sew seeds of distrust far and wide. They threaten by casting shadows of possible illegitimacy and/or unreliability whereas, as a matter of fact, this article contains accounts of personal experiences and opinions related to retaliation without proven evidence of illegal behavior.
What is at stake here of course is that citizens are guaranteed the right of free speech by the Constitution whereas governments are not guaranteed the right of secrecy by the Constitution except in the most stringently regulated matters of State
policy.
Ironically, although the State is also quaranteed the right of free speech, it refuses to use it by withholding information from the public, yet uses its right to withhold information to punish those who use their right to speak freely.
What, therefore, would prevent the State from becoming completely impervious by declaring all of its processes as “secret” and preventing citizens from knowing anything at all?
Obviously, democracy presumes and demands a just balance between freedom and license, and that balance serves us, the nation, better if it errs on the side of openness because secrecy offers shelter from discovery of error and encouragement to covering up crimes.
Correct me if I’m wrong here.
By Jay Lindberg, February 11, 2012 at 10:28 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
IN THE TRENCHES
You should try exposing corruption in the War on
Drugs some time. I called it in the trenches and
this is what it looked like from my book, “DRUG WAR
ECONOMICS” If anyone is interested in a copy of the
book, send me an email. I’ll send you a copy as a PDF
file.
Thought For the Day
If you are old enough to be lied to, you are old
enough to know the truth. (2000)
In the trenches is just what it says. These are the
battles being fought in the streets to make this
country a safer place for us all.
When you go after corruption in society and
government, you are hunting illegitimate power.
Citizenship doesn’t get much more dangerous than
this. Dr. Rosema, Geoffrey Hill and Judge Mclaughlin
were terminated with prejudice in San Bernardino
County last year.
Obituary
A year ago, Dr. Rosema was killed in front of his
house, Tyisha Miller style, with law enforcement guns
blazing. The local media kept the fact he worked in
the Coroner’s Office (Motive)and investigating
corruption (motive) in that office out of the press.
The San Bernardino Sun and the Press Enterprise did
not pull the trigger of the officers that
assassinated him but the killing could not have
happened without their cooperation.
Some of the bullets that ripped through his body,
belonged to them.
The logistics of this killing tells me this. Someone
Report thisin the press had to be notified before the killing
and agreed to keep the motive for the shooting out of
the local newspapers. I seriously doubt this one is
covered under the First Amendment.
By kazy, February 10, 2012 at 9:08 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
It occurred to me after examining the response that our government has on whistleblowers, it makes our government LOOK GUILTY of the charges.
Report thisBy kazy, February 10, 2012 at 8:52 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
This was a harrowing story to read - and very frightening to know how much we’ve become a “Big Brother” government. It is not hyperbole to say we are behaving like a totalitarian regime. This is horrifying. Maybe we were always like this but now with the Internet people are actually exercising their Constitutional rights only to find out we really don’t have those rights when it comes to challenging Big Brother.
Report thisBy BeReal, February 10, 2012 at 7:25 pm Link to this comment
You sir, are one of the few and I honor your integrity! I have filled the same role more than once, though not in government, and have run into the same response. I look forward to more of us waking up from the somnambulism we have been manipulated into!
To the rest who are still sleeping .. read up on the Milgram Experiment ... it is most telling!
Report thisBy Aarky, February 10, 2012 at 6:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Just one of the instances of waste and stupidity that Van Buren wrote about, “How Yout Tax Dollars Financed
Report thisReconstruction Madness in Iraq”.
By gerard, February 10, 2012 at 11:06 am Link to this comment
One obvious inconsistency about “whistle-blowing” is that it’s a one-way street: The government never blows the whistle on itself; only on conscientious citizens who have the guts to speak up. But if the government had the guts to blow its own whistles on its crimes and errors, citizens wouldn’t have to do it!
Report thisBy LVC, February 9, 2012 at 9:20 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I see this pictured “Whistle Blower” tag every time I see a train (nearly every day in
Report thisthe Pacific NW). There is usually a whistle, date and small message. Watch the
ends of cars of a train next time you are stopped at a crossing.
By Writeonwater, February 9, 2012 at 8:01 pm Link to this comment
There is something quite disturbing in this article. I commend Mr Van Buren for writing it. This particular statement…
“an agency ignoring its own rules,”
I believe the word expediency is the one that white washes the consequences he puts so clearly. This is having its counterpart in the law. In California a high court just “changed the rules” in terms of mortgage law. What had been a mater of State law has now been changed to fed law. The banks are the ones who win in this case. In a word they are immune from consequences.
When legal expectations become suborned to what appears to be, at best caprice and at worst something which Hesiod addressed when he said around the 7-8 Century BC…
…Judges lull’d by thee
The sentence gave and stamp’d the false decree:
Oh fools! who know not in their selfish soul
How far the half is better than the whole:
The Whistle-blower policy of Obama’s is one of the biggest stains he cannot hide.
Report this