Washington, D.C. January 8, 2011. Today, Stephen Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center, issued the following statement expressing his concern about the rise in retaliatory investigations in the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal:
The WikiLeaks scandal
is being used to justify a witch hunt against federal employees
suspected of being whistleblowers.
Currently, the NWC has obtained
information documenting abusive investigatory tactics being used against
federal employees, including monitoring the private emails and seizing
computer hard-drives from employees who disclosed non-classified
information to Congress. The U.S. Constitution protects government
workers who report waste, fraud and abuse to the American people.
However, in the first two years of the Obama presidency, more Americans
have been indicted for alleged media leaks then under any other
president in U.S. history, including Richard Nixon.
We are concerned that the administration is hiding behind the WikiLeaks
scandal to identify and retaliate against other whistleblowers who have
engaged in protected First Amendment speech, including implementing questionable psychological profiling in an attempt to find suspected leakers. The American people need
to know about government abuses. Prosecutors involved in so-called
"leak" investigations must respect the First Amendment rights of all
federal employees, and cannot engage in unconstitutional investigatory
tactics that will have a 'chilling effect' on the right of federal
employees to disclose waste, fraud and abuse.
Congress must enact a National Whistleblower Protection Act to ensure
that all Americans have legitimate channels to expose wrongdoing to
appropriate authorities. The government cannot have it both ways. If
employees are denied the right to expose wrongdoing through effective
and legally protected channels, honest American civil servants will
continue to leak information to the press and public. Until the law is
fixed, we are in a lose-lose situation.
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