Reply #22: Does this bill also apply to whistleblowers in security-related positions? [View All]

[cascadiance]

Pardon me for not taking the time to look this up myself.. I'm fighting off a nasty cold now. But I recall earlier whistleblower protection bills making exceptions and NOT protecting this category of federal employees. With those exceptions, workers such as Russell Tice and Sibel Edmonds still wouldn't be protected. Those are the kind of workers we need MOST as whistleblowers to find out about the likely areas of severe wrongdoing in government, especially Bushco... If they pass this bill with this exception, it will be marketed as changing the rules, but fundamentally it will still ignore the real areas of importance to address for whistleblower protection.

Another good rider or bill to work with this act to help whistleblowers come forward (and file court cases) would be to put into law something (I believe Congressman Nadler has a bill for this now), which applies the same rules or variants of such for criminal cases that is in law now to civil cases, to avoid the heavy usage of State Secrets Privilege to dismiss civil cases before they can be even heard, the way Bushco has been doing at unprecedented rates. If this were in place, more security whistleblowers would know they could have their day in court (albeit with some security restrictions), if they need to file a lawsuit to get their story out.