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WORD COUNT
601
MAY 14, 2008
NATIONAL SECURITY
HEROES HERE AT HOME – by Louis Clark
President Bush has
joked about wanting to torture whistleblowers, stating he would like to
string them "up by their thumbs. The same way we do with prisoners in
Guantanamo!" Now that whistleblowers have exposed the torture that his
administration essentially condoned at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other
places, Bush's joke now seems ironic. But a greater irony exists
surrounding the president’s core position that his national security
practices have kept America safe. Whistleblower disclosures have
steadily eroded this assertion.
Despite bad jokes and
rhetoric, he has failed to shut national security whistleblowers up.
Veto threats for Congressional bills that would protect histleblowers,
and "signing statements" pledging to ignore similar provisions of
enacted legislation have not succeeded in imposing the kind of massive
secrecy he sought. In fact, one whistleblower after another has torn
holes in the fabric of his legitimacy and legacy, exposing incompetence,
illegality, and massive privacy violations.
Society is fortunate
that these whistleblowing patriots with national security concerns
refuse to remain silent despite threats of retribution. Such courageous
individuals are responding positively to their own inner voices of
conscience and personal sense of justice. They will not be complicit in
allowing unchecked abuses of authority and illegality to triumph.
Consider the cases:
* Two program
managers working for a private security contractor for the Department of
State who recently raised deep concerns about the past integrity of the
company's security program for the U. S. embassy in Afghanistan. Their
allegations highlight the problem of foreign-owned or controlled
companies providing security for U.S. Government facilities.
* Babak Pasdar, a
computer expert who worked for a telecommunications giant, discovered a
mysterious "Quantico Circuit" within a major telecommunications system
that provided a government agency unfettered access to all customer
communications connected directly or indirectly to mobile phones. He
also revealed that his company had structured its system so it would be
impossible to know what had been transmitted through the Circuit.
* Late last year,
civilian Marine Corps official and whistleblower Franz Gayl wrote a
study analyzing the Department of Defense's (DoD) delays in securing
Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), which are better able
to protect troops from IED blasts than armored Humvees, the most common
protective vehicle in service. Had they been
available to troops,
Gayl maintained, they could have prevented an unknown number of troop
deaths, especially since 40 percent of all American troop deaths during
the Iraq War have been the result of Improvised Explosive Devices, or
IEDs - homemade roadside bombs. Instead of approving funding for MRAPs,
DoD simply added more armor to the inferior Humvees and provided
"inaccurate and incomplete" information about MRAPs to Congress.
Those who follow the
path of justice and truth find the trek thorny and treacherous because
powerful forces are allied against them. At great personal risk and
sacrifice many such individuals are stepping forward. In doing so, they
are changing the course of history, but they need help from all of us.
It must act on pending legislation to protect national security
whistleblowers. It must also see that all revelations about corruption
are examined and reforms pursued so that those who risked their
livelihood and career have not done so in vain.
Just as we need
whistleblowers to keep our government, corporate and their institutions
honest, whistleblowers need us for protection against he forces whose
political and financial interests are harmed by truth. Until we
recognize as a civil society that it is our obligation to protect and
listen to these patriots, all jokes about "stringing them up" will
continue to fall flat and reflect poorly on those who tell them.
--
Louis Clark is
president of the Government Accountability Project in Washington, DC.
GAP focuses on providing protection for federal employees who "blow the
whistle" on wrongful actions by their employers.
www.whistleblower.org
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