Whistleblowing Facts

Yesterday Jon Stewart on the Daily Show had a piece on the pallets of cash shipped to Iraq and the fact that most of it was missing. He featured both the Republicans and the Democrats advertising their websites to report on fraud and abuse. What a joke that is. Here is the truth for you whistleblower wannabees.
From Project Censored, comes this revelation: Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the agency that is supposed to protect federal employees who blow the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse is dismissing hundreds of cases while advancing almost none. According to the Annual Report for 2004 (which was not released until the end of first quarter fiscal year 2006) less than 1.5 percent of whistleblower claims were referred for investigation while more than 1000 reports were closed before they were even opened. On March 3, 2005, OSC staff members joined by a coalition of whistleblower protection and civil rights organizations filed a complaint against Bloch (Special Counsel Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush in 2004). His own employees accused him of violating the very rules he is supposed to be enforcing. The complaint specifies instances of illegal gag orders, cronyism, invidious discrimination, and retaliation by forcing the resignation of one-fifth of the OSC headquarters legal and investigative staff. The complaint was filed with the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which took no action on the case for seven months.....The Department of Labor has also gotten on board in a behind-the-scenes maneuver to cancel whistleblower protections.

And then there is this from Alternet: The Secret War on FBI Whistle-blowers is a 2002 article on the treatment of an FBI agent who claimed the agency "circled the wagons" to cover up a score of pre-9-11 intelligence blunders.
The first stop on the whistle-blower's roller coaster to ruin is discreditation. "Anonymous news leaks always come first," he says.....Next, say those who've taken the ride, comes a gamut of retaliatory tactics: harassment from supervisors, the loss of office allies, a stripping of security clearance, the monitoring of activities, inter-office relocation -- one Department of Agriculture informer was moved to a desk in the hallway outside the bathroom -- demotions, psychiatric or medical referrals, or "administrative leave," to put it euphemistically. "The FBI never fires whistle-blowers, directly," says psychiatric social worker Don Soeken. In the late '70s, Soeken worked for the U.S. Public Health Service, and his job was to perform "fitness for duty" examinations for federal employees whose supervisors thought they were mentally unstable. But Soeken noticed something curious about his clientele. All his patients seemed to be whistle-blowers, Soeken says, and he was asked to label the muckrakers mentally unfit, giving the government the green light to dismiss them. Soeken refused. He became a whistle-blower himself, reporting the shameful practice to Congress, and now helps whistle-blowers recover on a farm in West Virginia that he calls the Whistlestop.

By the way the term "Whistleblower" refers to the action of the referee who blows the whistle when he sees someone cheating or not following the rules of the game and even if the home team hates him for it, that is his job.