Editorial: Hear the whistle blowing

Monday, Feb. 20, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.

As the Bush administration seeks to stop internal leaks that resulted in news reports about the domestic surveillance program and possible abuses occurring inside secret CIA detention centers, members of Congress are calling for stronger protections of federal workers who blow the whistle on government waste and fraud.

According to Cox News Service, federal whistleblowers - such as those who revealed the government's failure to adequately track the suicide hijackers responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - have virtually no protection against on-the-job retaliation.

"Whistleblower protections are not working," Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said last week during a hearing of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national and emerging threats. "Seldom in our history has the need for the whistleblower's unfiltered voice been more urgent."

In one instance a former Federal Aviation Administration security official, who before the 2001 attacks reported that his employees had infiltrated security at 90 percent of the nation's airports and that a hijacking was inevitable, was demoted to answering phones on the graveyard shift and updating a Homeland Security phone book. The demotion came after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he blew the whistle on those who had ignored his warnings about hijacking risks.

Former intelligence officers who testified last week also told of losing their security clearances and being demoted to clerical jobs for revealing abuse of prisoners in Iraq, security glitches at nuclear facilities and suspicions of espionage at the National Security Agency.

It is bad enough that Bush administration officials have misled the American public about the reasons for going to war in Iraq and sought to cover up or minimize everything from U.S. torture of prisoners and the leaking of a CIA operative's identity to the government's spying on Americans' phone calls and the vice president shooting someone while hunting.

"It should not be acceptable to retaliate (against someone) for telling the truth," Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said last week. "It's un-American.''

It certainly is.