March 14, 2006

The Need for a Real Patriot Act

By Bogdan Dzakovic, NSWBC Member

It should be readily apparent by now that the 9-11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented but for the failure of our government to do its job. Contrary to the 9-11 Commission’s main conclusion, the failures of our government were NOT due to “a failure of imagination”. Whistleblowers from EVERY engaged agency responsible for defending this country have reported their own attempts to prevent 9-11 and were thwarted by their own bureaucracies. These bureaucratic failures were not caused by a lack of resources or legislative authority as implied by the provisions of the current Patriot Act. Instead, these failures have been documented to have been caused by bureaucratic turf battles and inertia, gross mismanagement, and topped off by a lack of appropriate Congressional oversight.

Over two hundred years ago, the gifted founding fathers of this great country, recognizing the inherit nefarious nature of mankind in its political endeavors, set up a system of checks and balances within this government to prevent a single branch of the government from becoming too powerful; as a means of thwarting the growth of the roots of tyranny. But even these men did not have the vision to anticipate the growth of government bureaucracies whose primary mission is self propagation, the siphoning off of billions of dollars of tax payer’s money, and operating in a completely unaccountable system in spite of the numerous documented case failures which contributed to the ease by which the terrorists were able to kill some 3,000 innocent people.

Hence, we now have the emersion of a new breed of American Patriots. People who took an oath to defend this country and the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, both foreign and DOMESTIC. People who did their jobs effectively and according to their sacred trust as civil and/or military servants, but were thwarted by an iron curtain of bureaucratic sludge. People who took the dangerous step of aggressively fulfilling their jobs by taking their concerns outside the normal channels where these problems are unceremoniously buried. In every single one of these cases, the individuals suffered reprisal from the very same broken bureaucracy that they attempted to fix. Some lost their jobs, others have been relegated to doing idiot work for the rest of their careers. Some of the current batch of these patriots have even had their lives threatened.

While some have argued that the 9-11 attacks were a new dimension in violence that provides some excuse for the bureaucratic failures (I certainly don’t agree with this thesis, however); nearly five years after the fact, it is totally inexcusable that federal bureaucracies are allowed to continue to operate as ineptly as they did leading up to 9-11. Witness the countless reports in the news and by Congress itself. From the knee jerk reaction to the attacks, the Katrina fiasco, the billions of misspent dollars and the many problems identified in EVERY engaged agency involved in national security. There simply is no accountability or effective oversight of these agencies. The Congress of the United States, in its role of oversight of the Executive Branch, NEEDS this new breed of American Patriot, many of whom have joined the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. It is a crime against SOCIETY that Congress allows the executive branch to persecute these individuals.

It is time for the Congress to institute a new and real Patriot Act which protects these individuals. I fully support Senator Lautenberg’s bill [the Whistleblower Empowerment, Security and Taxpayer Protection Act of 2006], as a first step in bringing some honor back into public service. And for those bureaucrats and politicians who do not actively support this bill: In the words of an early American patriot, Samuel Adams, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen”.

END!