National
Security Whistleblowers Coalition
NSWBC ADVISORY- September 15, 2006
Contact: Sibel Edmonds, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, sedmonds@nswbc.org
Whistleblower Organizations Urge the
House Chairman against S.494
Ineffective Senate Amendment Will
Not Protect Whistleblowers or National Security
Alexandria, VA---In a letter sent today
the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition together with a Consortium of other whistleblower organizations
urged Congressman Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Committee on Armed
Services, to support house substitute for ineffective Senate Amendment which
will not protect national security during the final conference on the 2007
Defense Authorization Act. Among others, the Consortium includes National
Whistleblower Center, Liberty Coalition,
Veterans Affairs Whistleblowers Coalition, and Concerned Foreign Service
Officers. (For the letter Click
Here)
The Senate
has incorporated a whistleblower protection provision (S.494) into the fiscal
year 2007 defense authorization act.
The Senate proposal does not properly protect national security. It excludes key government workers fighting
the “war on terror” from any whistleblower protection whatsoever. Additionally, the protections it does offer
are weak and have been incompetently administered by a lack-luster merit
systems process which has often rewarded inefficiency. The provision appears to
be another cosmetic add-on marketed falsely as whistleblower protection.
The House
Government Reform Committee has conducted extensive hearings on the appropriate
standards necessary to protect those patriotic civil servants willing to expose
bureaucrats or politicians who are “weak” or incompetent on national-security
issues. The Committee has taken leadership on drafting and passing real whistleblower protections intended
to defend national security; H.R. 1317/H.R. 5112.
It is not
too dramatic to say that if the provisions in the Senate bill pass, rather than
the genuine protections contemplated in the house bill, Congress will have
sentenced as-yet unknown Americans to death and injury by failing to protect
proven measures – reporting of government malfeasance and negligence – that
gird our national security.
The
Coalition requested Chairman Hunter’s personal intervention to ensure that the
protections offered under HR. 1317/H.R. 5112 are adopted in conference, not the weak and
completely ineffective Senate provision, S. 494, during the final conference on
the 2007 Defense Authorization Act.
National
Security Whistleblowers Coalition, founded in August 2004, is an independent
and nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to address our
nation’s security weaknesses; to inform authorities of security vulnerabilities
in our intelligence agencies, at nuclear power plants and weapon facilities, in
airports, and at our nation’s borders and ports; to uncover government waste,
fraud, abuse, and in some cases criminal conduct. The NSWBC is dedicated
to aiding national security whistleblowers through a variety of methods,
including advocacy of governmental and legal reform, educating the public
concerning whistleblowing activity, provision of comfort and fellowship to
national security whistleblowers suffering retaliation and other harms, and
working with other public interest organizations to affect goals defined in the
NSWBC mission statement. For more on NSWBC visit www.nswbc.org
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