Whistle While You Purge

The W machine keeps pumping them out...tsk tsk. THIS FROM:

Op/Ed-The Nation
Monday Feb. 28, 11:15 AM ET
By Ari Berman

It's been an inauspicious start for Scott Bloch, head of the government's Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the agency charged with protecting federal whistleblowers. After moving from the Justice Department's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives in January 2004, Bloch suggested that federal employees could essentially be fired for being gay. Then, directly contradicting his organization's purpose, Bloch complained of "leakers" within the OSC and issued a gag order for employees. In a speech last fall Bloch admitted he knew little about the Counsel's work before Bush nominated him. Now he's pushing forward a controversial agency "reorganization" plan that watchdogs liken to a purge.

Under Bloch's orders, 20 percent of the Counsel's legal and investigative team will be fired or relocated. With no prior consultation, Bloch ordered twelve employees to transfer from Washington to Oakland, Dallas or the newly-opened Detroit field office. Senior staff were given only ten days to agree to the transfer and sixty days to move. As a result, seven employees quit, one retired and four agreed to relocate. The Project on Government Oversight labeled the decision "a purge to stifle dissent and re-staff the agency with handpicked loyalists."

"The irony is overwhelming," says POGO's Danielle Brian. "How could the federal protector of whistleblowers make a bigger mockery of the agency's mission that this?" The Office of Special Counsel was created in 1976 to protect whistleblowers in the wake of Watergate. In 1989, George Bush)--at Congress' unanimous urging--passed the Whistleblower Protection Act. Congress extended safeguards for informers of corporate fraud in 2002.

During the Bush Administration, whistleblower complaints of government waste, fraud and abuse have doubled from 380 reported cases in 2001 to 535 in 2003. Less than one percent of these cases lead to an investigation. Instead of addressing the Counsel's obvious deficiencies, Bloch hired highly conservative, personal friends as consultants through no-bid contracts. Then he announced that the number of backlogged cases had decreased by 90 percent in the past year, from 700 cases down to 100.

Government watchdogs, such as Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, say Bloch merely dumped hundreds of cases. When Ruch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to verify Bloch's claim, the OSC said it lacked the resources to respond to the FOIA until at least July 2005. "Bloch is claiming that he does not have enough staff to even respond to FOIA requests and then a week later he fires seven more staff," Ruch laments. "Go figure." Yet another example of the Bush Administration hurting the very people it purports to help.