About that Need for a Whistleblower Law…
I believe it was just the other day when I was saying it was more urgent to implement whistleblower protection than to write a new journalist shield law. This doesn’t change my opinion in that regard.
This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effortto collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department.The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in theDepartment, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committeehad set up a formon the committee’s website for people to blow the whistle privatelyabout abuses there. Although the panel said it would not acceptanonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identitywould be held in the "strictest confidence."
But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent theemail addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who hadwritten in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters whohad used the website form, including presumably whistleblowersthemselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentallyincluded in the "to:" field — instead of concealing those addresseswith a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".
See, if we didn’t force our whistleblowers to sneak around so much, this wouldn’t be the monumental fuck up it is. As it is though, this is likely to discourage a more whistleblowers from coming forward.
That say, I will at least entertain (for the moment) that this was deliberate. The Republicans have always hated this tip line–they’ve been trying to shut it down since Conyers started this. And the email explained that the tip line has now been shut down.
This message is to inform you that the Committee is now ending the tipline and has voted to approve procedures governing the confidentialityof the e-mails received.
So this email included the emails of everyone who has–or will–submit a tip to the tip line. And that entire list was carbon copied to Cheney’s office.
Some of the email addresses appear to be transparently fake, butthere’s also, much more troubling, a [email protected] copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney.
In other words, it would be very smart poker if some disloyal Democratic staffer or a Republican staffer to "accidentally" send Cheney the list of all those who were revealing secrets about DOJ. There have been some Republican leaks of damaging testimony in the past. What would it take for someone to "accidentally" make this tip line backfire–to make it serve the intelligence purposes of those trying to avoid responsibility for politicizing DOJ, rather than the opposite?
What would it take for someone to â€accidentally†make this tip line backfire–to make it serve the intelligence purposes of those trying to avoid responsibility for politicizing DOJ, rather than the opposite?
Not much, clearly. I figure this story will guarantee it.
Can someone teach these idiots the use of bcc: for this kind of e-mail? (I can’t believe any staffer hasn’t already learned that. A Congresscritter, prehaps, as they don’t normally handle anything that isn’t actually personal.)
This could go either way. Have seen it happen far too often in the corporate world, innocently (and stupidly); could have been an accident.
But I’d be ripping apart the staff at the HJC in the meantime, because this is the kind of â€accident†that cannot happen twice.
But isn’t it nice to know the whistleblowers might recognize some compatriots on that email list? Maybe someone on Waxman’s committee or elsewhere involved, knows there are three or four of these email addresses that, if their separate stories were to be joined in a composite, the total impact could be complete, rather than partial.
And since there’s so little will on the part of the DOJ to pursue these links and to tightened-up some loose associations, maybe someone â€made†this â€mistake†to provide the whistleblowers with their own tools for joint strategy.
Just food for thought…
Don’t you think Cheney’s already got the keys to the email vault and can read all the whistleblower stuff anyway?
Whistleblowers are Cheney’s favorite game; they are always in season and more fun to bag than quail, partridge, or billionaire huntin’ buddies.
This â€mistake†has just extended a cycle of Cheneyian retribution that has already disrupted the families and careers of the people most committed to making government fair, open and effective. It has made us less safe.
I actually saw an instance where someone did this deliberately, and included on the cc’d list emails from porn sites and several previous girlfriends of the… ’jerk’ at whom the ’ooopsie!!’ cc’d email was aimed. (You had to be there, but it was a diabolically clever ’f*ck you’.)
It could be hugely funny if any ’DC Madame’ emails were on that cc’d list. The ’Mwaahahahahahaha Potential’ on this one could be fairly high.
The HJC described the error as â€A technological error in a recent communication inadvertently disclosed certain email addresses.†If this is a forthcoming explanation, then we might assume the (cgi?) code written to forward all the tip emails from the HJC/DOJ â€tips†mailbox to the designated members of the HJC was poorly coded – to include the whistleblowers email addresses in the TO field.
The tip form (sample) on the HJC website provides two interesting features; a DOJ employee does not have to use their own DOJ mail account to submit a tip, and a DOJ employee could enter any email address on the form, their home hotmail account or a made-up address.
How does one explain how Cheney’s email address ended up in the CC field if all the tipsters’ addresses ended up in the TO field? You see, if Cheney’s address was in the TO field like other tipsters, it could have been submitted by anyone with access the HJC Tip web form but it wasn’t, it was in the CC: field. Either the people who wrote the cgi code intentionally CC’d Cheney as part of the program logic or someone was involved in sending the email – it wasn’t totally automated – and they added Dick Cheney’s public email address in the CC field. It could have been added to the BCC field and no one the wiser but it wasn’t and for a purpose. I think we’re looking for a Republican staffer on the HJC or a tech hacker working for the OVP or DOJ who recoded the web tip form before the procedure was run to forward the email.
CC-ing Cheney was deliberate… more Republican dirty tricks… keep on eye on who Addington meets for lunch at the St Regis. If Dick Cheney is wiling to betray a covert CIA agent working on nuclear non-proliferation in Iraq and Iran then who is safe?
This is quite disgusting, really. Good job, Empty Wheel.
I hope there are many lawsuits. I do not believe it was accidental. It is similar to a stunt pulled within DOD, DSS to be specific, to try to route out those who would not just keep their mouth shut to the waste, fraud and abuse. They brought in a person to use psuedo group processing activities and after convincing people to trust them, and asking them to candidly fill out a survey, then proceeded to scuttle off with the results, not share them with the employees, and then begin a process of harrassing and sinking employees who participated.
For those who need to (and I hope they will continue to do so) report wrongdoing, I would suggest going to the truly anonymous tip line of the Project on Government Oversite (POGO) to report it there. Go to POGO.org and then click on report corruption link on their site page, or use this page address: http://www.pogo.org/p/x/exposecorruption.html
While it is true, as one commenter said, that combining related tips and reports may help support the processing and holding the wrongdoers accountable for the sum total of the various reports, outing all of the reporters was NOT the way to do it. They and their families have been put at risk, more than most know. I would suggest people immediately contact POGO for assistance. There are a great many â€cases†being put together right now.
Does anyone really believe the reasons given (Reported at TPM Muckraker 10-29-07)as the likely reason for the outing of these Justice Dept. Whistleblowers?