Next Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient?

The Justice Department, in a draft of an investigative report by the inspector general's office, has found yet another instance of retaliation against a whistle-blower. The investigation revolves around a bungled case in Florida and Mark German, the former FBI undercover agent who reported problems with the case to his superiors all the way up to FBI Director Mueller.

During its investigation the IG's office found that the case had been mishandled in many ways, including the use of corrective fluid to change the dates on some forms. It also found that former agent German was the victim of retaliation for his efforts to bring this to the attention of supervisors in the agency who could remedy the problems. And this brings me to the man who has overtaken "Brownie" in the London bookmakers' odds as the individual most likely to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Jorge Martinez:

In the most serious instance, the head of the F.B.I. undercover unit, Jorge Martinez, froze Mr. German out of teaching assignments in undercover training and told one agent that Mr. German would "never work another undercover case," the report said.

Mr. Martinez told investigators that he did not remember making the statements but that if he had, it was a "knee-jerk reaction but did not mean to indicate I was retaliating against him," the report said.

Riiighhht, it wasn't retaliation, it was punishment. Which is kind of like this distinction: "no, I did not rape the prisoner with a broom handle, I sodomized him with it."

Now at this point I haven't made up my mind about which aspect of this report is the most disturbing, the continued punitive actions against whistle-blowers at the FBI, or the fact that some FBI employee thought he could cover his tracks by using LIQUID PAPER. I wonder how many technicians at the FBI crime lab it took to detect that crafty move?

Of course it's the retaliation against whistle-blowers that's the most disturbing, and while I don't know when the official report on the investigation involving Mark German is supposed to drop, the NY Times got hold of the draft just a week after the Supreme Court refused to reinstate the civil case of another FBI whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds.

The reason Edmonds can't sue is because John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets privilege" to keep her from having her day in court. He claimed that her case would involve information that "might expose government secrets that could damage national security." Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Grassley suggested that the real reason for declaring the facts of this case as state secrets was that it "serves to protect the executive branch against embarrassing revelations and full accountability."

So far it doesn't seem as if whistle-blowers are fairing very well over at the FBI. These two cases aren't identical, German was an agent who resigned and has yet to pursue any legal recourse, while Edmonds was a contract translator who was fired and sued the Bureau over her dismissal. But there are a great number of similarities too: they are both whistle-blowers, they both caught the attention of Senator Chuck Grassley--a Republican from the heartland who has been sponsoring an FBI reform bill that includes protection for whistle-blowers for four years now, and they are both vindicated by reports from the inspector general's office at Justice.

The fact that they are called "whistle-blowers" in the first place is disconcerting enough. I tend to think of a whistle-blower as a Deep Throat character or somebody saying, "they're poisoning the water!" I never imagined that saying "hey, you know Bill over in accounting? He can't add," would qualify somebody as a whistle-blower. This seems to be basically what German said, "this dude sucks at his job and is breaking the rules." No great deep dark secrets being exposed here, just sloppy work and, oh yeah, maybe a little law breaking, but still, a "whistle-blower?"

Obviously the punishment of whistle-blowers, or conscientious employees, in government agencies charged with keeping us safe doesn't increase our safety. These two FBI employees were both involved in the kind of work that might actually prevent another terrorist attack here, unlike many of the other projects receiving Homeland Security dollars, and now they're gone.

These two cases, especially that of Edmonds, point out another threat to our national security as well as our personal freedoms, transparency, or the lack thereof. Helmut has spoken extensively and eloquently on this subject, like here and here, and a quick search for "transparency" in the little search box thingy up there will show you all of it. So I only point this out as a sort of "yeah, what he said" instance.

While all of this is, sadly, not a great surprise, there is a silver lining: there are professionals left at the Justice Department who still maintain their integrity (and this is the crucial part) and that haven't yet been totally suppressed, oppressed, or run off by the crony political appointees who supervise them so as to ensure that their work isn't "biased."