HOW? by Darlene Fitzgerald
This article came in the mail this morning. I pass it along for general interest. Thank you Darlene!
HOW?
By Darlene Fitzgerald
National Security Whistleblower
December 19, 2007
Over this past year, there have been numerous articles, Senate testimony and reports detailing the Bush administration’s squandering of billions of our tax dollars with virtually nothing to show for it. As recent as this month, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released yet another shocking report appropriately entitled, “Homeland Security for Sale - DHS: Five Years of Mismanagement,” which was aired on MSNBC and published in several major newspapers.
In June 2007, the Washington Post released an article entitled, “DHS, 124 Million Dollars - No Bid Contracts.” Another article entitled, “Getting Hosed by DHS” and another quotes Senator Leahy on January 4, 2007 as stating, “More than 50 billion to Iraq private contractors hired to guard busses, drive trucks, food and shelter troops and rebuild the country, ”and of course there’s not much to show for it. I could go on and on report after report, but I think you get the picture.
Each and every time one of these reports exposes the latest-greatest scandal, the immediate response from the American public is of course, “HOW can this happen!” As an insider of our government for many years, as a National Security Whistleblower, author and most importantly, a caring citizen who has avidly fought against this “HOW” for almost 30 years now, I’ve learned a few things about “HOW.”
Most of the above-mentioned scandals that have managed to actually make it into the main stream media, no easy task I might add, make it appear as though this “HOW” is the result of some illusive, complicated, overwhelming machinery that is our government. This is simply not so. In my humble opinion, “HOW” can be broken down into some basic, simple principals that we as Americans can understand.
First, we have to realize that our government is made up of human beings, with all the frailties, good and evil, of our species. I like to divide government employees (including the folks at the very top - Congress, Bush administration, etc.) into four (4) basic categories:
1. Greedy, self-absorbed people whose only real interest in their jobs is to see just how powerful and rich they can become, by hook or by crook (mostly the latter). These employees, unfortunately, tend to rise to the top of every agency over the backs, or through them with a knife, of the folks in category number four (4) below. These are people who have no conscience and truly believe that they are above the law. This, as you may imagine, is the most dangerous
category.
2. Lazy people. These are the folks that will just “go along to get along.” They are content in doing just enough to get by to get a pay check, and not enough to make any real difference. They will turn their heads the other way, and maybe even go along with things they know are wrong. They feel that they can simply ride the coattails of the folks in category number one (1).
3. Cowards. These are basically good hard-working government employees that ignore obvious waist, fraud and abuse in our government because they will feel guilty about doing nothing - which is exactly what they will do - nothing. These are people who justify in their minds that what they think they are witnessing just can’t be happening (denial), or justify in their minds why they have to stay silent. FEAR drives this category of folks, and for good reason, to be further explained below.
4. Stand Ups. These are good, honest folks who work hard, and refuse to cave into the fear. What fear you ask? The fear that this article is about, because you see, the FEAR is the answer to the “HOW.” I’m speaking of the fear that will be most certainly generated when their government chain of command retaliates against them, unencumbered by any real laws or regulations, when these folks dare to speak truth to power. These folks will find themselves very quickly at a crossroads where they have a decision to make - fall into one of the above categories, quit their jobs and loose their careers, or become a Whistleblower, and stand up to the bullies that their managers and most coworkers will very quickly become if they refuse to shut up and get in line. These people find themselves between a rock and a hard place - and this is where we get the “HOW” in our government.
On May 15, 2007, the Government Accountability Project (GAP), the No Fear Coalition, the Project on Government Oversite (POGO), and several other Whistleblower organizations sponsored the Washington Whistleblower Week in Washington, D.C. in support of the much needed “Whistleblower Protection Act,” Senate Bill #494 and the “No Fear Act,” Senate Bill #201. Whistleblowers from all around the country came to testify before a Congressional panel in order to get these bills passed. These bills have already passed the House, overwhelmingly, and were sitting idle in the Senate.
It is important to note that it was officially read into the record that more than 700 government employees wanted to appear and testify at this hearing. This alone, demonstrates clearly just how pervasive and systemic Whistleblower retaliation has become in our government. I was fortunate enough to be one of the 25 or so who were allowed to give live testimony. As I sat there all day listening to the testimony of some of the bravest folks I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting tell their horrendous stories exposing government waist, fraud, corruption and abuse on an enormous scale, I noticed a few things:
A. Most of these stories were extremely well documented and witnessed. I’m sure that is exactly why they were chosen over others to give this testimony.
B. Secondly, most of these stories weren’t covered by the main stream media, and they most certainly should have been. Some of these stories I’ve summarized below. When you read what they were in fact whistleblowing about, I’m sure that you will agree that they were more than worthy of main stream media attention.
C. The folks that were selected to testify were the “Cream of the crop” employees with the highest of ratings on their progress reports - before they blew the whistle. Most of them brought along their employee folders which included numerous awards and commendations, promotions, rave reviews and other accolades just to further demonstrate this point. Further, most of them had many years as a government employee, all in good standing.
D. Finally, everyone of these highly decorated, highly promoted, “Cream of the crop” employees immediately became labeled by their agencies as unproductive, incompetent, lazy, and/or crazy, immediately after they followed their conscience and bravely reported the waste, fraud, abuse, or corruption that they had witnessed. Moreover, most of them had either been fired, were in the process of being fired, or facing criminal charges.
I’ve written a short summary of the testimony of just a few of the Whistleblowers, including my own. I highly encourage all who read this article to go online, type in their names, and read their testimony in its entirety.
1.) Bunnatine Greenhouse
Ms. Greenhouse was a United States Army Corps of Engineers, senior procurement executive who blew the whistle on violations of issuing government contracts to Halliburton, “As the ramp-up to the Iraqi War escalated.” Greenhouse did what most loyal government employees do. She notified her concerns to her chain of command. “I immediately questioned whether the corps had the legal authority to function as the Army’s delegated contracting authority. The Corps had absolutely no competencies related to oil production. Restoration of oil production was simply outside of the scope of our Congressionally mandated mission,” she explained. “But it was too late, the Halliburton express had already left the station.”
“I raised concern with officials representing the Department of Defense, The Department of the Army and the Corps of Engineers....after the draft had been approved by representatives of the office of the Secretary of Defense, the five year, no compete clause remained in place. I could not sign the document in good faith knowing that this extended period was unreasonable... Therefore, next to my signature I handwrote the following comment directly onto the original document: I caution that extending this sole source effort beyond a one year period could convey an invalid perception that there is not strong intent for a limited competition.” Ms. Greenhouse did this to insure that her concern over this obvious blatant abuse of this process would not be overlooked. “Instead, it was just ignored,” she added.
On December 11, 2003, the Defense Contract Audit Agency issued a draft report on concluding that this contract overcharge for the purchase of fuel by $61,000,000. However, the firestorm over this issue was significantly dampened a week later when, “The Corps simply asserted that the price charge for the fuel was “fair and reasonable.”
Ms. Greenhouse would not back down and just go away. As the pressure mounted she was eventually, “summoned to a meeting” where they notified her that she was to be removed from her Senior Executive Service and from her position. “I had no other alternative at that juncture but to file a formal request or investigation with the then-Acting Secretary of the Army and to appropriate members of Congress.” She ended her testimony by thanking the National Whistleblower Center for their support for, “Without their effort I could not have survived the political firestorm that burns around me.”
2.) Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo was a senior policy analyst fo the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), until she was terminated, shortly after she reported that an American company was generating toxic waste that was poisoning African workers. At that time, she was serving as an African affairs specialist on the Gore-Mbeki Commission. Instead of being praised for her findings, she was removed from the commission. She has received extreme harassment, death and rape threats when she exposed the environmental and human disasters taking place in the Brits, South Africa, vanadium mines. Her concerns were eerily similar to the complaints of other Whistleblowers. On August 18th, 2000, a federal jury found the EPA guilty of violating the civil rights of Dr. Coleman-Adebayo on the basis of a hostile work environment.
3.) Bogdon Dzakovic
Mr. Dzakovic was a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) security expert who blew the whistle on lax oversight and testing of security at airports, before and after 9-11. Dzakovic began by explaining HOW abuses of secrecy are a, “clear and present danger to homeland security.” Dzakovic had served seven (7) years with the FAA Red Team, which conducted undercover test on airport security through simulated terrorist attacks. “Although we breached security with ridiculous ease up to 90% of the time, the FAA suppressed these warnings. Instead we were ordered not to write up our findings and not to retest airports.”
After the terrorist attack on 9-11 the FAA and other government officials were all seen in different reports, and in testimony to Congress saying things like Secretary Rice stated, “How could we have known this was going to happen?” “The truth is,” stated Dzakovic, “they did know. What happened on 9-11 was not a failure in the system, it was a system designed for failure. FAA very conscientiously and deliberately orchestrated a dangerous facade of security.” Dzakovic further testified, “There are serious indications that FAA deceived the public about what happened on 9-11.”
About a month after 9-11, Dzakovic filed a Whistleblower Disclosure against FAA with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Last year the OSC found a substantial likelihood that Dzakovic was right and ordered Secretary Mineta to investigate. “Immediately after our Red Team warnings were vindicated, however, we were grounded. Later I was removed from my position as a Red Team leader with no explanation and placed in a career limbo,” he testified to the panel.
Dzakovic did what most Whistleblowers do and he took his concerns to the Inspector General’s (IG) Office. A senior official from that office stated to him that, “The IG couldn’t take any action against the FAA unless you give me a dead body and a smoking gun, I can’t do anything against the FAA.” Dzakovic further testified “Well, we now have nearly 3,000 dead bodies, and a smoking cannon, and the IG still refuses to take action against the FAA.” “...not one person has been disciplined for mismanaging an agency that operated in a manner that was a substantial and specific danger to public safety contributing directly to the nearly 3,000 deaths on 9-11. As a matter of fact, many of these same managers have been promoted within TSA and are still with the FAA, and are managing the FAA internal investigations/security mission and its hazardous materials mission in precisely the same way asit mismanaged its previous aviation security mission before 9-11.”
TSA has been reported repeatedly for misuses of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money while civil aviation security is, “little better now than it was before 9-11" according to Dzakovic. Meanwhile Dzakovic testified that he has been relegate to doing jobs like, “punching holes in paper and putting orientation binders together for the hundreds of newly hired TSA employees. My current job is even further removed from keeping bombs, weapons and terrorist off planes.”
4.) Darlene Fitzgerald
Summary of my testimony before the Congressional panel:
I had more than 20 years of combined law enforcement experience in the military, private industry and as a Special Agent, when I resigned from my agency because I refused to work for an agency that was worse than the people I put in jail. In 1998 I was in charge of a U.S. Customs task force operating an extensive investigation called Operation Rite Rail. We uncovered tons of narcotics and contraband being facilitated into the U.S. from Mexico via railroad tanker cars - with the apparent approval of U.S. Customs managers. This resulted in a landmark civil case in federal court: Fitzgerald - Nunn Vs. Department of Homeland Security. At this trial Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos took the stand as our witness and made history by being the first sitting judge ever to testify against the U.S. government.
High level-Customs’ managers shut down my investigation into narcotics smuggling. I had already seized 8000 pounds of marijuana and 34 kilos of uncut cocaine in just one pressurized railroad tanker car. I had in my grasp five more of these cars imported from Mexico that were improperly manifested as “empty,” yet contained 25 to 40 tons of suspected contraband. I was ordered off the case and told to shut down my operation.
At the trial, Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAIC) Gary Pinkava took the stand for Customs, and admitted without elaboration that he would not allow me or my supervisor to pressure test, at no charge to the government, these highly suspected tanker cars. This would have been the largest seizure on record for any agency. Subsequently, these tanker cars were surreptitiously released into the commerce of the U.S. uninspected by anyone.
Sufficient evidence to warrant a grand jury investigation of the following was most certainly exposed at the above styled trial: Witness tampering, Facilitation of the importation of 25 to 40 tons of contraband into the U.S., Perjury, Misprision of Felony, and possible Subornation of Perjury. This evidence was sufficient to warrant the initiation of a grand jury investigation - yet there was none. (Complete transcripts of this trial testimony may be read at http://www.BorderGate.net.) Further, since the submission of our witness list in this case, every single person on that list has been either severely harassed, arrested, investigated, threatened, and / or fired.
What my task force and I also exposed is the horrendous national security terrorist threat that these rail tanker cars pose to our nation. Timothy McVey blew up the Federal Murrah Building in Oklahoma City with about one ton of ammonium nitrate in an unsealed-cargo truck. This cowardly attack killed scores of people and resulted in more than eleven damaged buildings being torn down. Yet a terrorist can put forty times this amount of ammonium nitrate in a railroad tanker car and pressurize it. This would create what is essentially the world’s largest “pipe bomb.”
It is important to note that there have been no other rail tanker car seizures since that done by my task force in 1998. Have the drug smugglers and terrorist simply quit trying to enter the U.S., or have they been operating freely with the assistance of corrupt and / or incompetent managers within DHS.
The real victims here are all of the brave Whistleblowers who have come forward with important information that exposes threats to our national security. What has happened, and continues to happen to all the Whistleblowers in my “BorderGate” story is not only wrong, but it places our country at grave risk as well. To quote a famous French free thinker Voltaire, “Being right is dangerous when government is wrong.”
That concluded my testimony.
It is important to note that the only major news organization that covered this important Congressional testimony was CSPAN. No other major news agency bothered covering this most important, scandalous testimony. This too is a large part of the problem which results in the “HOW.” In years past, the media was the ultimate check and balance for our government. Now, I’m sad to say, they are not. Had the media rolled up their sleeves and not “jumped in the boat” with the Bush administration - Had they done their jobs and asked the hard questions in the first place, maybe we would have never rushed into the Iraq war.
When the media does squeeze a Whistleblower’s story into their busy day of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Ellen’s dog, they only tell about the scandal itself. I have yet to see any main stream media conduct a followup on what happens to the Whistleblower who risked everything to bring them the information. The public never knows of how the Whistleblower is almost always fired from their job, and then cleverly “blackballed” from future employment by their previous government managers. You never hear about how the Whistleblower is usually the major bred-winner of the family, and when they can no longer work their spouses don’t understand and divorce them.
The Whistleblower becomes isolated, loses his/her home, files bankruptcy and is dragged through a divorce. Then, because of the mountain of stress piled upon them in a relatively short period of time, the Whistleblower begins to have serious health problems. I personally know of too many Whistleblowers who have died from stress related heart conditions, or have just outright given up and committed suicide. Their lives are destroyed, and all because they had the guts to do the right thing. I personally have had family members state, “You had that great job making all that money and didn’t have the brains to just shut up and keep your job - how stupid.” This is rarely, if ever, covered by the media. To the press, the Whistleblower is simply cannon fodder - a person to use to get their story.
Maybe, if the media would air more time and space to Whistleblowers instead of hours and hours of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, maybe if they did their jobs, maybe we wouldn’t be asking so much about “HOW.” I’m convinced that if Richard Nixon had completed his “Watergate” crimes in 2007, he would have gotten away with it. The days of “investigative journalism” by real reporters are seemingly over. It’s all too easy and much cheaper for media executives to air “talking head” news on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton than to do investigative reporting.
As I sat in Congress that day in May 2007 and listened to the numerous accounts of government waste, fraud, corruption, abuse, and most important, the horrendous retaliation faced by the Whistleblowers who dared to speak truth to power, I realized that I had the answer to HOW. This is HOW our government officials get away with it all - because they can. As you read this article, what is probably the most important piece of legislation in our history sits dormant in the Senate. The Whistleblower Protection Act would provide a real punch to the “HOW.” Yet, our Senate does nothing, and our media has yet to report that this bill is being ignored - much like how the media has ignored the Whistleblowers themselves who dare to take on the “HOW.”
Further, as you read this letter our national debt grows at just under $ONE MILLION DOLLARS A MINUTE (as reported on December 6th, 2007 by MSNBC & other news organizations), largely due to stories like the ones testified to by Whistleblowers this year before Congress. Now that you the reader fully understands “HOW,” I encourage all who read this to do your part to assist Whistleblowers to combat the “HOW” by calling or writing to Senator Harry Reid. Senator Reid has the power to move this bill to the floor for a vote. Every phone call or letter to his office will help (202) 224-3542 / fax (202) 224-7327. I also encourage you to learn more about “HOW” by visiting the following web sites:
The Government Accountability Project: http://www.whistleblower.org
The Project on Government Oversite: http://www.pogo.org
The BorderGate web site: http://www.BorderGate.net
-- Darlene Fitzgerald is a National Security Whistleblower, author of “BorderGate, the story the government doesn’t want you to read”.
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