The Muckraker

Last week, James Sandler's investigation on whistleblower protections—or lack of—was published by Salon. Within hours the story was picked up by blogs, including IRE's Extra Extra and the FedBlog of GovernmentExecutive.com.

Salon's comments forum was also pinging with responses. Many were from people who were whistleblowers themselves. The U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch, the man in charge of investigating whistleblower cases for the federal government, posted a lengthy response to Sandler's article. Excerpts from the Salon comments are below.

Bloch responds:

I have tried to protect whistleblowers every chance I could. I have taken it on the chin from advocacy groups who profit from trying to stir up trouble and make everyone else but themselves look bad. I tried to file on behalf of Ms. Chambers, but her attorney with PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) filed on her behalf before we could, and this deprived her of our ability to pursue her case. She lost our presumption of a stay of termination. If we had been allowed to file on behalf of Ms. Chambers, I believe we would have obtained the stay we were going to seek and the case would have been settled favorably for her. As it was, the court denied the stay requested by her and she has lost at every stage.
—Mitch191

And an anonymous response to Bloch's post:

What Special Counsel Bloch says:
"I tried to file on behalf of Ms. Chambers, but her attorney with PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) filed on her behalf before we could, and this deprived her of our ability to pursue her case."

What the law says:
"If an employee . . . seeks a corrective action from the Board under section 1221 . . . the Special Counsel may continue to seek corrective action personal to such employee . . . with the consent of such employee. . ."
5 U.S.C. 1214(a)(4)
—Anonymous

Other comments:

obviously whistleblowing is a fools errand. however that's what the press is for.
—david sugarman

My advice to potential whistleblowers -- based on my personal experience -- is that if you blow the whistle you might as well pack up your shit and wait to be escorted out the door or to the basement. Period. Your performance is irrelevant. Your length of service is irrelevant. The fact that you have a "really good case" is irrelevant.
—Mishima666

I've "blown the whistle" twice, once while working for the federal government, once while working for a private corporation.
Results: good.
Retribution: none.
How is this possible?
If your goal is to correct a problem (rather than take personal credit and glory) there are a thousand ways to shed an embarrassing light, which cannot be ignored, on a problem - anonymously.
Get smart before you take any action and you need not fear punishment. In fact, the entire exercise can be great entertainment (watching them scurry to fix the problem, while not quite understanding how they came to be on the defensive).
—comfortable

I am a long-serving Navy attorney and have done significant work in the area of complaints on both the civilian and uniformed side of the house. This is a good story in that it points out issues in our system of resolving these types of complaints, but it is not the full story.
One can read this and walk away with the impression that anybody that complains is subjected to retaliation and of those retaliated against, only a small number ultimately receive protection and/or justice. What it does not do is give you the numbers of people who report issues and are never retaliated against or the numbers of people who report issues, are retaliated against and receive some form of protection and/or justice before it goes to the MSPB obviating the need for a MSPB hearing.
—jazzlstnr

>> Read more comments on "The War on Whistleblowers" on Salon's website.

>> Read blog responses to "The War on Whistleblowers" on Technorati.

Around 6:30 a.m. an explosion ripped through the Sago Mine in West Virginia. Thirteen miners were trapped underground. News crews from around the country descended on West Virginia's coal country. Lawmakers in Washington demanded stricter safety regulations and enforcement. The nation held its breath.

It took nearly twelve hours before rescue crews could even enter the mine. By the time rescuers dug the men out, all but one were dead.

While most reporters covered the Sago Mine story as a tragic accident, Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette decided to dig deeper. A fifteen-year veteran of the coal industry beat, Ward began examining mine records and visiting coalfields across West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. He spoke to coal miners, mine operators, government inspectors, and lawmakers. What he found was chilling: Mine operators and owners were pushing for the cheapest, fastest production of coal—a high-priced commodity—and sacrificing the lives and safety of miners in the process. Safety regulations were being ignored. Miners were receiving inadequate training. Rescue crews were short-staffed or nonexistent.

Ward's series brought the systemic flaws of coal mining—what one mine safety lawyer called "an outlaw industry"—into the national spotlight.

>> Watch "Sustained Outrage" online now. The episode is also airing on PBS. Check local listings.

>> Read Ken Ward's original series in The Charleston Gazette.

>> Read reporter Ken Ward’s tips for anyone interesting in investigating mine or worker safety issues.

>> The Mine Safety and Health Administration tracks mining deaths from 1995 to the present on its website. Poynter.org also highlights other mine safety resources.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox accused a Mexican senator of drug trafficking last week, resurrecting charges first revealed in a New York Times story I co-reported ten years ago.

These stories don't die. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Mexican reporters.

Fox brought up the drug charges after Mexican senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones called for an investigation of Fox over charges of illegal enrichment while serving as Mexico's President.

In return, Fox accused Beltrones, who is contemplating a 2012 run for the presidency, of running a smear campaign against him and his wife. "Mr. Manlio Fabio Beltrones should focus on his duties as a senator, rather than promoting his presidential aspirations," Fox said on Friday.

"Manlio Fabio Beltrones has a record with the DEA related to drug trafficking," Fox continued, referring to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. "Mexico doesn't deserve this political spectacle."

Fox's charges stemmed from our 1997 New York Times investigation of Beltrones, who was then governor of the northern state of Sonora.

The article, which caused a thunderous outcry in Mexico at the time, revealed that U.S. officials had collected intelligence linking Beltrones and another Mexican governor to one of Mexico's biggest drug traffickers.

Both governors, who denied the charges, filed criminal libel complaints against the story's authors, Sam Dillon and me. The complaints, if substantiated, would have landed us in a Mexican prison.

The federal criminal defamation statute, written in 1917, was a unique tool for the politically powerful to imprison journalists for writing anything that damaged their reputations, even if what was said was true. But the law's real import was to coerce reporters into writing retractions.

When a senior Mexican government official made such a proffer to the New York Times, Bill Keller, then the paper's foreign editor, brusquely responded by letter: "We do not, and will not, back away from a story we believe to have been accurate in order to appease someone who found the story troublesome."

Beltrones became further enflamed after the Times article was included in a series of reports showing the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. The paper's submission letter for the award remarked that undertaking a major investigative project on a foreign country was "something almost unheard of in foreign correspondence."

Mexico's attorney general eventually dismissed the governors' complaints against us. And earlier this year, Mexico finally scuttled the 90-year-old criminal libel statute as a gesture towards more press freedom.

But journalists in Mexico face a far more existential threat from the drug mafias and corrupt politicians, and neither Fox nor Beltrones nor any other politician has done much about it.

Last year, nine Mexican journalists were murdered, and three are missing, according to Reporters Without Borders.

After Beltrones left the governorship for a legislative post, the trafficking situation in Sonora turned even uglier.

On April 2, 2005, Alfredo Jiménez Mota, a 26-year-old reporter investigating drug corruption in the state, disappeared and is believed to have been killed. Mexican officials have yet to identify and bring to justice the authors of the crime.

Jiménez Mota worked at El Imparcial in Hermosillo, where both Sam and I had spent a great deal of time during our investigation of Beltrones. We did not know Jiménez Mota, who was only 16 at the time.

Yet his disappearance, and probable murder, strikes me deeply. By chance, he disappeared on my birthday, investigating drug corruption in the same locale that we did. The sad irony is that Sam and I were rewarded for our reporting. Alfredo appears to have paid with his life.

For more about the story behind the story, see "Opening Mexico: The Making of A Democracy," by Julia Preson and Sam Dilllon.

Two of the TV news teams featured in EXPOSÉ's "Security Theater" used hidden cameras to get the inside scoop on airport security.

The ethical debate over the use of hidden cameras in journalism is a heated one. ABC's Primetime Live has used hidden cameras to uncover spoiled meat in supermarkets and abuse in nursing homes. And let's not forget Dateline NBC's wildly popular and controversial "To Catch a Predator" series, in which hidden cameras and sting operations are used to bust pedophiles on the Internet.

The hidden camera is an invaluable tool for reporters seeking to acquire proof of wrongdoing, abuse, and fraud. But it can also be a dangerous tool if used for the wrong reasons. And the many lawsuits filed against news organizations charging invasion of privacy, trespassing, and fraud because of the improper use of hidden cameras show just how dangerous a tool it can be. (In the most famous case, a jury ruled in favor of Food Lion, purveyor of the above cited spoiled meat, against ABC’s Primetime Live for the show’s fraudulent use of undercover reporters and hidden cameras—to the tune of $5.5 million in punitive damages.)

Bob Steele, a journalist and contributor to an ethics columnist for Poynter.org came up with this helpful set of guidelines over a decade ago for reporters who are considering using a hidden camera or any kind of deception or misrepresentation in newsgathering. (In this month's American Journalism Review, Steele’s guidelines were invoked in an attempt to judge the ethics of Harper’s reporter Ken Silverstein’s recent undercover stint in which he found out what kinds of unsavory things Washington lobbyists are willing to do for dictators, for the right price.) Steele further suggests reporters ask themselves questions such as: Have I exhausted all other investigative options? Does the public service of this investigation outweigh the deception involved in using a hidden camera? Is there an escape plan in case the undercover reporter is exposed?

Local television news may have a soft reputation when it comes to hard-hitting investigative journalism. However, some television newsrooms are chasing leads and cultivating inside sources as they undertake investigations that often have national importance. On Exposé's "Security Theater" the investigative teams at KNXV in Phoenix, KUSA in Denver, and KHOU in Houston go undercover, go on stakeouts, and go the extra mile to unearth government documents and plumb knowledgeable sources revealing shocking lapses in the nation's airport security.

>> Watch "Security Theater" online now.

>>Watch some of the original television reports that "Security Theater" is based on:

"Serious security questions at Sky Harbor Airport"
Lisa Fletcher reports on lax overnight security at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, where TSA agents turn off the metal detectors and X-ray machines and close the checkpoints between midnight and 4:30 AM.

"Is Houston a sitting duck for terrorism?"
Jeremy Rogalski finds that some smaller general aviation airports in Houston, TX have no government security requirements, only suggestions. Private and corporate jets and planes are readily accessible and available to anyone who makes it past the lax security.

”Undercover agents slip bombs past DIA screeners”
Deborah Sherman learns from inside sources that screeners at Denver International Airport have failed to detect explosives in TSA tests.

This week on EXPOSÉ: Going undercover, using hidden cameras, and obtaining government documents, local television news reporters reveal lax security, sleeping guards and failed security tests at some of the nation's busiest airports.

>> Watch a preview of "Security Theater" online.

The EXPOSÉ: America's Investigative Reports series is produced by Thirteen/WNET New York in association with CIR.

In conjunction with National Public Radio, the Center for Investigative Reporting helped research and report on one of the largest recipients of federal farm subsidies, the legendary King Ranch of Texas. As NPR’s Peter Overby reports, from 1999-2005 King Ranch raked in $8.3 million in subsidies for growing cotton.

Though family owned, King Ranch is probably not what most people would think of as a family farm. It is a politically savvy corporate conglomerate that has its own political action committee and a well-connected lobbyist to help shape this year’s Farm Bill. Out of King Ranch’s 1,200 square miles of land, only 23 are dedicated to growing cotton.

Additionally, powerful political figures sit on the ranch’s board of directors, including former Secretary of State James Baker, and Ray Hunt, a Texas oil tycoon with Washington connections who is ranked as one of the richest men in America by Forbes. The ranch’s CEO, Jack Hunt, was appointed to the Texas Water Development Board by then Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

Additional reporting by CIR shows that from 1997–2006, King Ranch made at least $960,000 in federal campaign contributions, including soft money. The contributions came from King Ranch’s PAC, executives, and board members.

Since 2001, King Ranch spent at least $850,000 on lobbying. To lobby for the Farm Bill, King Ranch hired Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the ranch where Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot attorney Harry Whittington.

For all the lobbying power, however, Overby reports that King Ranch hardly cares about the cotton subsidies. The company says it applies for the subsidies because that’s how the cotton industry is set up. In any case, as CEO Jack Hunt tells Overby, “it’s just one piece of our company.”

For nearly half a century the U.S. government has protected American factory workers from occupational illness and injury, but a Salt Lake Tribune investigation shows such protections seldom extend to Chinese workers who now make most U.S. goods. In a four part series, reporter Loretta Tofani reveals how Chinese workers are dying slow, difficult deaths caused by the toxic chemicals they use to make products in virtually every industry for export to the U.S. and the world. Tofani visited 25 factories in China. She interviewed Chinese workers in hospitals, homes, and outside of their factories, observing first hand how Chinese workers routinely get fatal diseases or lose limbs making products for U.S. consumers. She obtained their medical records and talked to attorneys, business leaders, government officials, and labor activists. She examined thousands of import documents to reveal direct ties between U.S. companies, unsafe factories, and dying or maimed workers. Her investigation reveals that Chinese workers are paying the true price of cheap U.S. goods from China.

Tofani's story was partially funded by CIR's Dick Goldensohn Fund.

>> Read "American imports, Chinese deaths" in the Salt Lake Tribune.

On November 28, 2005, California Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham resigned from office after pleading guilty to taking more than $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors seeking government contracts.

The story of Cunningham's downfall-from legendary Vietnam War ace pilot to federal inmate-was publicly credited by the U.S. District Attorney's Office to the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of reporters from Copley News Service and The San Diego Union-Tribune. Starting with the story of Cunningham's suspicious house sale to defense contractor Mitchell Wade, and using court records, Congressional travel databases, confidential sources, and even scans of a high school yearbook, the reporting team uncovered the Congressman's track record of illicit backroom deals. EXPOSÉ follows the reporters' trail to reveal how the contract game is played in Washington and how willing lawmakers are to play it.

>> Watch "Quid Pro Quo" online now. The episode also airs on PBS tonight. Check local listings.

>> What exactly is "earmarking"? The reporters who broke the Duke Cunningham story explain how Congress has become a "pay-to-play" system in a web-exclusive video interview.

>> A web-exclusive audio interview with reporter Jerry Kammer of Copley News Service: "I think I learned a long time ago that one of the best things that journalism can do is inform the people about how power is used, especially when it’s abused."

The Chauncey Bailey Project reports in the Oakland Tribune today:

Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV denies any role in the killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey and other violent crimes linked to the organization, claiming he has been set up by relatives and associates trying to seize the organization's reins.

In an exclusive interview Wednesday at Alameda County's Santa Rita county jail in Dublin, where he has been held since Aug. 3, the Bey family scion said it makes no sense for him to be involved in violent crimes of any kind because he was on the verge of getting the bakery business out of bankruptcy.

Court records would seem to belie Bey IV's assurances of social civility, as he has amassed at least nine court cases in four counties in just 2 1/2 years.