Calling national security whistleblowers “modern day
Paul Reveres” deserving of legal protection, the ranking
democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security,
Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., has announced plans to introduce
legislation that would give any federal employee, federal
contractor or subcontractor, or a corporate employee
protection from retaliation when reporting a concern about
national or homeland security, threat to public health and
safety, or fraud, waste or mismanagement to their employer,
GAO, a government agency or Congress, according to a
statement from his office.
Under the legislation, if the Department of Labor failed
to act on a case within six months, whistleblowers could
take it to civil court and seek compensatory and punitive
damages, and acts of retaliation in these matters would
become punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
It would also ensure that if the government invoked the
states secrets privilege, preventing the merits of a case
from being heard, the whistleblower would automatically
win the case.
However, an amendment version of the legislation failed on
a party-line committee vote as the Homeland Security
Authorization Act was marked up recently, so its future is
questionable.
It would have extended whistleblower protections provided
by Congress in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to corporate employees
who report accounting fraud, to the rest of the federal and
private sector workforce.
The congressman said in a statement that it is “preposterous”
that the Sarbanes-Oxley act gives better whistleblower
protections to Enron or WorldCom employees than it gives
to FBI employees, or TSA baggage screeners — instead they
are “blackballed from getting other jobs. They go broke.
Their lives are ruined.”
His office said the former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds
collaborated on the legislation, along with other national
whistleblower advocates.
