You may have started as a young blogger, but you’re more than that now. Keep up the good (and thankless) work.

Stunning in scope but not surprising in reality. Hacks come in many colors and hide behind many labels.

One more thing. Mr. Drake said the following:

During the 2001-2006 timeframe, OSC was not in a position to properly process the very sensitive (and even highly classified disclosures I made to Congress and later to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General) involving intelligence activities and programs at the NSA. In addition, OSC had no jurisdiction regarding those particular disclosures.

Putting aside semantics over “jurisdiction” versus “accepting” versus “referral,” which plagued an earlier conversation I had with him, the fact is that OSC was not practically capable of carrying out its job in 2001-2002, denying him (or someone in his position, so to not get bogged down in the individual nuances of one’s case) the benefit of the law.

The Special Counsel between 1998-2003 was a Clinton-appointee, Elaine Kaplan, whom Obama recently nominated to become a judge of the Court of Federal Claims.

So this Special Counsel failed to ensure that OSC was abiding by the law and was a safe haven for people like Mr. Drake. When she left office in 2003, GAP gave her an award for having ” served the highest ideals of public service.”

Let’s be clear: GAP was around then, and could have conducted accountability (what the “A” in its name stands for) to make sure GAP was a safe haven at the time.

There is absolutely no reason why OSC is becoming a safe haven now and was not then, other than who the leadership is composed of. There is no new law that was passed that made this happen.

And here Mr. Drake is standing up for GAP rather than asking questions about its commitment to its own mission statement and to the plight of whistleblowers.

Maybe Mr. Drake is a more charitable and forgiving person than I am. But I have seen very little by way of GAP’s behavior to assure me that “yes, this time we will take accountability seriously.” The last go-around, involving the passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, in 2012, showed an ugly side of GAP: mercenary, dishonest, imperious. My FDL diary is replete with examples. I can be persuaded, though. Here’s a list of needed reforms: http://mspbwatch.net/reform.

If GAP were to tell the whistleblower community that it is serious about giving whistleblowers a seat at the table, rather than speaking for them behind closed doors, that would be a good faith gesture that could end a lot of acrimony (and no, I would not be angling for it).

But for the time being, my zealous oversight of GAP and other related institutions will continue, even if the ad hominems continue.

There is absolutely nothing that I said about Mr. Drake’s ordeal that is in tension with any of this, with one exception below. I have always accounted for the fact that OSC may not have been in a practical position to accept classified disclosures in the time frame Mr. Drake mentions. That does not change the fact that OSC, under the law, was and is authorized to accept classified disclosures (and making referrals when appropriate).

There is nothing in the law that I have seen that states that OSC did not and does not possess jurisdiction to accept disclosures of any type. In the case of “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information,” OSC refers the information to Congress and the National Security Advisor. That has the law since 1978, currently codified in 5 U.S.C. 1213(j).

OSC had a troubled history, and it is only now reforming itself after 35 years of disserving whistleblowers. It therefore serves no one for Ms. Radack and GAP to make continuing statements in the present day that suggest that national security whistleblowers have no where to go, as they did in an amicus brief in the NDAA litigation in the Second Circuit, as well as other comments elsewhere. Mr. Drake’s second-to-last paragraph admits as much. Here is a summary of the amicus that contains the false statement: http://mspbwatch.net/2012/12/19/fact-check-gap-legal-filing-falsely-claims-intelligence-workers-lack-external-avenues-to-blow-the-whistle/

That is the crux of my complaint with Ms. Radack. She is simply incorrect about the law, and is doing so in a manner that closes doors, rather than opens them, to people in Mr. Drake’s position.

Moreover, what Mr. Drake doesn’t seem to realize is that his suffering isn’t solely due to lack of explicit whistleblower protections, but also to the fact that a broken system persists in agencies across government, not just the NSA, where retaliation and corruption take root and flourish. This is entirely avoidable. An agency created after Watergate was given the explicit mandate of reporting to Congress “whether the public interest in a civil service free of prohibited personnel practices is being adequately protected.” Basically, to tell Congress whether the government is sick or healthy. This agency, the Merit Systems Protection Board, has never answered this question. It was designed to be the “conscience of the civil service.” It has jurisdiction to review the NSA in this regard, even if Mr. Drake cannot file an appeal there to contest his retaliatory termination.

The reason why I bring this up is because Mr. Carson’s long-term efforts — and my shorter-term efforts — to get GAP to direct its attention to MSPB’s failure are met with excuses, evasions, and platitudes. GAP doesn’t just represent clients. It is also the pre-eminent legislative advocacy organization on the Hill. It is the 800 pound gorilla. It has no reasoned principles behind its excuses, just ad hominem and platitudes about foxes guarding hen houses.

Finally, to say that corporate-funded foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Soros) give hundreds of thousands of dollars “for the express purpose of funding GAP so they can represent government and corporate whistleblowers” is, one, conclusory, and two, a little naive.

GAP’s arbitrary and capricious behavior in response to Mr. Carson’s and my concerns about this broken system speaks volumes about its agenda. It does not act in the public interest, at least not where its private agenda conflicts with the public interest.

Drake, 3/20/13: “So, by putting the focus on the person and ascribing characteristics, they caricaturize the person to avoid having to deal with the message.”

Gosztola, 3/22/13: “I see what you are doing as being more divisive to the cause of fighting the war on whistleblowing. You have not demonstrated to me that what you are doing is about more than having some kind of beef with Jesselyn. It seems like you have an agenda – like you are upset GAP gets so much attention and that overshadows what you do in some capacity. If I have this wrong, I apologize and welcome a rebuttal that shows I am wrong to have this perception”

The rebuttal is all here, Kevin. I await your earnest, objective review of it. I don’t even need an apology, just for you to mean what you say in public.

Okay. You have the proof in your inbox, as you know.

You said you would not censor me when I post comments here about this topic, but that you will be “informing readers every time of the context of your vendetta or personal campaign.” I note that you said this before receiving my evidence, and without indicating whether you would interview both sides to hear them out before concluding that I am engaging in a “vendetta or personal campaign.” That is also useful context, should I or others conclude that the Dissenter is a PR arm of GAP and Jesselyn Radack. Readers can decide that for themselves, with full knowledge of the facts.

Okay. I’ll prep a list of misstatements by Radack, with quotes and links. I won’t ask anyone to hunt around.

Kevin, you quoted this just yesterday:

“Instead of focusing on the message, it was simply what would compel a person to do this absent the message,” he explains.” Similarly, in Manning’s case, “The focus becomes the person. The focus becomes the messenger. And so you just get painted and anything you can find that puts you in a negative light they will use because what it’s designed to do is question your integrity. It’s designed to question your motives. It’s actually designed to question your intentions. It’s actually designed to question fundamentally who you are and, if there’s any reason to suspect that you might be unstable or that you might be susceptible or that somehow you don’t fit the norm or that you’re outside the norm,” they seize upon it.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/03/20/nsa-whistleblower-thomas-drake-all-doubts-dispelled-bradley-mannings-a-whistleblower/

And now you do the same instead of focusing on what I have to say, which is that Radack misleads the public and GAP is a veal pen institution. It is your boss Jane Hamsher that coined that term, right?

Unless this logic doesn’t apply if you have dinner with people who run the veal pen?

Kevin,

You would do well to look at issues on the merits and not engage in a motive analysis.

Was anything I said false? Did you even fact check it?

One could lay the same vendetta charge on many targets of your work, both persons and institutions. You would expect to be taken seriously, on the merits.

Such a double standard would be hypocritical.

FWIW, I fact check her and her employer’s statements here:

http://mspbwatch.net/tag/jesselyn-radack

and

http://mspbwatch.net/category/fact-check

I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon but there it is, for the record.