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(Photo: Chris Christner / Flickr)
Politico is reporting that the White House is rejecting calls for the Office of Special Counsel to investigate alleged national security leaks:
“No,” press secretary Jay Carney said when asked whether the president would agree to have the Office of Special Counsel investigate alleged leaks of classified information regarding U.S. intelligence operations. “The president,” Carney said, “insists that his administration take all appropriate and necessary steps to prevent leaks.”
However, the Office of Special Counsel is an independent agency and its leader, Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner, cannot be removed except by “the President only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
In addition, OSC has the following duty:
(a) The Office of Special Counsel shall—
(3) receive, review, and, where appropriate, forward to the Attorney General or an agency head under section 1213, disclosures of violations of any law, rule, or regulation, or gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety;
So, you see, if the Special Counsel receives allegations from employees or former employees who have direct information regarding the leaks, the law mandates that the Special Counsel receive and process such disclosures, without interference from the White House.
Here, I’m afraid Jay Carney may be speaking out of turn as it is not for the President to agree or disagree should the OSC receive allegations.
12 Comments
Please keep it up! Every check on this imperial government is to the good.
You are doing fine work.
Yes, BUT….”The Special Counsel shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a term of 5 years.
“Carolyn Lerner heads the United States Office of Special Counsel. Her five-year term began in June 2011.”
Doubt if she’s going to buck the guy who appointed her.
It’s a 5 year non-renewable term, for what that’s worth.Nevermind, the law doesn’t prohibit it. I won’t say that Special Counsels never succumbed to political pressure (heh), but here it’s a high profile matter…Uppity Women can surprise us. We all, or many of us, thought we were getting a different Pres.
You bet!
Thanks for clarifying that. In other words, the Office of Special Counsel can investigate past crimes, i.e., they don’t have to look forward only. That will come as MFing shock to this president.
“alleged national security leaks”
So the idea is to make it even harder to find out what the government is doing.
Somehow I missing what the celebration is about.
So if they plug the leaks, how exactly does that hinder the imperial government?
Lerner looks like she’s got a pretty good bio. Do you know anything about her other than she was appointed by the president?
For a second I got confused and thought it was Caroline Krass! Now, *that* would be a disaster … so, I’m kind of relieved at the moment.
She’s getting high marks in the whistleblower community for turning around the beleaguered Office of Special Counsel:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/special-counsel-carolyn-lerner-quickly-raises-the-profile-of-her-office/2011/12/12/gIQA5MPiHP_story.html
More here: http://mspbwatch.net/tag/carolyn-lerner/
It seems like the purpose of the office is to *protect* whistleblowers and such. So if they were involved, seems like it would indicate that they were investigating the *government* for violating whistleblower statutes or retaliation or whatever.
Based on the description, they are kind of like the White Knight that’s supposed to be advocating on behalf of government whistleblowers. But if I read it right, appears they’re pretty much just handling personnel complaints under the PPP and coasting on everything else.
For all the Kabuki we all need a program.
This seems to be in response to Republican charges of Obamamites leaking stuff with spin of favorable manliness.
The Republicans were responding to more news on the Stuxnet, and Flame, computer attack on Iran. ( While someone just may have virused US drone pilot stations causing the US anti Iranian nuclear scientist drone to land well inside Iran ).
In the meantime Obama and Holder are coming down hard hard hard on various journalists, and CIA and NSA whistleblowers.
Use emptywheel.net mostly to keep up with this.
And this will go nowhere. If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there. If there’s something there, there’s nothing there.