Whistleblower

Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration

The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is. On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret.

The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers. It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot -- from 11 years ago -- to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War. The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/06/23/risen

worth reading!

thanks

Blackwater whistleblower trial begins in Va.


The security firm once known as Blackwater overbilled the federal government for services in Iraq and Afghanistan and submitted phony reimbursements and other bogus expenses, a lawyer said Tuesday in opening statements of a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two former employees.

A lawyer for the company, which now operates under the name Xe Services, denied the fraud accusations and said the firm's employees had always strived to be scrupulous in its accounting.

"The State Department continues to receive invoices from us, for our work," said the company's lawyer, David O'Brien. "They continue to pay it and they continue to do business with us."

The 2008 lawsuit from ex-employees Brad and Melan Davis accuses the company of submitting fraudulent bills to the State Department on its $1 billion contract for security work in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the jury agrees, the Davises would be eligible to collect a share of any money that the government lost to fraud.

Their attorney, Susan Burke, told a jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., that Blackwater employees falsified records of how many workers were actually providing security services in Iraq and Afghanistan at any given time and also submitted inflated reimbursement amounts for travel.

"They didn't want to alert the State Department to that fact," Burke said. "The State Department had put an enormous amount of trust into them."

Melan Davis, who was responsible for pulling together travel expenses to submit to the State Department, had direct knowledge of the fraud because she participated in it herself, Burke said. Court papers allege the company overbilled the government by more than $123 million in labor and travel expenses, though a judge precluded the Davises from sharing that estimate with the jury after defense lawyers challenged it.

Melan Davis was the first witness. Asked by her attorney why she was there, she replied, "Myself, along with others, committed fraud."

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III has already dismissed several of the lawsuit's claims, including a salacious allegation that Blackwater billed the government for prostitutes. The judge said there was no evidence that Blackwater sought out prostitutes.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hYTVzpS1scJ-sy_PJlYoL0vS7inQ?docId=b19bc8d780ba406a8ddf42595b7a8bc9

This will go nowhere. A slap on the wrist maybe.

SEC Kowtows to Fortune 500 on Corruption 'Investigations,' Whistleblower Says
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/27/46031.htm

SAN DIEGO (CN) - The SEC allows the nation's richest firms and financial institutions - and only the biggest and richest firms - to handpick the lawyers investigating them for corruption, a whistleblower claims in Federal Court.
Rodolfo Michelon claims that the SEC runs an exclusive "outsourcing program" for Wall Street, neutering incentives and protections for whistleblowers under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.