Number: RL33215
Title: National Security Whistleblowers
Authors: Louis Fisher, Government and Finance Division 
Abstract: Congress and the President have often collided over access to information within the executive branch. Although executive officials recognize that they have a duty to keep Congress informed and to share agency documents, domestic as well as national security, on some occasions the executive branch will invoke different types of privileges to block congressional access. Congressional committees can issue subpoenas and either house may hold executive officials in contempt for refusing to release documents or to testify. However, those measures are extreme and are taken only after customary efforts to find a compromise have collapsed. In the midst of some of these confrontations, Presidents have issued orders to executive agencies to limit information to Congress, particularly to prevent agency employees from going directly to Congress. Congress has responded with statutes to keep the lanes of information open. In cases involving the reporting of sensitive information related to national security, Congress has balanced the competing interests of keeping lawmakers informed while safeguarding secrets. For example, the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 encourages employees of the Intelligence Community to contact Congress but only through the Intelligence Committees. Introduction Agency whistleblowers operate within a system of mixed messages. On the one hand, the Code of Ethics adopted by Congress in 1958 directs all government employees to "expose corruption wherever discovered." Over the years, agency employees have received credit for revealing problems of defense cost overruns, unsafe nuclear power plant conditions, questionable drugs approved for marketing, contract illegalities and improprieties, and regulatory corruption. On the other hand, exposing corruption can result in their being fired, transferred, reprimanded, denied promotion, or harassed. In 1978, a Senate panel found that the fear of reprisal "renders intra-agency communications a sham, and compromises not only the employee, management, and the Code of Ethics, but also the Constitutional function of congressional oversight itself."
Pages: 43
Date: December 30, 2005