I really, really want to hear what she has to say.

Whistleblowing should be a last resort, behind reasonable criticism and questions, complaints and leaks.

Transparency, which used to offset set many problems with self-evident need for correction, has been replaced by excessive secrecy coupled with an elaborate system of tracking and intimidation designed to enforce that secrecy, which is usually cast as part of understood "loyalty".

Since leaks are anonymous, they may correct the most obvious and blatant problems but many times do not because no investigation will proceed absent a valid (identified) source in the first place.

So it's Catch-22 for the whistleblower. Complain and identify oneself at the risk of getting fired. Complain anonymously through leaks and nothing happens, except perhaps drawing raised suspicion as a source of the complaint.

The general result of reduced transparency and increased secrecy has created:

1) An increased degree of incompetence at the top levels of management;

2) More incentives to abuse the system for personal gain;

3) Absurd levels of paralyzing, bureaucratic controls so bizarre that they delegate by default great amounts of power to the wrong people at the wrong times for the wrong reasons;

As a general rule, the more incompetent the top leadership, the more likely the case for whistleblowing. Such "leaders" cannot communicate meaningfully with those below them, particularly to sort through and respond to the substantial information and viewpoints that come up through the ranks.

Only the very best leaders are able to engage with staff in serious challenges to their decisions and policies in a way that commands respect and voluntary loyalty that generally wards off the need for leaks and whistleblowing.

For example, consider the commanding presence of Thad W. Allen, Commander of the Coast Guard compared to the likes of Michael Brown of FEMA whom Allen replaced during Katrina.

Internal staff may disagree with Allen, but his grasp of the big picture as well as the details are undeniable. Because he's capable of defending policy in public, that suggests he's also likely to implement the same policies internally with sufficient consistency to avoid corruption and morale problems.

Agency heads like Allen used to be the rule. Now they're the exception, replaced by the garden variety hacks typical of the Bush Administration.

There is not any part of the government, social policy, bureaucracy, judicial offices and anything else that Bush and his Repu(b)gnant enablers have touched that they haven't corrupted. This is just one more of a long litany of disgusting perversions of justice formulated and carried out by the White House.

He was sent to a psychiatric hospital for blowing the whistle?

Hey, that is just what our "enemies" do too. Our march to fascism is going well. There's the old story that the more you hate someone, the more you become like them.

We have met the enemy. It is us.

The history of whistleblowers in the federal government is long, bloody and fraught with difficulty. The federal agencies are giving lessons to middle managers how to drive out the whistleblowers without taking an "adverse action" which would give them a right to a hearing before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. Meanwhile, the vacant positions which result are being filled by "Bushies", who will use the Civil Service Reform Act protections to keep their job, while they sabotogue the next administration.

Do you think I am overstating the situtation? Talk to me in two years.

I have been representing federal employees since 1981, first as trial counsel for the U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority, as a labor studies instructor, and since 1984, as an attorney in private practice. Many would-be whistleblowers have survived the process and are exposing potential health and safety problems, gross-mismanagement, etc. without losing their job. Many attorneys, therapists, union representatives, family, friends and community groups support them in thousands of ways.

Read back over the letters written so far -- there is more than a kernel of truth in every one. The situation is better here, than many countries in the world, where the likes of my clients would be likely jailed and/or killed. Do not lose hope. If you know someone who is witnessing a serious problem and feels the need to blow the whistle -- listen to them and validate their experience. Advise them to:

Carefully plan their next steps.

Check out legal advice available through the many resources on the internet, including nela.org, cela.org, peer.org, whistleblowers.org, whistleblower.org, etc.

Stay postitive, strong and healthy!

regarding whistleblowing, my advice is don’t do it. the federal government is a dying industry. the mahatma’s admonishment to be the change you want to see doesn’t apply. wait to see whether there’s a change in administration in early 2009.

It's just another standard federal whistleblower story - OSC and MSPB are ineffecutal and the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has gutted the law - and the administration is opposed to legislation that would overturn the Federal Circuit anti-whistleblower decisions.

The "elephant in the room" the author missed is OSC's systemic and persistent lawbreaking failure to protect 10,000 or more federal employees who sought its protection from "prohibited personnel practices" (PPP's) - including but not limited to the whistleblower reprisal type PPP -since it was created as an independent agency in 1989, together with MSPB's enabling lawbreaking failure since 1989 to conduct oversight of OSC's compliance with law in protecting feds from PPP's.

With some others, I have created OSC Watch http://whsknox.blogs.com/osc_watch It has 3 objectives: 1) "out" OSC's lawbreaking (and MSPB's enabling lawbreaking); 2) get it stopped, and 3) obtain some measure of relief and justice for the 10,000 or more direct victims of this OSC/MSPB lawbreaking.

For the 3000 or so federal employees who sought remedy from agency whistleblower reprisal at MSPB after OSC failed to comply with its lawful obligations to protect them since 1989, they are not without recourse - there is a pending case at Federal Circuit, Carson v. MSPB, docket no. 2007-3134, that argues the Federal Circuit should overturn the MSPB decision on the basis of OSC not complying with statutory duties to protect the whistleblower and MSPB not ensuring OSC complied with those duties. If the Federal Circuit adopts that reasoning in its decision, it would create precedent for all those 3000 or so federal employees to request MSPB to re-open and reconsider its decision against them in their whistleblower appeals.

MSPB is an administrative forum, not a Court. It has powers a Court does not have. Specifically, by law and MSPB regulation at 5 CFR 1201.118, it can re-open and reconsider - at any time for any reason - any final decision it has issued, even if it has been reviewed and left intact by the Federal Circuit.

So for all the individuals quoted in the story, if their cases happened after 1989, it is not necessarily over.

The other "elephant in the room" the author missed is why so much lawbreaking by attorneys at OSC could go on for so long without anyone blowing whistles on it. It's because OSC attorneys, who are specifically hired to implement law to protect federal employees from PPP's, apparently claim that they have a higher duty, solely because they are attorneys, to cover up their lawbreaking failure to do so, to protect the interests of their "client" OSC and because legal ethics prohibit them from "blowing whistles" on their and OSC's lawbreaking.

My whistleblowing involved the safeguards and security of America's nuclear stockpile, which is under the custody of my agency, the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE did not slap me around in a vacuum, it did so because it could "get away with it." It (as other federal agencies) can get away with it because OSC attorneys betray their duty, as lawyers and federal employees, to implement the law they were hired to implement to protect feds and then cite their status as attorneys to justify their taking every step to cover it up to protect the interests of OSC, their "client."

That is the real story and James Sandler missed it.