WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Government whistleblowers need adequate protection against retaliation, especially in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), US Senator Patrick Leahy said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on whistleblower retaliation at the FBI.
“Government whistleblowers serve an essential role in providing accountability. It is important that all government employees are provided with strong and effective avenues to come forward with evidence of government waste, fraud and abuse,” Leahy said in a prepared statement on Wednesday. "To ensure that whistleblowers will come forward when they discover wrongdoing, they must be protected from retaliation."
“By dismissing retaliation complaints based on a disclosure made to an employee’s supervisor or someone in that person’s chain of command, DOJ leaves some FBI whistleblowers without protection from retaliation. This DOJ policy could also permit retaliatory activity to go uninvestigated and create a chilling effect for future whistleblowers,” the GAO said.
Senator Leahy said the GAO report and another one by the Department of Justice “highlight the obstacles that remain for FBI employees to appropriately blow the whistle and seek protection from retaliation.”
US Federal law prohibits retaliation against whistleblowers.
