A coalition of national security whistleblowers says that Congress is finally set to pass important protections for whistleblowers who report internal threats to national security, but that the Department of Justice wants the desperately needed protections dropped.

The new protections for national security whistleblowers are part of the 2007 defense authorization bill, currently in conference committee. The committee is set to take up the bill after Labor Day.

“Thanks to John Warner, (R-Va.) chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who takes national security seriously, a bill for the Whistleblower Protection Act to be born again unanimously passed the Senate in July,” said Government Accountability Project legal director Tom Devine. “Its fate is going to be decided in the back rooms, because it’s part of the defense bill.”

Standing in the way of national security whistleblower protection, Devine says, is House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Duncan Hunter, (R-Calif.) who “has bowed to demands by the Department of Justice that national security reform is off the table,” Devine said.

Over 100 national security whistleblowers, all of whom risked their security clearances and their jobs to come forward with accounts of waste, fraud and abuse, have joined the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition in order to work for protection from retaliation for those who speak out about government wrongdoing that threatens national security.

“The legislation would put them on an equal playing field with other government employees” who enjoy protection from retaliation, Devine said.

The tales from the whistleblowers themselves are eerily similar: In the course of their jobs, each spotted wrongdoing that was illegal or threatened national security. Each reported it up the chain of command. And each was retaliated against.

Russell Tice lost his security clearance and then his job when he reported possible espionage in the Defense Intelligence Agency, and early this year reported that he is aware of National Security Agency special access programs that are most likely illegal.

“The stakes are pretty high,” Tice said. “It involves compromising, literally, our nation’s highest level of secrets.”

Tice said he was declared paranoid in an “emergency psychological examination,” where no evidence existed to support such a declaration, and he was ultimately forced to resign from the NSA, “to cover up their embarrassment and incompetence,” he said. “Every avenue [to report wrongdoing] was shut down to me.”

Tice has said he will not divulge details of the programs to anyone without the necessary security clearances. In May he met with staffers for the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding illegal special access programs, but has “no idea” whether anything has been done.

Tice also said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been following him since he left NSA and “more than likely this is being recorded by the FBI right now.”

Bogdan Dzakovic worked security for the Federal Aviation Administration since 1987, and was demoted to an entry-level position because he repeatedly reported, from 1998 until just after 9/11, that airport security was sorely lacking.

“FAA had the moniker of ‘Tombstone Agency,’ and the reason they had that moniker is they never did anything until people got killed,” Dzakovic said.

He led the Red Team, a small group of undercover air marshals who attempted to penetrate airport security, and had over a 90% success rate before the program was shut down just after 9/11. But his team’s reports went ignored. “Because we didn’t support the tombstone mentality, we were ostracized and they didn’t do anything.”

“Two weeks after 9/11, I decided to file a whistleblower case with the Office of Special Counsel because some Congressional staff members that I had been dealing with said that Congress will do everything they can to make sure that there is not an investigation into the September 11 attacks.”

Dzakovic testified before the 9/11 Commission about the lack of airport security, but his testimony was dropped from the Commission’s report. TheSan Francisco Chronicle has some of that testimony:

“There are so many obvious holes in the system that are not being closed, it is very scary. And what’s worse is that they are not being closed for the exact same reasons that they weren’t closed leading up to 9/11. It’s the perpetuation of the good old boys’ club. Rarely do you see a bureaucrat or politician that actively encourages subordinates to give them bad news. Instead, they prefer to be surrounded by people who constantly present a rosy picture. So the only people that get promoted up the chain are the ones who play the game and don’t ruffle any feathers.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Mike German was run out of the FBI after he discovered improprieties that threatened to derail an investigation into Islamic terrorists seeking assistance from U.S. based white supremacist groups. German had been called in to infiltrate the groups and prevent the alliance.

“The evidence was being terribly mishandled and the investigation wasn’t being documented properly,” German said. “I tried to get the management in the local office to get it fixed, but they refused.”

German then followed up the chain of command, which resulted in the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office reporting his whistleblowing back to the local office for retaliation. “I would hope that the national security implications of Islamic terrorist groups working with domestic white supremacist groups would be apparent to everybody, but apparently it wasn’t.” The FBI then tried — poorly — to cover up its impropriety, and not only pulled German off the assignment, but also refused to assign him to anything else.

The DOJ IG eventually admitted that one supervisor retaliated against German, but covered up its own role, he said.

Michael Maxwell was the chain of command. He was forced to resign from Citizenship and Immigration Services after he tried to actually do his job as head of security for USCIS Internal Affairs, rather than simply dismiss the whistleblowers who reported their complaints to him.

“What I had to blow the whistle about were tremendous national security vulnerabilities, not only regarding internal corruption, not only allegations of espionage and providing material support to terrorist organizations, but also national security vulnerabilities that terrorists, foreign intelligence operatives and major criminal organizations were using to come through the immigration system,” Maxwell said.

“We reported them all the way to Secretary Chertoff, and each and every one of them turned a blind eye. I think that was primarily due to careerism, protecting the political careers of many, plenty of internal corruption, and there was also a lot of system failure.”

And Sibel Edmonds, a linguist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was driven out after she reported national security breaches in terrorism investigations. Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“Four and a half years after I blew the whistle, every single channel failed me: Congress, the Inspector General’s office, the courts,” Edmonds said. “And this is the case with all our whistleblowers.”

Devine said that people can contact Rep. Hunter at 202-225-5672 and the House Armed Services Committee at 202-225-4151 and urge him to keep the whistleblower protection act, known as the “Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act,” in the defense bill.