Word: blowers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have the e-mails been interpreted? To global-warming doubters, the CRU e-mails are the new Pentagon Papers, proof that the powers that be - in this case, international climate scientists - are engaged in outright fraud and were exposed only by a brave whistle-blower. (See pictures of a glacier melting in Peru...
...only contradicts Justice's own statement supporting a sentence reduction - Birkenfeld faced a possible five-year sentence for his work on behalf of Olenicoff - it's also flat-out wrong, says Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, who has been involved with hundreds of whistle-blower cases. After all, he notes, it would be a serious disincentive if whistle-blowers could be tripped up by inadvertently leaving out some information the government might come across later...
...says Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department attorney who was forced out of the DOJ after she blew the whistle on the department's destruction of e-mails related to the Bush Administration's prosecution of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban." "Basically, the government doesn't like whistle-blowers, and they have demonstrated time and again mountainous bad faith - as in this case, turning a perfectly good whistle-blower-incentive law into virtual entrapment," says Radack, who is the homeland security director...
...There is no doubt that dealing with whistle-blowers can be disagreeable. Some have tainted pasts, and in certain cases some stand to make millions from their cooperation, since they have a claim of up to 30% of funds recovered by the government. (This helps compensate for what can amount to their professional suicide.) There is nothing in whistle-blower-protection statutes that enjoins the government from prosecuting them for any fraud they participated in, but this option, intended for those who masterminded a fraud, is supposed to be balanced with a competing policy to encourage whistle-blowers to come...
...That's not the only potential conflict at play. While the Justice Department has already decided that Birkenfeld isn't a true whistle-blower, the IRS has yet to make its own determination. An adverse ruling "may make more sense legally than it does from a policy standpoint," says former IRS commissioner Margaret Richardson. But if the IRS comes to a different conclusion from the DOJ - and under a new law, Birkenfeld can challenge the IRS decision in court - the UBS whistle-blower could end up collecting the first of millions of dollars from the government even as he sits...