WB Warming

The insider threat program will be abused by agencies and

used to undercut and intimidate potential federal
whistleblowers the reach of the program affects all federal
employees creating a chilling effect
Washington Post 14
(Scott, Higham writerIntelligence security initiatives have chilling effect on federal whistleblowers,
critics say, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-security-initiativeshave-chilling-effect-on-federal-whistleblowers-critics-say/2014/07/23/c9dfd794-0ea0-11e4-8341b8072b1e7348_story.html) JB
The Insider Threat Program and a continuous monitoring initiative under consideration in the intelligence community were begun by the Obama
administration after the leaks of classified information by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, and the Navy Yard
shootings by Aaron Alexis, who used his security clearance to gain access to the base. The programs are designed to prevent leaks of classified

federal
agencies are setting up internal security programs without giving careful
consideration to whether they could dissuade whistleblowers from coming forward. The
Insider Threat Program has the potential for taking the legs out from
underneath all of the whistleblower protections we have, Grassley said in a recent interview. Greg
information by monitoring government computers and employees behavior. Grassley said the episode with the FBI illustrates how

Klein, the head of the FBIs Insider Threat Program, and McDonough, the congressional affairs agent, did not return calls seeking comment. An FBI
spokesman said the bureau does not plan to register whistleblowers. He said there was a misunderstanding about the nature of the briefing with staff
members for Grassley, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and a law enforcement official who is assigned to the Senate panel. The
spokesman noted that the FBI has a whistleblower training program for employees and a whistleblower protection office. We recognize the importance of
protecting the rights of whistleblowers, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said. Grassley is part of a growing chorus of lawmakers on Capitol Hill and attorneys

the Insider Threat Program and the potential intelligence community initiative threaten
to undermine federal workers ability to report wrongdoing without retaliation. Together,
the programs cover millions of federal workers and contractors at every
government agency. In February, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. testified before the Senate Armed Services
for whistleblowers who warn that

Committee that a system was being considered to continuously monitor the behavior of employees with security clearances on the job as well as off the
job. A senior intelligence official said a continuous monitoring program, mandated under the Intelligence Authorization Act and signed into law by
President Obama on July 7, is being set up and initially will include federal employees who hold top-secret security clearances. The official said there are

its time to put up the

caution light here, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. While Wyden included a provision
no plans to monitor employees after hours while they are using non-government computer systems. I think

in the most recent Intelligence Authorization Act that would prohibit retaliation against whistleblowers, he said he remains concerned about the impact of

This really has the potential for abuse, and I think it could have a chilling
effect on the publics right to know and effective oversight of our
government, Wyden said. Dan Meyer, the head of the Intelligence Community Whistleblowing & Source Protection program, created last year
the threat programs.

as part of the Office of Intelligence Community Inspector General, said he is working to ensure that employees who want to report wrongdoing can do so
anonymously and without reprisal. The critical thing is to maintain confidentiality, Meyer said. He said he is preparing training materials for intelligence
officers and spreading the word that employees can come to him anonymously through third parties. If an employee has verifiable information about
wrongdoing, a presidential directive takes effect, providing employees with protection against retaliation. We are in the process of making a systematic,
cultural change and getting everyone on board, Meyer said. After Mannings disclosures to WikiLeaks four years ago, Obama signedExecutive Order
13587, directing government agencies to assess how they handle classified information. On Nov. 28, 2010, the Office of the National Counterintelligence
Executive issued a memo to senior government agency officials, advising them to identify insider threats. The memo suggested using psychiatrists and
sociologists to assess changes in employees behavior. What metrics do you use to measure trustworthiness without alienating employees? the
counterintelligence office asked the agency chiefs. Do you use a psychiatrist or sociologist to measure: relative happiness as a means to gauge
trustworthiness? Despondence and grumpiness as a means to gauge waning trustworthiness? It will only increase hostility between the government and
really serious federal employees who are trying to improve the system, said Lynne Bernabei, a partner at Bernabei & Wachtel in Washington who has
been representing whistleblowers for nearly 30 years. Turning the security apparatus against its own people is not going to work. Whistleblower lawyers

There are legitimate

reasons for employers to be on the lookout for people who might be leaking
classified information, but this will obviously have a chilling effect on
employees who might want to blow the whistle, said Jason Zuckerman, who served as the senior legal
said they understand the need to protect classified information but think some of the new programs go too far.

adviser to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency charged with protecting whistleblowers, and now represents whistleblowers nationwide.
Michael German, a former undercover FBI agent and whistleblower, called the Insider Threat Program a dangerous initiative.

And, the effect spills-over to EVERY agency its targeted

surveillance at every potential whistleblower
GAP 12- whistleblower protection and advocacy organization
(Government Accountability Project, FDA Surveillance of Whistleblowers Unacceptable,
http://whistleblower.org/press/fda-surveillance-whistleblowers-%E2%80%98unacceptable%E2%80%99)
JB

Chilling Effect Far-Reaching if Congress Fails to Act

Today, the Government
Accountability Project
publicly denouncing the Food and Drug Administrations
implementation of an invasive and potentially illegal surveillance system instituted
against employees trying to blow the whistle on critical safety issues surrounding
medical devices
(Washington, D.C.)

(GAP) is

(FDA)

. The New York Times revealed the in-depth surveillance program in an explosive piece this past weekend. That article detailed how the agency monitored and secretly captured

thousands of email communications between the whistleblowers and members of the media, Congress, attorneys, other regulatory officials, and the White House. Many of these communications are protected by various
whistleblower laws. Subsequent reports show that agency lawyers approved these measures. Amanda Hitt, GAP Public Health Director, and Director of GAPs Food Integrity Campaign (which aims to protect whistleblowers at the

While the outcry by Congress and regulators thus far against the FDA is
encouraging, the damage may have already been done. Its hard to imagine how
this fiasco wont have a chilling effect on future FDA whistleblowers, and
employees from all sorts of government agencies.
the FDA is spying on its own to protect the financial interests of the
very corporations it is bound to regulate
This
FDA program was not the random monitoring of government computers it is a
premeditated, targeted strike against whistleblower-scientists who attempted to
safeguard the public This surveillance is unacceptable
FDA), stated:

This foray into espionage is nothing more than a service the agency

provides to its 'clients.' Simply put,

. GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack, who monitors the federal governments use of

surveillance, stated: "Like a virus, the systematic mass surveillance of federal employees has spread beyond national security agencies to domestic ones to programs that in no way involve classified information.

Only strengthening whistleblowers rights solves

whistleblowers are an essential check on government fraud
and abuse lack of protections ensures a chilling effect that
kills effectiveness
Anderson and Kleinman 14
(Christine Anderson, Public Policy Fellow, POGO, and Avery Kleinman was the Beth Daley Impact Fellow
for the Project On Government Oversight, FDA Surveillance Threatened Whistleblowers, pg online @
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2014/02/fda-surveillance-threatened-whistleblowers.html //um-ef)

Congress and the President must mandate a government-wide policy to prevent future
surveillance abuses, Angela Canterbury, Director of Public Policy at the Project On Government Oversight, told the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Wednesday during a hearing entitled Limitless Surveillance at the FDA: Protecting the Rights of Federal Whistleblowers.

The hearing revisited the media-dubbed case of the FDA 9, a group of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) physicians
and scientists who wrote to Congress and the President in 2008 and 2009 warning
that ineffective and unsafe devices were being approved by the FDA . The FDA
whistleblowers described serious wrongdoing by mid-level and senior FDA officials
who cut corners and overruled scientists. The FDA then began to spy on the
whistleblowerssweeping up whistleblowing disclosures to Congress, the Office of Special Counsel, and POGO. The hearing was
timed with the release of a joint staff report by House Oversight and Government
Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), titled Limitless Surveillance at the FDA:
Protecting the Rights of Federal Whistleblowers. The report concluded that the FDA lacked sufficient
authorization to monitor the whistleblowers, unlawfully captured protected
communications of the whistleblowers, failed to explain how ongoing monitoring

was necessary to the investigation of a past leak, and did not adequately bolster
whistleblower protections in new policies . Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) introductory remarks voiced his
discontent at being shut out of the drafting of the report. We must protect our whistleblowers. I am committed to that, and we are all committed to that.
Unfortunately, the majority has taken a traditionally bipartisan issue, something that all committee members should be investigating together, and turned
it into another partisan spectacle for which our committee has become well-known. Chairman Issa responded, Whistleblowers made Senator Grassley
and his staff aware of a problem, but independent investigation by the IG and by this committeebipartisan investigationhave led us to the conclusions
we will hear today. The minority may produce its own report on the findings in the coming weeks. Senator Grassley testified first, stating, In 33 years,

whistleblowers are
about as welcome in a bureaucracy as skunks at a picnic . On the FDA specifically, he said,
We have found problems with the respect of scientists and the respect of the
scientific process within that agency regardless of who was president . You can watch the
Senators full testimony here. Discussing the alleged confidentiality of the information shared by the whistleblowers, Chairman Issa emphasized that the
trade secrets being protected by confidentiality claims protect the companies, not
the public. Most people probably listening and watching and today believe the public has a right to know that information and may not agree
under both Republicans and Democrats, Ive found the problem the same. Whatever bureaucracy youre talking about,

with the FDAs view that that is private or confidential or somehow a secret from the American people as to whether a product that may or may not yet be

neither the Issa-Grassley

nor the Health and Human Services Inspector General (HHS IG) investigation confirmed
that the FDA surveillance found evidence of the disclosure of confidential
information. Moreover, whether the information was confidential should have been investigatedinstead of the whistleblowers. Canterbury also
said that protecting whistleblowers at the FDA may be a matter of life and death for
many Americans: Whistleblowers are the guardians of the public trust and safety. Without proper controls at FDA
and throughout the government, employee surveillance is a serious threat to whistleblower
protections. The resulting chilling effect will significantly reduce
accountabilitythus keeping waste, fraud, abuse, and threats to public health and
safety in the shadows. The FDAs problems can be deadly. There have been far
too many ineffective and unsafe medical devices approved by the broken agency ,
on the market is safe and effective. Canterbury agreed with the Chairmans concerns, and later noted that

Canterbury said. Unfortunately, there have been multiple instances of misconduct in the medical device approval process at the FDA in the past few years.
In February 2009, POGO issued a report authored by Dr. Ned Feder, The FDAs Deadly Gamble with the Safety of Medical Devices, which showed that

senior FDA officials decided not to enforce a regulation that helps protect patients
from unsafe devices. The officials did this over the protests of scientists . Canterbury told the
committee that unwarranted surveillance is a serious threat and government agencies
should not be allowed to police themselves. She noted that only law enforcement, such as the FBI, Office of Special
Council, and Inspector General, should investigate suspected leaks of legally protected information or other crimes. The HHS IG, the watchdog tasked with

The report pointed to

FDAs failure to consider whether potentially intrusive monitoring would be the
most appropriate investigative tools with which to investigate a suspected leak .
oversight of the FDA, released its report on the surveillance of the whistleblowers the night before the hearing.

Scenario 1
And, momentum from Obama, the courts, the CAA, and
international cooperation means well prevent catastrophic
warming now, but effective implementation of U.S.
Environmental Laws is key
Doniger 14
(David, is director and senior attorney for NRDC's climate and clean air program in Washington, D.C.
law degree and a masters degree in city and regional planning from the University of California at
Berkeley and a B.A. in history from Yale University, David rejoined NRDC in 2001 and represented
NRDC in a string of climate change cases, including Massachusetts v. EPA, The Clean Air Act and
Climate Change: Where We've Been and Where We're Going, pg online @
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ddoniger/the_clean_air_act_and_climate.html //um-ef)

two momentous events in the

long struggle over using the Clean Air Act to curb the carbon pollution thats driving
dangerous climate change. On the one hand, the leaders of the new Republican majority in the next Congress are trumpeting their climate denial and
I thought we should start by reflecting on where we are right now. This month is only half over, but it has already seen

their determination to block President Obamas Climate Action Plan at every turn in particular his proposed standards to put the first limits on carbon pollution from the nations power

Obama has signaled his determination to move ahead with more

climate actions within his authority under the Clean Air Act and other current laws.
And, in a major boost for prospects of reaching an international climate agreement in Paris a year from now, the President reached a n historic
pact with China that commits both countries to significant action and sets a new
target for deeper U.S. carbon reductions by 2025. Where will this lead? Who will win the coming
plants. On the other hand, President

confrontation between the President and Congress? Ill offer some thoughts on the future, but first lets spend a few minutes on the nearly 50-year journey with the Clean Air Act that got
us here. Our story begins way back in 1965. I was just entering high school and had no clue about any of this. But as far back as 1965, when Congress first enacted pollution standards
for motor vehicles, some Congressmen were thinking about climate change. Congressman Henry Helstoski of New Jersey stated: It has been predicted that by the year 2000, the
amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide may have increased by about fifty percent, and many believe that this will have a considerable effect on the world's climate. Roll forward to
1970, when the modern Clean Air Act was born. President Richard Nixon formed the Council on Environmental Quality and charged it to report to Congress on the nations environment.
Chapter 5 of CEQs first annual report was devoted to CO2-driven warming of the planet. And Congress took notice. Senator Caleb Boggs of Delaware placed the global warming chapter
into the Congressional Record. More importantly, the authors of the Clean Air Act, led by Senators Edmund Muskie of Maine and Howard Baker of Tennessee, expressly included
pollutions effects on climate or weather in the definition of what constituted an adverse effect on public welfare. In this way, climate was built into the fundamental architecture of
the 1970 Clean Air Act. You see, the far-sighted architects of the Clean Air Act built it to last. It was built not just to address the pollution problems that were front and center in 1970, but
also to equip the EPA to respond when science identifies new problems rising over the horizon. So whenever the EPA administrator finds that a pollutant poses a danger to public health
or welfare, various standard-setting provisions of the Act place the administrator under a mandatory duty to regulate the emissions of that pollutant, whether from power plants,
vehicles, or factories. The agency has used that endangerment authority to confront new threats, like lead, fine particles, and ozone-destroying chemicals, as science has revealed their
dangers. And that authority was there to be used a few decades later when the dangers of climate change really came to the fore. Now a word about my entry into the picture. I was first
turned on to the Clean Air Act in the mid-1970s, at law school at the University of California, Berkeley. At first, I was mostly interested in the problems of urban smog, vehicle emissions,
and toxic pollutants from factories. I was lucky enough to join the staff of NRDC, and before I knew it, at the ripe old age of 33 in 1984, I found myself arguing Chevron v. NRDC a case
you may have heard of before the Supreme Court. I thought Id won, but I lost, 6-0. More about Chevron in a moment. After picking myself up off the floor, I caught the bug for tackling
global pollution first in the form of the chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer. To make that story short, NRDC used the endangerment provisions of
the Clean Air Act to force EPA to take action on CFCs, and I worked with many others to forge the Montreal Protocol, the highly successful treaty that protects the ozone layer. This took
place, amazingly enough, during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. I also helped shape and start implementing the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. I left NRDC to serve in
government in the Clinton years, mostly at EPA. I was privileged to be part of the administrations climate strategy team and a negotiator of the Kyoto Protocol. Well, Kyoto itself didnt go
forward in the U.S., thanks to the denialists in another Republican Congress, but seeds of progress were sown. At EPA in the late 1990s, I wrote an interagency memo, blessed by my
higher-ups, explaining that the Clean Air Act already authorized indeed required EPA to curb carbon pollution if the administrator determined that it endangers public health or welfare
that climate-referencing term I spoke of a few minutes ago. That memo was promptly leaked to the trade press by another agency, and my boss, Administrator Carol Browner, found
herself answering questions about it before a House appropriations committee. I demand a legal opinion, thundered Tom DeLay, later the House majority leader known as The
Hammer. Browner complied, of course, and EPAs general counsel, John Cannon, produced a legal opinion that the Clean Air Act does indeed cover the pollution that drives climate
change. After Bush v. Gore, however, I needed to find other employment, and I returned to NRDC to continue working on climate. The early 00s were definitely a low point. Under the
second President Bush, EPA rescinded the Cannon legal opinion and pronounced its view that carbon and climate lay totally outside the Clean Air Act. So NRDC joined with 15 states and
more than a dozen other environmental groups to challenge this decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. In a landmark 2007 ruling, the Supreme Court overruled the Bush administration, 5-4.
Echoing the Cannon legal opinion, the High Court held that Clean Air Act covers the carbon pollution coming from cars, and that EPA is obligated to set emission standards act if the
administrator finds that pollution to endanger health or welfare. The Court ordered EPA to make a new decision, following the science and the law. The Supreme Court has twice since
reaffirmed Massachusetts first in 2011 in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, a case about power plants, and again in 2014 in denying review of dozens of rear-guard petitions to
reconsider those holdings, flying under the banner of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. But back to our chronology.

When the Obama administration came to

office, the stage was set for action. In the Presidents first term, his EPA and Department of Transportation set landmark clean car and fuel
economy standards, under the Clean Air Act and the CAFE law, that will double the miles-per-gallon of new vehicles and cut their carbon pollution in half by 2025. The President also
sought, but did not get, new climate legislation. The Waxman-Markey bill would have added to the Clean Air Act a cap and trade program for industrial sources of carbon pollution,

in the
second term, with a different Congress and no prospect of helpful legislation , President
Obama stepped up to the challenge of tackling climate change under the clean air
and energy laws already on the books. He issued his Climate Action Plan in June 2013. The plan includes many actions, but the heart of
the plan is using the Clean Air Act to put the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution
from the fleet of existing power plants. They are the nations largest carbon
polluters, together accounting for more than 2 billion tons of CO2 per year, 40% of
the nations total. The Clean Power Plan, proposed last in June, will cut power plant carbon
pollution an estimated 26% from 2005 levels by 2020, and 30% by 2030. It shares two key features with an
including power plants. The bill passed the House and had majority support in the Senate but not the necessary 60 votes. That left the Clean Air Act as it was. So

innovative plan that NRDC launched in 2012: First, it sets different standards for each state, reflecting their different mix of coal-fired, gas-fired, and other generating resources. Second,
it establishes a flexible system-based approach that incorporates the clean-up potential from across the electric grid: improvements at individual plants, using cleaner resources more
and dirty ones less, ramping up zero-carbon power sources like wind and solar (and nuclear), and energy efficiency measures that reduce how much electricity we need to generate in
the first place. Already EPA has reached out to thousands of stakeholders, from state environmental and energy officials and power companies to environmentalists, clean energy
businesses, labor, and many others. There are many supporters and many detractors. And there will be a big legal fight after the rules are issued next summer over whether EPA has
authority for its plan under a particular part of the Clean Air Act, section 111(d). Heres where Chevron comes back to the fore. Chevron stands for the proposition that when laws like the
Clean Air Act are crystal clear unambiguous the agency charged with implementing them must, of course, follow that clear meaning. But Chevron, and an important case the Court
decided last April, EME Homer City v. EPA, stand for another proposition. Laws like the Clean Air Act are not always crystal clear. They often use broad or ambiguous terms that, the Court
says, delegate to the agency the job of filling in the details or making necessary policy decisions. Where there is room for interpretation in the laws terms, the courts will defer to the
implementing agencys reading if it gives a reasonable interpretation. The Homer City case emphasizes the importance of Chevron deference when dealing with Clean Air Act provisions

I am bullish that the courts the D.C. Circuit and, if it goes

will uphold EPAs interpretation of Section 111(d) and its application to the problem of power plant carbon pollution.
Thus the Clean Power Plans main challenges, in my opinion, are in the political
arena, and that brings us back to the momentous events of the first half of this month. In past Congresses, those who claim climate change is a hoax and those who decry a war
that charge EPA with addressing and solving new problems as they arise. For these reasons,
there, the Supreme Court

on coal have lacked the votes to pass legislation to block action. Bills have passed the House, but died in the Senate. To be sure, with a Republican Senate majority, there will be

I am confident that these bills to block the

power plant standards or other parts of the Climate Action Plan will lack the
necessary 60 votes even in the new Senate. And I am also confident that if something does pass because there are a few types of
determined efforts to pass free-standing bills, budget riders, and other legislation. But

legislation that need only a simple majority neither the House nor the Senate will have the 2/3rds majority required to override a presidential veto. Its possible that Congressional
leaders will resort to extreme tactics, like attaching EPA-blocking legislation to appropriations bills or continuing resolutions needed to keep the government running, and daring the

President to veto them. Senator McConnell, however, has already said there will be no government shutdowns or debt defaults on his watch. Rep. Rogers, head of the House
appropriations committee, warned recently against taking hostages you cant shoot. Senator McConnell is no doubt aware of two things: (1) that the American public has consistently

the EPA, the Clean Air Act, and curbing carbon pollution are
to his consternation highly popular with the same American public . This bears underlining. A wide range of polling, in blue, purple, and
blamed Republicans for past shutdowns, and (2) that

even red states, consistently shows strong support usually 60-70 percent for EPA standards to limit dangerous carbon pollution from power plants and other industries. Support levels

The U.S.-China
agreement adds another factor. A year from now countries will gather in Paris in another attempt to forge an international climate agreement. This
agreement will succeed where others have failed if the worlds largest economies and carbon polluters can agree to meaningful, mutually acceptable national commitments. Most
of the major emitting countries have strong reasons to take action . But each needs to know that the other
major players are in the game. The United States has not always been in the game. But President Obamas
Climate Action Plan, and the power plant standards in particular, have been
instrumental in convincing other countries that after all this time, the United States
is finally playing, doing its part. These actions under the Clean Air Act and other
existing laws have restored our credibility and our leverage. The Chinese have taken
notice. Without the Climate Action Plan, it would have been impossible for the two
giants the worlds #1 and #2 emitters to work out the agreement announced
earlier this month. To be sure, the emission reduction commitments from these two countries, even if matched by all others, are not sufficient to protect the planet
from unacceptable climate change. We will need faster reductions, and we will work hard for them. But the journey has begun. The gridlock
has been broken. The chances for a Paris agreement went way up this week. Senator McConnell and other Republicans have lashed out at the U.S.-China agreement
are strong often majorities even among Republicans even when respondents are prompted with dire messages of economic impact.

so harshly, I think, out of frustration. They know that it moves the climate issue from the realm of mere domestic policy into the realm of foreign affairs. If your bill will undermine not

with the Presidents

continuing leadership we will be able to keep making progress on climate change
even during the next Congress. And as everyone here knows, Republicans face a daunting Senate electoral map in 2016, when they will also face a
only the EPA, but also the U.S.-China relationship and more, you are at a double disadvantage. So call me an optimist, but I think that

presidential-year electorate, not the smaller off-year electorate that came out this year. Climate will be a bigger factor in the next election than ever before.

The risk of climate change is high and coming whistleblower

protections are necessary for enforcement of current
environmental laws
Warren 15
(Christopher K. Warren, Senior Note Editor, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 20142015, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 40 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 195, Blowing The
Whistle On Environmental Law: How Congress Can Help The Epa Enlist Private Resources In The Fight
To Save The Planet, pg lexis//um-ef)

The changing environment may be one of the most pressing threats in all of
human history. n196 Climate change, dwindling fresh drinking water supplies,
and exposure to toxic elements pose serious health concerns to human
beings, and have the potential to jeopardize the future of humanity. n197
Greater preventative, mitigating, and remedial actions are needed to prevent these
threats from spiraling out of control and creating devastating effects, and it will take
an effort--both public and private--of massive proportions to achieve such prevention.
n198 Given the scope of the problem, every effort should be made to incentivize
widespread participation in the enforcement of environmental protection measures.
n199 The government should not only devote public resources to this fight, but also actively recruit, promote, and support assistance from private citizens,
and provide resources that will incentivize such a program. n200 A. Problems with the Current Enforcement Regime 1. Public Resources Alone Are Not

Public resources alone will be insufficient to combat the environmental

challenges that the United States now faces. n201 The federal and state governments and their agencies are simply ill
equipped to effectively ascertain, ad-dress, and reverse the environmental problems now being confronted. n202 [*217] The government
lacks sufficient financial resources to adequately address all of the threats to the
environment, and even if it had adequate resources, its scope of expertise is
Enough

inadequate. n203 In fact, the government's resources are so limited that it cannot even
enforce the statutory regulations that it currently has in place by addressing every
reported violation. n204 It is nearly impossible, for example, for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to
monitor every source of pollution or project that poses a threat to the environment. n205 Detecting such violations requires
not only financial wherewithal, but also the technical expertise and understanding
to clearly identify every breach of a statute or regulation . n206 Further, private resources appear to be
necessary to combat the alignment of the economic interests of the federal government, the states, and private industry. n207 Many states attempt to
foster a favorable operating arena for industry by engaging in a race to the bottom for lax environmental regulations meant lure businesses into their
economies. n208 In such instances, state and private economic interests run counter the overall public welfare that the federal government is trying to

Further, government agencies responsible for enforcing environmental

statutes may also have deep ties to industry as a result of agency-capture, which
run counter to the government's own goals. n210 In order to account for these
shortcomings, citizens must be given a more meaningful opportunity to
assist in the enforcement of statutes that protect public welfare. n211 2. The Inadequacy of
Citizen Suit Provisions for Enforcement The government's current efforts to enlist
private resources into the fight to protect the environment have primarily been made
through citizen suit provisions. n212 Citizen suit provisions, however, have many weaknesses that
largely [*218] render them ineffective at recruiting private resources that significantly aid
in the protection of the environment. n213 One of the major problems with citizen suits is that they fail to
sufficiently improve the public's ability to detect violations . n214 The moving party in most citizen suits is
protect. n209

most often a large, well-funded private group, and such parties generally lack specific knowledge of wrongdoing by a given violator. n215 They must work
to uncover violations just as any public agency or government prosecutor would. n216 Further, although citizen suits may add more eyes to look for
alleged violations, they do not achieve the necessary effect of incentivizing those with actual knowledge of specific violations to come forward. n217
Citizen suits can also be ineffective because they have the potential to promote environmentally counterproductive cooperation between prosecutors,
agencies and industry. n218 Hurdles contained in citizen suits, such as the requirement that a citizen suit be dropped if the government diligently
prosecutes the matter, may foster lax enforcement. n219 This is because pro-industry governmental actors may simply pursue minimal corrective
measures against an industry violator, inhibiting the full compliance generally sought in a successfully waged citizen suit. n220 Perhaps most importantly
from the perspective of potential whistleblowers, citizen suits also fail to adequately incentivize whistleblowers and their counsels to engage in these suits
by aligning their interests with the government's. n221 Citizen suits do not provide any financial reward to plaintiffs and merely provide injunctive relief or
damages paid to the government. n222 In some [*219] cases, plaintiffs who bring these suits are even barred from even recovering attorney's fees,

Whistleblower
programs provide assistance to the U.S. government and regulatory agencies by
aligning public and private interests. n224 When private instruments of justice are undertaken in the interest of the common
good, they can produce beneficial tools, such as legal talent, investigative resources, and inside information. n225 Wrongdoing can often
be difficult to detect, and therefore, an insider with intimate knowledge of a
company or a potentially liable party's actions, can be invaluable in prosecuting
enforcement actions without expending prohibitively large amounts of resources. n226
regardless of whether or not bringing the suit achieves the desired result. n223 B. Advantages of Whistleblower Programs

Newest studies prove climate refugees and extinction from

runaway warming, acidification, and mass extinctions are
inevitable absent effective carbon cutsprefer the newest
studies and unbiased statistics
Holthaus 8/5
(Eric Holthaus. Dr. Eric Holthaus earned his PhD in Geography and Development from the University of
Arizona, his MA in Climate and Society from Columbia University, his MS in Metereology from the
University of Oklahoma, and his BS in Metereology from St. Louis University. He was the Officer of
Research for Climate Adaptation for the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, a
Contributing Metereologist for WSJ, and Lead Metereologist and Weather Editor at Weathermob. He is
currently a meteorologist for Slate. "The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already
Here," . 8-5-2015. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-changenightmares-are-already-here-20150805//ghs-kw)
*Edited for offensive language

2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan [things got
pretty bad]. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan
and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park,
the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98
degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The
Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer
servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a
50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours , jumping across the I-15 freeway during
rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico
is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Nio forms in the
tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide . On July 20th, James Hansen, the former
NASA climatologist who brought climate change to the public's attention in the summer of 1988, issued a bombshell: He and a
team of climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback
mechanism off the coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could
rise 10 times faster than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065. The authors
included this chilling warning: If emissions aren't cut, "We conclude that multi-meter sea-level
rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic
consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that
conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make
the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization." Eric Rignot, a
climate scientist at NASA and the University of California-Irvine and a co-author on Hansen's study, said their new
research doesn't necessarily change the worst-case scenario on sea-level rise, it just makes it much more
pressing to think about and discuss, especially among world leaders. In particular, says Rignot, the new
research shows a two-degree Celsius rise in global temperature the previously
agreed upon "safe" level of climate change "would be a catastrophe for
sea-level rise." Hansen's new study also shows how complicated and
unpredictable climate change can be. Even as global ocean temperatures rise to their highest levels in
recorded history, some parts of the ocean , near where ice is melting exceptionally fast, are actually
cooling, slowing ocean circulation currents and sending weather patterns into a
frenzy. Sure enough, a persistently cold patch of ocean is starting to show up just south of Greenland, exactly where previous
experimental predictions of a sudden surge of freshwater from melting ice expected it to be. Michael Mann,
another prominent climate scientist, recently said of the unexpectedly
sudden Atlantic slowdown, "This is yet another example of where
observations suggest that climate model predictions may be too
conservative when it comes to the pace at which certain aspects of
climate change are proceeding." Since storm systems and jet streams in the
United States and Europe partially draw their energy from the difference in ocean
temperatures, the implication of one patch of ocean cooling while the rest of the
ocean warms is profound. Storms will get stronger, and sea-level rise will
accelerate. Scientists like Hansen only expect extreme weather to get worse in the years
to come, though Mann said it was still "unclear" whether recent severe winters on the East Coast are connected to the
phenomenon. And yet, these aren't even the most disturbing changes happening to
the Earth's biosphere that climate scientists are discovering this year. For
that, you have to look not at the rising sea levels but to what is actually happening
within the oceans themselves. Water temperatures this year in the North Pacific have
never been this high for this long over such a large area and it is
already having a profound effect on marine life. Eighty-year-old Roger Thomas runs whaleHistorians may look to

watching trips out of San Francisco. On an excursion earlier this year, Thomas spotted 25 humpbacks and three blue whales. During
a survey on July 4th, federal officials spotted 115 whales in a single hour near the Farallon Islands enough to issue a boating
warning. Humpbacks are occasionally seen offshore in California, but rarely so close to the coast or in such numbers. Why are they
coming so close to shore? Exceptionally warm water has concentrated the krill and anchovies they feed on into a narrow band of
relatively cool coastal water. The whales are having a heyday. "It's unbelievable," Thomas told a local paper. "Whales are all over the

federal scientists
discovered 35,000 walruses congregating on a single beach. It was the largest-ever
documented "haul out" of walruses, and a sign that sea ice, their favored habitat, is
becoming harder and harder to find. Marine life is moving north, adapting in real time to the warming ocean.
place." Last fall, in northern Alaska, in the same part of the Arctic where Shell is planning to drill for oil,

Great white sharks have been sighted breeding near Monterey Bay, California, the farthest north that's ever been known to occur. A
blue marlin was caught last summer near Catalina Island 1,000 miles north of its typical range. Across California, there have been

No species may be as uniquely

endangered as the one most associated with the Pacific Northwest, the salmon. Every two weeks, Bill Peterson, an
sightings of non-native animals moving north, such as Mexican red crabs.

oceanographer and senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in
Oregon, takes to the sea to collect data he uses to forecast the return of salmon. What he's been seeing this year is deeply

Salmon are crucial to their coastal ecosystem like perhaps few other species
on the planet. A significant portion of the nitrogen in West Coast forests has been
traced back to salmon, which can travel hundreds of miles upstream to lay their
eggs. The largest trees on Earth simply wouldn't exist without salmon. But their
situation is precarious. This year, officials in California are bringing salmon downstream in convoys of trucks, because
river levels are too low and the temperatures too warm for them to have a
reasonable chance of surviving. One species, the winter-run Chinook salmon, is at a particularly increased risk of
troubling.

decline in the next few years, should the warm water persist offshore. "You talk to fishermen, and they all say: 'We've never seen
anything like this before,'" says Peterson. "So when you have no experience with something like this, it gets like, 'What the hell's

Atmospheric scientists increasingly believe that the exceptionally warm

waters over the past months are the early indications of a phase shift in the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation, a cyclical warming of the North Pacific that happens a few times
each century. Positive phases of the PDO have been known to last for 15 to
20 years, during which global warming can increase at double the rate as
going on?'"

during negative phases of the PDO. It also makes big El Nios, like this year's, more likely. The nature of PDO phase shifts is
unpredictable climate scientists simply haven't yet figured out precisely what's behind them and why they happen when they do.
It's not a permanent change the ocean's temperature will likely drop from these record highs, at least temporarily, some time

the impact on marine species will be lasting, and scientists have

pointed to the PDO as a global-warming preview. "The climate [change] models
predict this gentle, slow increase in temperature," says Peterson, "but the main
problem we've had for the last few years is the variability is so high. As scientists, we
can't keep up with it, and neither can the animals." Peterson likens it to a boxer getting
pummeled round after round: "At some point, you knock them down, and the fight is
over." Attendant with this weird wildlife behavior is a stunning drop in the number
of plankton the basis of the ocean's food chain. In July, another major study concluded that
acidifying oceans are likely to have a "quite traumatic" impact on plankton diversity,
with some species dying out while others flourish . As the oceans absorb carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere, it's converted into carbonic acid and the pH of
seawater declines. According to lead author Stephanie Dutkiewicz of MIT, that trend means "the whole food
chain is going to be different." The Hansen study may have gotten more attention, but the
Dutkiewicz study, and others like it, could have even more dire implications for our future .
over the next few years but

The rapid changes Dutkiewicz and her colleagues are observing have shocked some of their fellow scientists into thinking that yes,

we're heading toward the worst-case scenario. Unlike a prediction of

massive sea-level rise just decades away, the warming and acidifying
oceans represent a problem that seems to have kick-started a mass
extinction on the same time scale. Jacquelyn Gill is a paleoecologist at the University of Maine. She knows
actually,

a lot about extinction, and her work is more relevant than ever. Essentially, she's trying to save the species that are alive right now
by learning more about what killed off the ones that aren't. The

ancient data she studies shows "really

compelling evidence that there can be events of abrupt climate change that can
happen well within human life spans. We're talking less than a decade." For the past
year or two, a persistent change in winds over the North Pacific has given rise to what
meteorologists and oceanographers are calling "the blob" a highly anomalous patch of warm water
between Hawaii, Alaska and Baja California that's thrown the marine ecosystem into
a tailspin. Amid warmer temperatures, plankton numbers have plummeted, and the myriad
species that depend on them have migrated or seen their own numbers dwindle.
Significant northward surges of warm water have happened before, even frequently.
El Nio, for example, does this on a predictable basis. But what's happening this year appears to be
something new. Some climate scientists think that the wind shift is linked to the rapid decline in
Arctic sea ice over the past few years, which separate research has shown makes weather patterns more likely to get stuck.
A similar shift in the behavior of the jet stream has also contributed to the California
drought and severe polar vortex winters in the Northeast over the past two years.
An amplified jet-stream pattern has produced an unusual doldrum off the West
Coast that's persisted for most of the past 18 months. Daniel Swain, a Stanford University
meteorologist, has called it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" weather patterns just aren't supposed to last this long. What's
increasingly uncontroversial among scientists is that in many ecosystems,
the impacts of the current off-the-charts temperatures in the North Pacific
will linger for years, or longer. The largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific is exhibiting cyclical
variability to greater extremes than other ocean basins. While the North Pacific is currently the most
dramatic area of change in the world's oceans, it's not alone: Globally, 2014 was a record-setting year for
ocean temperatures, and 2015 is on pace to beat it soundly, boosted by the El Nio
in the Pacific. Six percent of the world's reefs could disappear before the
end of the decade, perhaps permanently, thanks to warming waters. Since warmer
oceans expand in volume, it's also leading to a surge in sea-level rise. One recent study showed a slowdown in Atlantic Ocean
currents, perhaps linked to glacial melt from Greenland, that caused a four-inch rise in sea levels along the Northeast coast in just
two years, from 2009 to 2010. To be sure, it seems like this sudden and unpredicted surge was only temporary, but scientists who
studied the surge estimated it to be a 1-in-850-year event, and it's been blamed on accelerated beach erosion "almost as significant

Possibly worse than rising ocean temperatures is the acidification

of the waters. Acidification has a direct effect on mollusks and other marine animals
with hard outer bodies: A striking study last year showed that, along the West Coast, the shells of tiny snails are already
as some hurricane events."

dissolving, with as-yet-unknown consequences on the ecosystem. One of the study's authors, Nina Bednarek, told Science

snails' shells, pitted by the acidifying ocean, resembled "cauliflower" or

"sandpaper." A similarly striking study by more than a dozen of the world's
top ocean scientists this July said that the current pace of increasing
carbon emissions would force an "effectively irreversible" change on ocean
ecosystems during this century. In as little as a decade, the study suggested, chemical changes
will rise significantly above background levels in nearly half of the world's oceans. "I
used to think it was kind of hard to make things in the ocean go extinct," James
Barry of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California told the Seattle Times in 2013.
"But this change we're seeing is happening so fast it's almost
instantaneous." Thanks to the pressure we're putting on the planet's ecosystem warming, acidification and good oldfashioned pollution the oceans are set up for several decades of rapid change. Here's what
magazine that the

could happen next. The combination of excessive nutrients from agricultural runoff, abnormal wind patterns and the warming
oceans is already creating seasonal dead zones in coastal regions when algae blooms suck up most of the available oxygen. The
appearance of low-oxygen regions has doubled in frequency every 10 years since 1960 and should continue to grow over the
coming decades at an even greater rate. So far, dead zones have remained mostly close to the coasts, but in the 21st century,
deep-ocean dead zones could become common. These low-oxygen regions could gradually expand in size potentially thousands
of miles across which would force fish, whales, pretty much everything upward. If this were to occur, large sections of the
temperate deep oceans would suffer should the oxygen-free layer grow so pronounced that it stratifies, pushing surface ocean
warming into overdrive and hindering upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich deeper water.

Enhanced evaporation from

the warmer oceans will create heavier downpours, perhaps destabilizing the root
systems of forests, and accelerated runoff will pour more excess nutrients into
coastal areas, further enhancing dead zones. In the past year, downpours have broken records in Long
Island, Phoenix, Detroit, Baltimore, Houston and Pensacola, Florida. Evidence for the above scenario
comes in large part from our best understanding of what happened 250
million years ago, during the "Great Dying," when more than 90 percent of
all oceanic species perished after a pulse of carbon dioxide and methane from
land-based sources began a period of profound climate change. The conditions that
triggered "Great Dying" took hundreds of thousands of years to develop. But humans have been emitting carbon dioxide at a much

With all these stressors

working against it, a hypoxic feedback loop could wind up destroying some of
the oceans' most species-rich ecosystems within our lifetime. A recent study by Sarah Moffitt of the
University of California-Davis said it could take the ocean thousands of years to recover .
quicker rate, so the current mass extinction only took 100 years or so to kick-start.

"Looking forward for my kid, people in the future are not going to have the same ocean that I have today," Moffitt said. As you might
expect, having tickets to the front row of a global environmental catastrophe is taking an increasingly emotional toll on scientists,

two dozen or so scientists

all drifted into apocalyptic language at some point.

and in some cases pushing them toward advocacy. Of the

virtually

I interviewed for this piece,

Scenario 2
Nuclear whistleblowers key to prevent catastrophic nuclear
meltdown and accidental nuclear weapon use
HMR 15
(Horace Mann Review, The Review is Horace Mann Schools premier journal of
opinion on current events, politics, public policy, and culture, Whistleblowers: A
Necessary Force in Fighting Corruption, 2/9, , http://www.hmreview.org/?p=212) JB
When institutions start to cut corners and slack off on safety, it is the job of
whistleblowers to come forward and tell the world of the companys unfair practices so that
they can be rectified. From textiles to electronics, from military to civilian, political and social, companies and organizations sometimes
engage in processes that cut corners and unfairly exploit workers or supplies at a cost to the consumers and jeopardize both the workers and consumers

Alarmingly, nuclear whistleblowing has also been a necessary

part of keeping the world safe from catastrophic events. From Mordechai Vanunu, who
safety in the process.

revealed the Israeli nuclear weapons program to the British, to Gerald Brown, who uncovered the Thermo-lag circuit integrity scandal and silicone foam

workers in dangerous situations have repeatedly taken

the initiative to keep their workplaces, and the world, safe . Whistleblowers are
integral in the function of the world government. They do the thankless job of turning on
their bosses and friends and leaking the little cut corners that friends agreed to in a
brightly lit conference room as a harmless way to reduce costs to the world, so that the people not be
deceived as to the product they are receiving. Nuclear whistleblowers job is more thankless than
any other while being more necessary to the preservation of society than
any other. Most names are absent from common vernacular, and they seem to have been all but forgotten except on Wikipedias page on
nuclear whistleblowers. Yet men and women who revealed unsafe practices in nuclear power
plants have led to sweeping changes in security and management at those plants
Some whistleblowers receive national attention and international support. Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked the PRISM program to
scandals in U.S. and Canadian nuclear power plants,

the press, is widely known and discussed, even though not all people support his decision. He received the optimal reaction from the public that will most
likely lead to changes in privacy policies of American government. He did the thankless job of revealing trade secrets, and although he is wanted by the
United States and is hiding in the Russian Federation, he

got his message out. Nuclear whistleblowers are not

always so lucky. On the other hand, the most high profile nuclear whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu, the man who leaked Israels nuclear
program to the British government, is not remembered by name, and his actions have all but been forgotten. Some people blow hot air at the issue of
Israels violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty but most have taken it for granted and accept Israels status as a nuclear state. Vanunu deserves to

be recognized even though his countrymen in Israel and conservatives everywhere tend to resent his actions. He is a strong man who stood up for what he
believed in, and it is the duty of the people to recognize that, especially when the reaction to Snowdens leaks were disproportionately and vastly larger in
magnitude. Yet the message to whistleblowers in the nuclear sector is clear. If even the most high profile case does not receive the attention it deserves,
or give the whistleblower the attention he or she needs to spread awareness about the issue that he or she is trying to fix, then there is no point of

This fact is seen in the trend observed- there have

been remarkably few whistleblowing events and no high profile ones, even
though our nuclear industry is in poor shape. The US Public Interest Group advocates against the building
of new nuclear power plants by showing that the current plants are outdated and new ones have the same life span. While other
whistleblowers and whistleblowing events are high profile, many nuclear
whistleblowing events are not remembered by the public . There is therefore little
incentive for people in the nuclear sector to come forward about issues in the
workplace. But there is a need for them to. There are watchdogs in place to prevent mishandling of nuclear
materials in the nuclear power and weapons sector, but of late they have also been doing their jobs incorrectly. The United States Nuclear
Regulatory Commission is the agency responsible for ensuring the safety of nuclear reactors ,
waste, materials, and security. It too sometimes falls prey to a will to preserve
pride and face in front of Congress. In July 2011, George Mulley blew the whistle on the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission for underreporting issues in the nuclear sectors. His actions
show that whistleblowing can work, and that it is necessary for them to act. It is preposterous to assume that everything is
perfect in the nuclear sector. It is out of the headlines, which are at the moment populated with horror stories out of the Middle East and
West Africa, but remains an issue, and perhaps even more acute than the others, because it
directly affects the lives of millions of American citizens. It is imperative for both American citizens and the
blowing the whistle on ones employer.

legislative bodies in the states and in Congress to recognize the attention that needs to be paid to our nuclear sector. It is of the utmost importance for the

government agencies are often awkward and immobile ,

while one person can do a lot to stop unsafe practices in one swoop . Even though
people to come out and do what is right, because

the job of the whistleblower is unadmirable, it must be done to preserve the security of the country, especially when the sector involved is the nuclear

whistleblowing also extends to nuclear weapons

sector. The
. Twenty thousand nuclear warheads exist
on the planet today. The bulk of them are stored in silos around the United States and the states of the former Soviet Union. Many warheads were

The technology keeping these warheads

from going off is antiquated to the point of comedy , and the locations where they are stored are almost falling
manufactured decades ago, and so were the places where they are stored.

apart. The Air Force corpsmen tasked with the protection of the weapons are not only inept, but also insubordinate. Other issues such as a lack of interest
in maintaining such a large arsenal and lack of discipline even in the higher echelons of the command also plague the nuclear weapons sector.

America and the world needs ordinary people who work in these sectors to step up
and reveal the wrongs in the industry so that they may be corrected . At the point
where the nuclear power sectors and nuclear weapons facilities cannot self-regulate
and the regulator established (NRC) has a conflict of interest when reporting the
problems with the plants, the imperative moves to the employees , the people who are seeing the
plants continue functioning well past their designed date of expiry and who are seeing them deteriorate day by day, to report them and make the issue of
nuclear power safety a national issue. When we can get the general public involved in the issue of nuclear safety, then the world will be a safer place, and
it will have been due to the man or woman who originally blew the whistle on the organization.

Meltdown leads to extinction

Wasserman 1- senior editor of the Free Press
(Harvey, Americas Terrorist Nuclear Threat to Itself,
https://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/security/wassermannukesecurity.htm) JB
One or more could be
wiped out with a wide range of easily deployed small aircraft, ground-based
weapons, truck bombs or even chemical/biological assault s aimed at the operating work force. Dozens of
US reactors have repeatedly failed even modest security tests over the years. Even
heightened wartime standards cannot guarantee protection of the vast, supremely
sensitive controls required for reactor safety . Without continous monitoring and guaranteed water flow, the
thousands of tons of radioactive rods in the cores and the thousands more stored in
The assault would not require a large jet. The safety systems are extremely complex and virtually indefensible.

those fragile pools would rapidly melt into super-hot radioactive balls of lava that
would burn into the ground and the water table and, ultimately, the Hudson. Indeed, a jetcrash like the one on 9/11
or other forms of terrorist assault at Indian Point could yield three infernal fireballs of molten radioactive lava burning through the earth and into the

Striking water they would blast gigantic billows of horribly radioactive

steam into the atmosphere. Prevailing winds from the north and west might initially
drive these clouds of mass death downriver into New York City and east into
Westchester and Long Island. But at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, winds ultimately shifted around the compass to irradiate all
surrounding areas with the devastating poisons released by the on-going fiery torrent. At Indian Point , thousands of square miles
would have been saturated with the most lethal clouds ever created or imagined,
depositing relentless genetic poisons that would kill forever . In nearby communities like Buchanan,
Nyack, Monsey and scores more, infants and small children would quickly die en masse. Virtually all
pregnant women would spontaneously abort, or ultimately give birth to horribly
deformed offspring. Ghastly sores, rashes, ulcerations and burns would afflict the
skin of millions. Emphysema, heart attacks, stroke, multiple organ failure, hair loss, nausea, inability to eat or drink or swallow, diarrhea and
incontinance, sterility and impotence, asthma, blindness, and more would kill thousands on the spot, and doom hundreds of thousands if not millions. A
terrible metallic taste would afflict virtually everyone downwind in New York, New Jersey and New England , a
ghoulish curse similar to that endured by the fliers who dropped the atomic bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagaskai, by those living downwind from nuclear bomb tests in the south seas and Nevada, and by victims
caught in the downdrafts from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Then comes the abominable wave of cancers,
leukemias, lymphomas, tumors and hellish diseases for which new names will have
to be invented, and new dimensions of agony will beg description. Indeed, those who
survived the initial wave of radiation would envy those who did not. Evacuation
would be impossible, but thousands would die trying. Bridges and highways would
become killing fields for those attempting to escape to destinations that would soon enough become equally deadly as the winds shifted.
aquifer and the river.

Attempts to quench the fires would be futile. At Chernobyl, pilots flying helicopters that dropped boron on the fiery core died in droves. At Indian Point,
such missions would be a sure ticket to death. Their utility would be doubtful as the molten cores rage uncontrolled for days, weeks and years, spewing
ever more devastation into the eco-sphere. More than 800,000 Soviet draftees were forced through Chernobyl's seething remains in a futile attempt to
clean it up. They are dying in droves. Who would now volunteer for such an American task force? The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl blanketed the vast
Ukraine and Belarus landscape, then carried over Europe and into the jetstream, surging through the west coast of the United States within ten days,

. The radioactive clouds from Indian Point

would enshroud New York, New Jersey, New England, and carry deep into the
Atlantic and up into Canada and across to Europe and around the globe again and
again. The immediate damage would render thousands of the world's most populous and expensive square miles permanently uninhabitable. All five
carrying across our northern tier, circling the globe, then coming back again

boroughs of New York City would be an apocalyptic wasteland. The World Trade Center would be rendered as unusable and even more lethal by a jet crash
at Indian Point than it was by the direct hits of 9/11. All real estate and economic value would be poisonously radioactive throughout the entire region.
Irreplaceable trillions in human capital would be forever lost. As at Three Mile Island, where thousands of farm and wild animals died in heaps, and as at

, natural eco-systems on which human and

all other life depends would be permanently and irrevocably destroyed, Spiritually,
psychologically, financially, ecologically, our nation would never recover. This is what we
Chernobyl, where soil, water and plant life have been hopelessly irradiated

missed by a mere forty miles near New York City on September 11. Now that we are at war, this is what could be happening as you read this. There are
103 of these potential Bombs of the Apocalypse now operating in the United States. They generate just 18% of America's electricity, just 8% of our total
energy. As with reactors elsewhere, the two at Indian Point have both been off-line for long periods of time with no appreciable impact on life in New York.
Already an extremely expensive source of electricity, the cost of attempting to defend these reactors will put nuclear energy even further off the
competitive scale. Since its deregulation crisis, California---already the nation's second-most efficient state---cut further into its electric consumption by
some 15%. Within a year the US could cheaply replace virtually with increased efficiency all the reactors now so much more expensive to operate and
protect. Yet, as the bombs fall and the terror escalates, Congress is fast-tracking a form of legal immunity to protect the operators of reactors like Indian
Point from liability in case of a meltdown or terrorist attack. Why is our nation handing its proclaimed enemies the weapons of our own mass destruction,
and then shielding from liability the companies that insist on continuing to operate them? Do we take this war seriously? Are we committed to the survival
of our nation? If so, the ticking reactor bombs that could obliterate the very core of our life and of all future generations must be shut down.

Groupthink
Contention two is groupthink
The culture of groupthink in the national security complex
makes military intervention inevitable
Benkler 14
(Yochai - the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty
co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University - A Public
Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers
http://benkler.org/Benkler_Whistleblowerdefense_Prepub.pdf)//GK

Literature on information dynamics and cognitive bias reinforces the idea that closed
organizations will go awry systematically and predictably .47 Substantial work establishes that groups
tend to feed back their own beliefs into themselves, reinforce majority positions ,
and fail to challenge consensus beliefsa process falling under the moniker groupthink. 48 Cass
Sunstein described, for example, how the SSCI specifically saw groupthink as a central attribute of the CIAs failure
in evaluating the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a failure that contributed
to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.49 Aziz Huq surveyed the literature that explores the cognitive dynamics
that emphasize security, predictability, control, and a resistance to
opposition and uncertainty associated specifically with fear of
terrorism.50 These dynamics are exacerbated in hierarchical systems
because advancement in these organizations requires that superiors not
be antagonized. The fundamental rules of bureaucratic life51 are at their core concerned with information flows: insulating bosses from
criticism and information that would threaten to destabilize their judgment in front of subordinates. Even more fundamentally, error and
biased interpretation of specific observations, background facts, and baseline presumptions
are all subject to the dynamics of motivated reasoning .52 That is, our most basic cognitive
processes drive us to interpret the world and our observations to fit our existing
understanding of the world. Finally, individuals in the national security system oversample
threats and are involved in a system dedicated to avoid large unknown losses . Extensive work
on the availability heuristic, loss aversion, and probability neglect suggests that insiders to the national security
establishment will overstate the threats against which they are defending and the threat
associated with leaks.53 When a system whose insularity and secrecy disable external
criticism, combined with individual cognitive and group information dynamics that contribute to poor diagnosis of
the state of the world, substantial errors are inevitable . When this system is as large
and complex as the national security system, and when the stakes of errors are so
high, these dynamics reliably lead to periodic tragedy, abuse, or both.

Unrestrained monitoring of whistleblowers spills up to

whistleblower officials and destroys whistleblowing channels in
the national security apparatus
Taylor and Landay 14
(MARISA, Investigative Reporter, McClatchy Washington Bureau, Jonathan After CIA gets secret
whistleblower email, Congress worries about more spying http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nationworld/national/national-security/_investigating-cia/article24771052.html)//GK
The CIA obtained a confidential email to Congress about alleged whistleblower retaliation related to the Senates

the CIA has been

intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases . The
classified report on the agencys harsh interrogation program, triggering fears that

CIA got hold of the legally protected email and other unspecified communications
between whistleblower officials and lawmakers this spring, people familiar with the matter told
McClatchy. Its unclear how the agency obtained the material . At the time, the CIA was
embroiled in a furious behind-the-scenes battle with the S enate Intelligence Committee
over the panels investigation of the agencys interrogation program , including
accusations that the CIA illegally monitored computers used in the five-year probe . The
CIA has denied the charges. The email controversy points to holes in the intelligence
communitys whistleblower protection systems and raises fresh questions about
the extent to which intelligence agencies can elude congressional
oversight. The email related to allegations that the agencys inspector general, David Buckley, failed to
properly investigate CIA retaliation against an agency official who cooperated in the committees probe, said the
knowledgeable people, who asked not to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Somehow,
according to these people, Buckley obtained the email, which was written by Daniel Meyer, the intelligence
communitys top official for whistleblower cases, to the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a leading
whistleblower-protection advocate. The Senate Intelligence Committee also learned of the matter, said the
knowledgeable people. After obtaining the email, Buckley approached Meyers boss, I. Charles McCullough III, the
inspector general for the 17-agency U.S. intelligence community, in what may have constituted a violation of the

Monitoring inspectors general

communications with lawmakers would clash with efforts by Congress and President
Barack Obama to strengthen protections for intelligence community whistleblowers . If
government officials outside an inspector generals office accessed such communications, they could
discover whistleblowers identities and retaliate against them by targeting them as
security risks known as insider threats. The incident involving Meyers email occurred shortly
confidentiality of the whistleblowing process, they said.

before Grassley and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote to Director of

federal employees
with security clearances are being continually monitored, without protections for
whistleblowers. McClatchys sources said that the letter and the email were likely connected.
National Intelligence James Clapper demanding to know if all of the communications of

And, Groupthink will manifest itself in a U.S.-Russia War. A

lack of original thought and skepticism makes another Iraq
inevitable.
Parry 15
(Robert Enforcing the Ukraine Group Think Consortiumnews.com, May 9, 2015, pg online @
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/09/enforcing-the-ukraine-group-think/)

as the United States rushes into a new Cold War with Russia, we are seeing the
makings of a new McCarthyism, challenging the patriotism of anyone who doesnt
get in line. But this conformity presents a serious threat to U.S. national security and even the
future of the planet. We saw a similar pattern with the rush to war in Iraq , but a
military clash with nuclear-armed Russia is a crisis of a much greater magnitude . One of
Professor Cohens key points has been that Official Washingtons group think about post-Soviet Russia
has been misguided from the start, laying the groundwork for todays confrontation. In Cohens view,
to understand why Russians are so alarmed by U.S . and NATO meddling in Ukraine,
you have to go back to those days after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead of
working with the Russians to transition carefully from a communist system to a
pluralistic, capitalist one, the U.S. prescription was shock therapy. As American
free market experts descended on Moscow during the pliant regime of Boris Yeltsin, well-connected
Russian thieves and their U.S. compatriots plundered the countrys wealth , creating
So,

a handful of billionaire oligarchs and leaving millions upon millions of Russians in a

state of near starvation, with a collapse in life expectancy rarely seen in a country not at war. Yet, despite the desperation of the
masses, American journalists and pundits hailed the democratic reform underway in Russia with glowing accounts of how glittering life could be in the
shiny new hotels, restaurants and bars of Moscow. Complaints about the suffering of average Russians were dismissed as the grumblings of losers who
failed to appreciate the economic wonders that lay ahead. As recounted in his 2001 book, Failed Crusade, Cohen correctly describes this fantastical

The widespread
suffering led Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin, to pull back on the wholesale privatization, to punish some oligarchs
and to restore some of the social safety net. Though the U.S. mainstream media portrays
Putin as essentially a tyrant, his elections and approval numbers indicate that he
commands broad popular support, in part, because he stood up to some oligarchs
(though he still worked with others). Yet, Official Washington continues to portray oligarchs whom
Putin jailed as innocent victims of a tyrants revenge. After Putin pardoned jailed oligarch Mikhail
reporting as journalistic malpractice that left the American people misinformed about the on-the-ground reality in Russia.

Khodorkovsky, the neocon Freedom House sponsored a Washington dinner in Khordorkovskys honor, hailing him as one of Russias political heroes. I
have to say Im impressed by him, declared Freedom House President David Kramer. But hes still figuring out how he can make a difference. New York
Times writer Peter Baker fairly swooned at Khodorkovskys presence. If anything, he seemed stronger and deeper than before prison, Baker wrote. The
notion of prison as cleansing the soul and ennobling the spirit is a powerful motif in Russian literature. Yet, even Khodorkovsky, who is now in his early
50s, acknowledged that he grew up in Russias emerging Wild West capitalism to take advantage of what he now says was a corrupt privatization
system, Baker reported. In other words, Khodorkovsky was admitting that he obtained his vast wealth through a corrupt process, though by referring to it
as the Wild West Baker made the adventure seem quite dashing and even admirable when, in reality, Khodorkovsky was a key figure in the plunder of

Professor Cohen was one of

the few scholars with the courage to challenge the prevailing boosterism for
Russias shock therapy. He noted even then the danger of mistaken conventional
wisdom and how it strangles original thought and necessary skepticism. Much
as Russia scholars prefer consensus, even orthodoxy, to dissent, most journalists, one of them tells us, are devoted to
group-think and see the world through a set of standard templates, wrote Cohen. For
them to break with standard templates requires not only introspection but
retrospection, which also is not a characteristic of either profession.
Russia that impoverished millions of his countrymen and sent many to early graves. In the 1990s,

And, a lack of rational voices and protests in the U.S.

government is the trigger groupthink will cause the U.S. to
push Putin beyond his red-lines inviting unnecessary conflict
that destroys the planet
Parry 2015
(Robert, an American investigative journalist best known for his role in covering the Iran-Contra affair
for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in
Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA and Contras cocaine
trafficking in the US scandal in 1985. He was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting in
1984. He has been the editor of Consortium News since 1995, February 6, 2015, Nuclear War and
Clashing Ukraine Narratives, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/06/nuclear-warand-clashing-ukraine-narratives/, Accessed: July 13, 2015, YDEL)
Exclusive: America and Russia have two nearly opposite narratives on Ukraine, which is more an indictment of the
U.S. news media which feigns objectivity but disseminates what amounts to propaganda. These divergent

The U.S.
government and mainstream media are swaggering toward a possible nuclear
confrontation with Russia over Ukraine without any of the seriousness that has
informed this sort of decision-making throughout the nuclear age. Instead, Official
Washington seems possessed by a self-righteous goofiness that could be the prelude to the end
of life on this planet. Nearly across the U.S. political spectrum, there is a pugnacious group
think which has transformed what should have been a manageable political
dispute in Ukraine into some morality play where U.S. politicians and pundits blather on
about how the nearly year-old coup regime in Kiev shares our values and how
America must be prepared to defend this regime militarily. Though Im told that President
narratives are driving the world toward a possible nuclear crisis, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry

Obama personally recognizes how foolhardy this attitude is, he has made no significant move
to head off the craziness and, indeed, has tolerated provocative actions by his
underlings, such as neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nulands scheming with coup plotters to
overthrow Ukraines elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February. Obama also has withheld from
the American people intelligence information that undercuts some of the more
extreme claims that his administration has made. For instance, Im told that he has detailed
Barack

intelligence reporting on both the mysterious sniper attack that preceded the putsch nearly a year ago and the
shoot-down of the Malaysia Airlines Flights 17 that deepened the crisis last summer. But he wont release the
findings. More broadly over the last year, Obamas behavior ranging from his initial neglect of the Ukraine issue,
as Nulands coup plotting unfolded, to his own participation in the tough talk, such as boasting during his State of
the Union address that he had helped put the Russian economy in tatters ranks as one of the most irresponsible

Given the potential stakes of nuclear war, none of the

post-World War II presidents behaved as recklessly as Obama has, which now
includes allowing his administration officials to talk loosely about sending military
support to an unstable regime in Kiev that includes neo-Nazis who have undertaken death-squad
operations against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. U.S. Gen. Philip Breedlove, who is
commander of NATO, declared last November that regarding supplying military support for the Kiev
government nothing at this time is off the table. Breedlove is now pushing actively to send
lethal U.S. military equipment to fend off an offensive by ethnic Russian rebels in
the east. Im told that the Russians fear that U.S. officials are contemplating placing
Cruise missiles in Ukraine or otherwise introducing advanced weaponry that Moscow regards as
a direct threat to its national security. Whether or not the Russians are being alarmist, these
fears are affecting their own decision-making. None of the nuclear-age
presidents not Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald
Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush would have
engaged in such provocative actions on Russias borders, though some surely behaved
aggressively in overthrowing governments and starting wars farther away . Even Ronald Reagan, an aggressive
performances by a U.S. president.

Cold Warrior, kept his challenges to the Soviet Union in areas that were far less sensitive to its national security
than Ukraine. He may have supported the slaughter of leftists in Central America and Africa or armed Islamic
fundamentalists fighting a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, but he recognized the insanity of a military
showdown with Moscow in Eastern Europe. After the Soviet Unions collapse in 1991, U.S. presidents became more
assertive, pushing NATO into the former Warsaw Pact nations and, under President Clinton, bombing a Russian ally
in Serbia, but that came at a time when Russia was essentially flat on its back geopolitically. Perhaps the
triumphalism of that period is still alive especially among neocons who reject President Vladimir Putins reassertion

Washington hardliners still feel that they can treat Moscow

with disdain, ignoring the fact that Russia maintains a formidable nuclear arsenal and
of Russias national pride. These

is not willing to return to the supine position of the 1990s. In 2008, President George W. Bush arguably one of the
most reckless presidents of the era backed away from a confrontation with Russia when Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili, a neocon favorite, drew the Russians into a border conflict over South Ossetia. Despite some
war talk from the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain, President Bush showed relative

Obama has failed to rein in his administrations war

hawks and has done nothing to correct the biased narrative that his State
Department has fed to the equally irresponsible mainstream U.S. news media. Since
restraint. Imbalanced Narrative But

the Ukraine crisis began in fall of 2013, the New York Times and other major U.S. news outlets have provided only
one side of the story, openly supporting the interests of the pro-European western Ukrainians over the ethnic
Russian eastern Ukrainians. The bias is so strong that the mainstream media has largely ignored the remarkable
story of the Kiev regime willfully dispatching Nazi storm troopers to kill ethnic Russians in the east , something that
hasnt happened in Europe since World War II. For Western news organizations that are quick to note the slightest
uptick in neo-Nazism in Europe, there has been a willful blindness to Kievs premeditated use of what amount to
Nazi death squads undertaking house-to-house killings in eastern Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.coms Seeing No
Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine.] The Russian government has repeatedly protested these death-squad operations
and other crimes committed by the Kiev regime, but the U.S. mainstream media is so in the tank for the western
Ukrainians

that it has suppressed this aspect of the crisis, typically burying references to the neo-Nazi militias at

With this ugly reality hidden

from the U.S. public, Obamas State Department has been able to present a whitehat-vs.-black-hat narrative to the crisis. So, while Russians saw a constitutionally elected government
the end of stories or dismissing these accounts as Russian propaganda.

on their border overthrown by a U.S.-backed coup last February and then human rights atrocities inflicted on
ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine the American people heard only about wonderful pro-American reformers in
Kiev and the evil pro-Russian minions trying to destroy democracy at Putins bidding . This

distorted
American narrative has represented one of the most unprofessional and dangerous
performances in the history of modern U.S. journalism, rivaling the false
conventional wisdom about Iraqs WMD except in this case the media propaganda is aimed at a
country in Russia that really does have weapons of mass destruction. The Russians also have noted the arrival of
financially self-interested Americans, including Vice President Joe Bidens son Hunter Biden and Ukraines new
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, reminding the Russians of the American financial experts who descended on
Moscow with their shock therapy in the 1990s, reforms that enriched a few well-connected oligarchs but
impoverished millions of average Russians. Jaresko, a former U.S. diplomat who took Ukrainian citizenship in
December 2014 to become Finance Minister, had been in charge of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed $150 million Ukrainian
investment fund which involved substantial insider dealings, including paying a management firm that Jaresko
created more than $1 million a year in fees, even as the $150 million apparently dwindled to less than $100
million. Jaresko also has been involved in a two-year-long legal battle with her ex-husband to gag him from
releasing information about apparent irregularities in the handling of the U.S. money. Jaresko went into Chancery
Court in Delaware to enforce a non-disclosure clause against her ex-husband, Ihor Figlus, and got a court order to
silence him. This week, when I contacted George Pazuniak, Figluss lawyer about Jareskos aggressive enforcement
of the non-disclosure agreement, he told me that at this point, its very difficult for me to say very much without
having a detrimental effect on my client. With Jaresko now being hailed as a Ukrainian reformer who in the
words of New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman shares our values, one has to wonder why she has
fought so hard to shut up her ex-husband regarding possible revelations about improper handling of U.S. taxpayer
money. [See Consortiumnews.coms Ukraines Made-in-USA Finance Minister.] More Interested Parties The
Russians also looked askance at the appointment of Estonian Jaanika Merilo as the latest foreigner to be brought
inside the Ukrainian government as a reformer. Merilo, a Jaresko associate, is being put in charge of attracting
foreign investments but her photo spreads look more like someone interested in some rather kinky partying.

The

Russians are aware, too, of prominent Americans circling around the potential
plunder of Ukraine. For instance, Hunter Biden was named to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings,
Ukraines largest private gas firm. Burisma is also a shadowy Cyprus-based company linked to Privat Bank. Privat
Bank is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the Kiev regime to be
governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky has helped finance the
paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. And, Burisma has been lining up well-connected
lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerrys former Senate chief of staff David Leiter,
according to lobbying disclosures. As Time magazine reported, Leiters involvement in the firm rounds out a powerpacked team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a
Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerrys 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden
have worked as business partners with Kerrys son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont
Capital, a private-equity company. [See Consortiumnews.coms The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis.] So, the
Russians have a decidedly different view of the Ukrainian reforms than much of the U.S. media does. But Im told
that the Russians would be willing to tolerate these well-connected Americans enriching themselves in Ukraine and

the Russians have

drawn a red line at the prospect for the expansion of NATO forces into Ukraine and
the continued killing of ethnic Russians at the hands of neo-Nazi death squads. Putin
is demanding that those paramilitary forces be disarmed. Besides unleashing these righteven having Ukraine expand its economic relations with the European Union. But

wing militias on the ethnic Russians, the Kiev government has moved to punish the people living in the eastern
sectors by cutting off access to banks and other financial services. It also has become harder and more dangerous
for ethnic Russians to cross into territory controlled by the Kiev authorities. Many are turned back and those who do
get through face the risk of being taken and killed by the neo-Nazi militias. These conditions have left the people in
the Donetsk and Luhansk areas the so-called Donbass region on Russias border dependent on relief supplies
from Russia. Meanwhile, the Kiev regime pumped up by prospects of weapons from Washington as well as more
money has toughened its tone with vows to crush the eastern rebellion once and for all. Russias Hardening

The worsening situation in the east and the fear of U.S. military
weapons arriving in the west have prompted a shift in Moscows view of
the Ukraine crisis, including a readiness to resupply the ethnic Russian
forces in eastern Ukraine and even provide military advisers. These
Line

developments have alarmed European leaders who find themselves caught in the
middle of a possible conflict between the United States and Russia . German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande rushed to Kiev and then Moscow this week to discuss

The hardening Russian position now seeks, in effect, a

division of Ukraine into two autonomous zones, the east and the west with a central government
possible ways to defuse the crisis.

that maintains the currency and handles other national concerns. But Im told that Moscow might still accept the
earlier idea of a federated Ukraine with greater self-governance by the different regions. Putin also does not object
to Ukraine building closer economic ties to Europe and he offered a new referendum in Crimea on whether the
voters still want to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, said a source familiar with the Kremlins thinking. But

Putins red lines include no NATO expansion into Ukraine and protection for ethnic
Russians by disarming the neo-Nazi militias, the source said. If such an arrangement or
something similar isnt acceptable and if the killing of ethnic Russians continues, the
Kremlin would support a large-scale military offensive from the east that would involve
taking Kiev, according to the source. A Russian escalation of that magnitude would
likely invite a vigorous U.S. response, with leading American politicians
and pundits sure to ratchet up demands for a military counterstrike
against Russia. If Obama were to acquiesce to such bellicosity to avoid being called weak the
world could be pushed to the brink of nuclear war. Whos to Blame? Though the State
Department and the mainstream U.S. media continue to put all the blame on Russia, the fact that the
Ukraine crisis has reach such a dangerous crossroads reveals how reckless the
behavior of Official Washington has been over the past year. Nuland and other U.S.
officials took an internal Ukrainian disagreement over how quickly it should expand
ties to Europe while seeking to retain its historic relations with Russia and turned that fairly
pedestrian political dispute into a possible flashpoint for a nuclear war. At no
time, as this crisis has evolved over the past year, did anyone of significance in Official Washington, whether in
government or media, stop and contemplate whether this issue was worth risking the end of life on the planet.
Instead, all the American people have been given is a steady diet of anti-Yanukovych and anti-Putin propaganda.
Though constitutionally elected, Yanukovych was depicted as a corrupt tyrant who had a pricy sauna in his official

Though Putin had just staged the Winter Olympics in Sochi, signaling his
desire for Russia to integrate more with the West, he was portrayed as either a newage imperial czar or the second coming of Hitler if not worse because he occasionally would ride
mansion.

on a horse while not wearing a shirt. Further, the U.S. news media refused to conduct a serious investigation into

U.S. officials had helped destabilize Yanukovychs

government with the goal of achieving another neocon regime change. Nuland, who
the evidence that Nuland and other

personally urged on anti-Yanukovych protests in Kiev, discussed with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in
early February 2014 who should lead the new government Yats is the guy, she said, referring to Arseniy
Yatsenyuk and how to glue this thing. After weeks of mounting tensions and worsening violence, the coup
occurred on Feb. 22, 2014, when well-organized neo-Nazi and other right-wing militias from western Ukraine
overran presidential buildings forcing officials to flee for their lives. With Yanukovych ousted, Yatsenyuk soon
became Prime Minister. [See Consortiumnews.coms When Is a Putsch a Putsch. ] Many ethnic Russians in
southern and eastern Ukraine, who had strongly supported Yanukovych, refused to accept the new U.S.-backed
order in Kiev. Crimean officials and voters moved to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, a move that Putin
accepted because of Crimeas historic ties to Russia and his fear that the Russian naval base at Sevastopol might
be handed to NATO. The resistance spread to eastern Ukraine where other ethnic Russians took up arms against
the coup regime in Kiev, which responded with that it called an anti-terrorist operation against the east. To bolster
the weak Ukrainian army, Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov dispatched neo-Nazi and other volunteer militias
to spearhead the attacks. After the deaths of more than 5,000 people, a shaky cease-fire was announced in
September, but amid complaints about neo-Nazi death squads operating in government-controlled areas and
with life deteriorating in rebel-controlled towns and cities the ethnic Russians launched an offensive in January,

In reaction, U.S. pundits, including

columnists and editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, called for dispatching U.S. aid
to the Kiev forces, including proposals for lethal weaponry to deter Putins
aggression. Members of Congress and members of the Obama administration have joined
the chorus. On Feb. 2, the New York Times reported With Russian-backed separatists pressing their attacks in
using Russian-supplied weapons to expand their control of territory.

Ukraine, NATOs military commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, now supports providing defensive weapons and
equipment to Kievs beleaguered forces, and an array of administration and military officials appear to be edging
toward that position, American officials said. President Obama has made no decisions on providing such lethal
assistance. That same day, the lead Times editorial was entitled Mr. Putin Resumes His War and continued with
the theme about Russian aggression and the need to increase the cost if Russia demands a permanent rebelheld enclave. On Feb. 3, the Washington Post ran an editorial entitled Help for Ukraine. Defensive weapons could
deter Russia in a way sanctions wont. The editorial concluded that Putin will stop only if the cost to his regime is

new war fever gripped Washington and no one wanted to be

viewed as soft or to be denounced as a Putin apologist . Amid this combination of
propaganda, confusion and tough-guy-ism and lacking the tempering wisdom
about war and nuclear weapons that restrained earlier U.S. presidents a
momentum lurched toward a nuclear showdown over Ukraine that could put all life
on earth in jeopardy.
sharply raised and quickly. A

The plan solves

A) Whistleblowers are key to challenge core systemic
behaviors of national security organizations
Benkler 14
(Yochai - the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty
co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University - A Public
Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers
http://benkler.org/Benkler_Whistleblowerdefense_Prepub.pdf)//GK

Secrecy insulates self-reinforcing internal organizational dynamics from

external correction. In countering this tendency, not all leaks are of the same fabric. War story-type
leaks that make an administration look good or are aimed to shape public opinion in favor of an already-adopted
strategy or to manipulate support for one agency over another, trial balloons, and so forth, are legion.23 While
these offer the public color and texture from inside the government and are valuable to the press, they do not offer

leaks, however, provide a critical

mechanism for piercing the national security systems echo-chamber , countering
selfreinforcing information cascades, groupthink, and cognitive biases that
necessarily pervade any closed communications system. It is this type of leak, which
exposes and challenges core systemic behaviors, that has increased in this past decade, as it did
a productive counterweight to internal systemic failures and errors. Some

in the early 1970s. These leaks are primarily driven by conscience, and demand accountability for systemic error,
incompetence, or malfeasance. Their critical checking function derives from the fact that conscience is uncorrelated
with well-behaved organizational processes. Like an electric fuse, accountability leaks, as we might call them, blow
when the internal dynamics of the system reach the breaking point of an individual with knowledge, but without
authority. They are therefore hard to predict, and function like surprise inspections that keep a system honest.24 By

whistleblowing is hardly unique

to national security. American law in general embraces whistleblowing as a critical mechanism to
address the kinds of destructive organizational dynamics that lead to error,
incompetence, and abuse. In healthcare, financial, food and drug, or consumer product industries; in
doing so, these leaks serve both democracy and security. This failsafe view of

state and federal agencies, throughout the organizational ecosystem, whistleblowers are protected from retaliation
and often provided with financial incentives to expose wrongs they have seen and subject the organizations in

Whistleblowing is seen as a central pillar to

address government corruption and failure throughout the world. 26 Unless one believes
which they work to public or official scrutiny.25

that the national security establishment has a magical exemption from the dynamics that lead all other large scale

whistleblowing must be available as a critical arrow in

the quiver of any democracy that seeks to contain the tragic
consequences that follow when national security organizations make
significant errors or engage in illegality or systemic abuse.
organizations to error, then

B) Effective whistleblowing leads to error detection which is

critical to an engaged citizenry that can combat the national
security system and distinguish between manufactured and
real threats
Benkler 14
(Yochai - the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty
co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University - A Public
Accountability Defense for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers
http://benkler.org/Benkler_Whistleblowerdefense_Prepub.pdf)//GK

error detection has broader implications for the relationship between

the national security system and public opinion . Open, democratic societies are not
weaker for their openness; they are stronger for it .69 There are certainly
inconvenient truths; backroom deals that have to be done, diplomatic channels that must be kept open.
The point about

Public opinion can be fickle, leaders must sometimes take a longer view than present public sentiment will allow,

and perfect transparency can be no panacea unless one imagines a utopia in which
all members of the public are rational, wellinformed, and patient. So yes, there are always troop
movements that must be kept secret and much, much more. But there is also ambition and narrowmindedness, interest, groupthink, and the yes-man mentality of the bureaucratic
mindset. What has made open societies successful is their ability to learn , experiment,
and adapt in a persistently uncertain and changing environment . On a much grander scale
than computer security, secrecy undermines the most basic features by which open
societies learn, question, and adapt; these are the very foundations of security in democratic society, and are
congruent with, rather than in conflict with, the foundations of liberty in these societies.70 It would be a
mistake to imagine that the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), the secret domestic
spying program that the FBI ran against domestic dissenters (including leaders and activists in the civil rights and

made America stronger and more secure at a cost to freedom and

democracy. COINTELPRO made Americans less secure and less free, and less able to
engage in the kind of criticism that helps us learn to distinguish between real, core
threats to the lives and wellbeing of Americans and manufactured threats tailored to fit
the views of those who sought to disrupt dissent .
antiwar movements 71)

Thus the plan: The United States federal government should

reduce surveillance within the National Insider Threat
Program.

Solvency
Next is solvency
The ITP undermines the WPA and creates a chilling effect that
deters whistleblowers now
Canterbury 14
(Angela, Director of Public Policy, POGO's Angela Canterbury testifies on Limitless Surveillance at
the FDA: Protecting the Rights of Federal Whistleblowers February 26, 2014, pg online @
http://www.pogo.org/our-work/testimony/2014/pogos-angela-canterbury-testifies.html //um-ef)

Whistleblowers are the guardians of the public trust and safety. Without proper controls at FDA and
throughout the government, employee surveillance is a serious threat to whistleblower protections .
The resulting chilling effect will significantly reduce accountability thus keeping waste,
fraud, abuse, and threats to public health and safety in the shadows . Whistleblowers also are among
the best partners in crime-fighting. It is a well-known fact that whistleblowers have saved countless lives and
billions of taxpayer dollars. A survey conducted in 2012 by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found that nearly half of occupational
fraud cases were uncovered by a tip or complaint from an employee, customer, vendor, or other source.[46] In the case of fraud perpetrated by owners and executives, more than half

whistleblowers play a bigger role than

external auditors, government regulators, self-regulatory organizations, or the media in detecting fraud.[47] But
were uncovered by tips from whistleblowers. A 2011 academic study confirmed that

perhaps the best illustration of how whistleblowers can save taxpayer dollars is the more than $38 billion recovered since 1987 through the hugely successful False Claims Act (FCA),
championed by Senator Grassley.[48] The FCA prohibits a person or entity from fraudulently or dishonestly obtaining or using government funds. The law not only acts as a deterrent, but
also incentivizes whistleblowing through the financial awards and strong protections against retaliation.[49] Federal Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Keller Hall said that the FCA provisions
supplement the governments regular troops since it let loose a posse of ad hoc deputies to uncover and prosecute frauds against the government."[50] But unfortunately, the costbenefit analysis for most whistleblowing is so often all cost to the whistleblower and all benefit to society. Professor Richard E. Moberly in his testimony before Congress aptly stated:
Furthermore, almost all the benefits of a whistleblowers disclosure go to people other than the whistleblower: society as a whole benefits from increased safety, better health, and more
efficient law enforcement. However, most of the costs fall on the whistleblower. There is an enormous public gain if whistleblowers can be encouraged to come forward by reducing the

An obvious, but important, part of reducing whistleblowers

costs involves protecting them from retaliation after they disclose
misconduct.[51] Whistleblowing works for the public, but not without strong
protections for the whistleblower. Recognizing this, Congress has repeatedly strengthened the
rights and procedures available to whistleblowers . In 2012, Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Cummingsalong with
Representative Van Hollen, then-Representative Platts, and their Senate colleagueschampioned the latest enhancements to federal
employee protections with the enactment of the Whistleblower Protection
Enhancement Act.[52] While these reforms go a long way to improve the prospects for whistleblowing on government
wrongdoing, employee surveillance, left unaddressed, seriously undermines these
and other statutory protections for whistleblowers that Congress intended. An
Opportunity for Reform This committees attention to the unacceptable actions of the managers at FDA will
hopefully serve as a catalyst for government-wide reforms. Certainly security concerns and available
costs they must endure.

technology will outstrip the protection of civil liberties, whistleblower protections, and other constitutional rights unless there is a concerted effort to consider all of these goals together.

left to their own devices, the agencies

cannot be expected to get this right. The FDA and other agencies should not be in
the surveillance or law enforcement business. Federal agencies cannot be allowed
to police themselvesthat is why we have IGs, the OSC, DoJ, and Congress. Investigations of unauthorized, illegal disclosures of information and other criminal
We can and should move towards a better policy and to ensure more accountability now. But if

misconduct must be conducted by law enforcement investigatorssuch as the FBI or the Inspectors Generalnot bureaucrats. While we acknowledge there may be a very limited need

electronic surveillance is
ripe for abuseas demonstrated by the FDA. Even with just cause and proper
controls, it will be difficult, if not impossible to ensure constitutional
rights are not violated. To what end? As with the NSA domestic surveillance, the risks to our rights may be greater than the ability of the surveillance to
protect against risks to security. On September 12, 2012, FDA Commissioner Hamburg issued a memorandum directing the
Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Counsel to promptly develop a written procedure for employee
surveillance that includes some safeguards (Hamburg Memo).[53] Presumably, that written procedure is embodied in the interim
for agencies to gather evidence of wrongdoing by employees when there is reasonable suspicion of non-criminal misconduct, the

policies and procedures established last September by the FDA in its Staff Manual Guide (Interim Policy).[54] No doubt the FDA is in a tough spot, attempting to put into place a process

the
FDA doesnt have it right yet. Nothing in this policy would prevent the FDA
Commissioner or Chief Operating Officer from using information collected by the surveillance as
retaliation for whistleblowing or providing it to others who might . The policy
does little to lift the chilling effect at FDA that fosters waste, fraud, abuse, and
threats to public health and safety. How can the FDA ensure the publics health and
safety if scientists and physicians are too afraid to come forward when deadly
mistakes are made? Instead, the interim policy would allow the FDA
managers to control a vast and far-reaching surveillance program
that is more proscribed for surveillance critics, but also placating the lawyers for drug and device companies that demand that information be kept confidential. Needless to say,

without any oversight from an independent outside entity

Rather than protect whistleblowers from unwarranted FDA surveillance, this policy
protects the FDA from whistleblowers and shields it from accountability. Simply stating that the FDA
will follow existing laws to protect whistleblowers is not enough the procedures do not build in strong,
substantive safeguards. The Interim Policy does attempt to protect some sensitive communications by prohibiting the targeting of communications
with law enforcement, the OSC, members of Congress or their staff, employee union officials, or private attorneys. However, it does not include a similar prohibition on other protected

Congress protected
public whistleblowing because we live in a democracy that relies on an informed
public and freedom of the press. In numerous instances, threats to public health and safety, waste, fraud, and abuse and other wrongdoing would
disclosuresmost notably, public whistleblowing, which is protected as long as the disclosure of the information is not prohibited under law.

never have come to light or been addressed without public whistleblowing.[55] The FDA has not ensured employees, contractors, and grantees can exercise all of their legal rights

any final policy must prohibit specifically monitoring

communications with anyone that may include a protected disclosure. According to
without fear of retaliation. Thus,

the Whistleblower Protection Act, these communications would include a reasonable belief that the disclosure evidences any violation of any law, rule, or regulation; or gross
mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.'[56] In practice, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to

prevent the inadvertent capture of protected disclosures while monitoring employee communications. Therefore,

any final policy

must

mandate a legal review and express authorization before any potentially

protected communication that is collected is shared. Notification of potential legal pitfalls to recipients of collected
information, as called for in the Hamburg Memo, is woefully insufficient.[57] The FDA must do more to ensure all agency
personnel and federal fund recipients are better trained in whistleblower
protections. Under the WPA, it is the responsibility of the head of each agency, in consultation with the Office of Special Counsel, to ensure that agency employees are
informed of the rights and remedies available to them under the Whistleblower Protection Act.[58] The OSC, has a certification program
which allows agencies to demonstrate that they have fulfilled this legal obligation.
Last year, only three agencies sought and received certificationand, remarkably,
the FDA was not one of them.[59] Clearly, certification should not be voluntary.
Last December, in its second National Action Plan for the Open Government Partnership, the Obama Administration committed to taking steps over the next two years with the stated
goal of strengthening and expanding protections for federal whistleblowers.[60] These commitments include mandating participation in the Office of Special Counsels Whistleblower

However, Congress should ensure that agency compliance with the WPA
notification requirement and certification will continue into the future by putting the
requirement into statute. Federal contractors and grantees also are required to notify their employees of the whistleblower protections available to them.
Certification Program.

[61] There should be a mechanism to certify this compliance as well. Perhaps this could be part of the contracting or grant-making process, or the Whistleblower Ombudsmen in the
Offices of Inspectors General could play a role. The Inspectors General have responsibilities to conduct investigations of claims of retaliation by contractor and grantee employees, as

Agencies are currently certifying compliance with

Presidential Policy Directive 19, which protects national security and intelligence
community whistleblowers. These certifications should be made public , but so far only the
well as by national security and intelligence community workers.[62]

Department of Defense has done so. Additionally, a memo and staff manual guide will not alone ensure that privacy, whistleblower, and civil service rights are protected in employee

policies and procedures for safeguarding employee rights whenever investigations or

surveillance is conducted should include penalties for violations and should have
the force of law. Therefore, a permanent regulation for all of HSSnot just the FDAwould be most appropriate. However, there ought to be a government-wide
approach. The Department of Justice has the appropriate legal expertise for developing such policy, in consultation with the OSC and MSPB. Moreover, the FDA is only
attempting to write a policy ad hoc because of all the unwanted attention its
receiving. But what is to prevent other agencies from spying on employees without
surveillance. The

regard to the legal rights of these employees? Congress and/or the President
must mandate a government-wide policy to protect whistleblower and
other constitutional rights and prevent future abuses. Of course, interfering with communications to
Congress[63] and retaliating for whistleblowing[64] is against the law. Although the law does protect the identity of whistleblowers in other waysthe OSC and IG are prohibited from
disclosing the identity of whistleblowers except in certain circumstances[65]there is little to prevent other agencies from identifying whistleblowers by collecting communications.

Congress should consider amending the WPA and contractor protections to

specifically prohibit an agency from using collected communications to identify a
whistleblower. Today, we dont know nearly enough about the scope of employee surveillance across the government. We hope that this committee will order a
comprehensive study of how agencies are currently conducting surveillance of employees while protecting their rights. Far more needs to be known about current practices, legal
protections, effectiveness, and cost. A government-wide study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and/or the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) would provide the
executive branch and Congress with a more complete picture and recommendations for best-practice policies.[66] Naturally, there also must be a different approach with the evergrowing intelligence and national security workforce. More and more of the federal workforce is labeled as national security sensitiveand

there is a jaw-

dropping lack of oversight. The number of people cleared for access to classified information reached a record high in 2012, soaring to more than
4.9 million.[67] Add to that untold numbers of civil servants and contractors without access to classified information, but in positions labeled as national security sensitive.[68] In
order to prevent leaks of classified information, it is critical that there are truly safe
channels for legal disclosures. We have long been concerned about the potential for
abuse of whistleblowers as a result of Insider Threat programs mandated by the
President and Congress.[69] The program pits employees against one another,
[70] creating an atmosphere of suspicion and intimidation likely to silence
would-be whistleblowers. Intended to protect national security, implementation of the Insider Threat Program at agencies that have little to do with
national security issues suggests a serious overreach. Blurring the line between spies and whistleblowers can only harm national security. An investigation by
McClatchy last year discovered that agencies were using the Insider Threat Program
as grounds to pursue unauthorized disclosures of unclassified information
information that whistleblowers can legally disclose to anyone under current law .[71] We
hope this committee will also conduct rigorous oversight of whistleblower protections for the national security and intelligence community workforce. Importantly, we must not lose sight
of what brought us here today. Scientists at the FDA were concerned about a device approval process that they believed might put lives at risk. We urge you to ensure that the critical
work being done by the CDRH puts the publics health and safety first. Bureaucrats at FDA should not be allowed to overrule the findings of expert scientists and physicians, except
under extraordinary circumstances. There are no criminal penalties for FDA officials who allow unsafe devices to be approved. FDA officials should be held accountable for approving
ineffective or unsafe products, and flawed devices must be taken off the market. There must be far more transparency and less deference to the demands for confidentiality by the drug
and device companies. Finally, please do all you can to ensure the FDA whistleblowers get the justice that they deserve and that FDA managers are held accountable for any violations of
the rights of the scientists and physicians who sought to make medical devices safer and more effective. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. POGO and the Make It
Safe Coalition pledge to continue to work with you to fulfill the promise of a government that is truly open and accountable to the American people. I look forward to your questions.

And, there is zero risk of offense, the ITP overextends agencies

and creates a volume of useless information that PREVENTS
good governance
Rottman 13
(Gabe, Obamas Whistleblower Witchunt Wont Work at DOD, pg online @
http://www.defenseone.com/management/2013/07/obama-whistleblower-witchhunt-wont-workDOD/67598/ //um-ef)

Obama administration is now on an Angletonian path, but on a meta scale throughout the
government. Two years ago, the White House implemented the Insider Threat Program, an initiative created by
executive order following the WikiLeaks affair. Not surprisingly, civil liberties groups fear the initiative will open the
door to inappropriate and biased reporting based on racial and ethnic profiling,
whistleblower retaliation and personal and political vendettas that will overload the
system with bad information. These critics are joined, however, by career counterintelligence experts, many of whom argue that non-professionals are simply ill-equipped
to accurately identify potential threats. The program requires any government
agency with network access to classified information to design and implement an
insider threat plan to better identify both spies and leakers (including whistleblowers seeking to reveal
The

government fraud, waste, or illegality). The plans address both network and information security, but much of the focus has been on personnel security.

Implementing agencies must train all of their cleared workers on how to identify

high-risk behavior by their colleagues like stress, sudden financial problems or exploitable behavior traits, as one
Defense Department publication puts it. In certain circumstances and agencies, failure to report such behavior could
leave employees open to disciplinary action or even, reportedly, criminal penalties .
Some agencies have extended the program to all workers, not just those with clearances,
and in many cases the training is far from comprehensive . Its also unclear who will run these programs. McClatchy, which
broke the story, only notes that the Pentagon is training managers and security officials at the Defense Department and contractors to set up insider

ew have noted the particularly acute problems

posed by the program at the Defense Department, which will face special
challenges for two related reasons. The first is simply size. DOD is one of the largest employers
in the world and because of its size and mission has the largest pool of security
clearances in the government. In a total population of almost 5 million cleared government workers, the Defense Department has
threat offices. Interestingly, of those looking at the program, f

more than half, which include civilian employees, contractors and military personnel. Additionally, one of the more important government-wide

the Defense Security Service, which is responsible for

counterintelligence training and reporting for the entire defense industry . It also administers
the federal industrial security program, which grants facility security clearances and provides security monitoring for more than 13,500
cleared, contractor facilities at DOD as well as 26 other government agencies. As a result, any insider
threat guidance from DOD administered through DSS would apply very broadly . By
dragooning every cleared defense employee as a potential tipster (and potentially punishing them if they do not
report), the Insider Threat Program will vastly inflate the universe of potential
leads. The sheer volume of data generated by a program that not only invites, but
requires, Defense Department workers to report suspicious behavior by
colleagues will overwhelm the smaller number of investigators actually working on
legitimate insider threats. The same big data issues have bedeviled the wider
counterterrorism enterprise in the years following 9/11 . Legislative and administrative initiatives have
prompted unprecedented information gathering by the government without the requisite
resources or technical ability to digest the data . False positives are, tragically, a
frequent occurrence and are all too often the result of profiling based on a persons
race or ethnicity. Equally tragic are the investigative failures in the overworked
system, which was unable to detect in advance, for instance, the Boston bombers or the Detroit underwear bomber despite earlier tips to the
government. In the case of Fort Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the FBIs Webster Commission Report specifically said that the post-9/11
data explosion contributed to the failure to properly assess emails between Hasan
and Anwar al-Awlaki. Similarly here, by turning the entire DOD workforce into a tips factory,
the number of leads generated by the Insider Threat Program will only increase the
static on the line. The second problem arises from the governments purported indicators of highrisk behavior. It is true that some traditional indicators of espionage like sudden and unexplained wealth, attempts to conceal foreign travel or
the mishandling of classified information may provide leads for counterintelligence agents to initiate investigations. But opening the
floodgates by requiring cleared workers to report every perceived instance of such
behavior will only stress the investigators and increase the risk of system failure.
counterintelligence services is

The current initiative, however, goes beyond these traditional indicators and expands potential red flags, including things like stress, divorce, financial
distress or other life conflicts that are commonplace. And the program gives agencies the ability to experiment more freely. As reported by McClatchy, for
instance, FBI insider threat guidance warns security personnel to be on the lookout for James Bond Wannabe[s] and people with sympathy for the

The fatal flaw in the insider threat detection system is that it

is attempting to systematize something that is highly subjective. It asks individuals
without extensive and proper training in counterintelligence to determine whether
an individual is acting suspicious. Some individuals are going to see a spy or leaker around every corner, and unfortunately
many also harbor biases that make them more likely to suspect certain individuals more than others. Racial and ethnic profiling,
especially against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians, is an unfortunate fact of life,
and government employees are as vulnerable to those biases as everyone else .
Requiring workers to report everything they think is suspicious means a larger
underdog or for a particular cause.

haystack of bad information. It also makes the needles look smaller because the data surplus strains investigators and makes it
easier for the bad guy to hide his tracks. Its worth remembering that the Angleton program was eventually dismantled not just for principled reasons but
because, pragmatically, the omnipresent suspicion and lack of independent checks on Angleton and his staff had hamstrung the CIA in its mission. Case
officers couldnt recruit sources or collaborate with friendly intelligence agencies. That operational risk, coupled with both the threat to government
employees civil liberties and the danger that this will overwhelm counter-intelligence investigators, counsel strongly against this Angletonian initiative.