This podcast, featuring our Legal Director Tom Devine, was originally published here.

How Whistle-Blower Protections Can Be A Trap

This week, the spotlight turned to the anonymous individual who filed a complaint about presidential abuse of power and a related cover-up in the White House. He used the legal channels available to him but it wasn’t until Congress put pressure on the Acting Director of National Intelligence that the complaint became public.

Tom Devine is the Government Accountability Project’s Legal Director, where he advises, represents and tries, often against the odds, to protect government whistle-blowers. For more than 40 years he’s helped over 7,000 individuals defend themselves against retaliation. And he knows the law. He says that the US was the country first in the world to grant whistle-blower protections, but that its safeguards now lag behind those of most other democracies.

And what’s worse, there’s a caste system here. Government whistle-blowers have reasonable protections in most every sector but intelligence. Blow the whistle in that community, on anything, and you are left out in the cold.