Orange County Register: Whistleblowers’ Rights May Hinge on Ladera Ranch Man’s Case
GAP client Robert MacLean heads to Washington D.C. tomorrow for the Supreme Court hearing of his whistleblower retaliation case. MacLean, a former federal air marshal, was fired after exposing a government plan to suspend air marshal service on long-distance commercial flights at the same time terrorists were threatening to target U.S. aircraft. If the ruling against MacLean is allowed to stand, it could “chill the conviction of would-be whistleblowers across America.” Legal expert Thomas Campbell has reviewed the case and predicts that the Supreme Court will affirm the lower U.S. Court of Appeals decision vindicating MacLean.
Key Quote: “The law protects whistleblowers like MacLean from … retaliation so that Congress, and ultimately the public, can benefit from their willingness to bring to light serious problems that government agencies would prefer not to talk about,” says MacLean’s brief to the Supremes.
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[Campbell stated:] “The Federal Circuit decided the case correctly. I suspect the Supreme Court will affirm this reading, though there might be as many as 4 votes the other way, since the Supreme Court did not have to take the case, they could have let the Federal Circuit opinion stand.”
The Daily Tarheel: Faculty Call for UNC to Apologize to Mary Willingham
After a recent report revealed years of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), faculty have expressed their frustrations with how the school treated whistleblower Mary Willingham. She is a former UNC-CH literacy specialist who faced retaliation after raising many of the concerns revealed in the report. One professor stated that had the university listened to Willingham back in 2012, “the institution would have been spared years of humiliation and untold financial costs.” GAP President Louis Clark is quoted.
Key Quote: Louis Clark, the president of the Washington, D.C.-based Government Accountability Project, said organizations should not be in denial about how bad the problem might be.
“For an institution to be as transparent and ethical as it would like, there needs to be an institutional desire to know about any problems,” he said.
For Willingham, the worst part of the ordeal was the hypocrisy — that the University promoted free speech without acting on what people said.
“I had a chance to say what I wanted to say,” Willingham said. “I kept saying it but nobody was listening.”
Boston Globe: Edward Snowden’s Story Unfolds in Chilling ‘Citizenfour’
This review of Citizenfour, the new documentary about NSA whistleblower and GAP client Edward Snowden, urges everyone to go see the “profoundly chilling” film. GAP client and former NSA technical director-turned-whistleblower William Binney is also featured in the film, stating that “a week after 9/11, they began actively spying on everyone in this country.”
Key Quote: “Citzenfour” is prosaic in its presentation and profoundly chilling in its details, and if you think Snowden is a traitor, you should probably see it. If you think he’s a hero, you should probably see it. If you haven’t made up your mind — well, you get the idea. Certainly if you think no one knows whom you’re calling, what you’re texting, or what websites you’re patronizing, you should think again.