TRANSPARENCY: Bad Things Happen To Govt. Whistleblowers.

What happened to Peterson is not unusual, according to outside watchdogs, members of Congress and a review of recent media reports involving whistleblower retaliation at numerous federal agencies.

The pattern is predictable:

The whistleblower reports wrongdoing to the inspector general.

The IG does nothing except forward the complaint to the agency.

The agency retaliates against the whistleblower.

“They never listen to whistleblowers,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime champion of protecting those who expose agency wrongdoing. “They are punishing whistleblowers instead of considering them good, patriotic Americans. They are treated like a skunk at a picnic.”

A recent twist is that agencies are now using IGs to retaliate against whistleblowers or silence them by threatening criminal investigations rather than just personnel actions, said Tom Devine, legal director for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Project.

Criminal investigations conducted by the IGs mean agencies do not have to contend with complex personnel rules or whistleblower protection laws, Devine said.

Trumped-up charges can be anything from accusing the whistleblower of making threats to disclosing classified information, Devine said. The effect is intimidation.

What Michael Barone calls “gangster government.”