should the executive branch?

>how dare some woman reveal that her former employer a “news company” was suppressing evidence about a credibly accused pedophile/human trafficker

-icepeon/abc/cbs

Apples and oranges. The whistle blower statute exists so that government employees can report wrongdoing without facing retaliation. Then the inspector general investigates and determines whether it's a valid complaint. Legally and ethically, it would be wrong to retaliate against a whistle blower who went through the proper channels.

Weird that the self-professed civil libertarians here are all of a sudden so critical of whistle blowing. Maybe Rand Paul should propose a law repealing the statute?

This post was edited by IceMage on Nov 8 2019 07:59am

Where did you get that from? Have you even glanced at the ICWPA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Community_Whistleblower_Protection_Act
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-105publ272/html/PLAW-105publ272.htm

The statute offers no protections against retaliation or firing. It offers no guarantees of anonymity beyond "the ICIG shall not disclose the identity" (not anyone else) and does not give any remedy or recourse to IC employees who use it. Indeed, as remarked by Gimble in that link, the act's title is a misnomer because it can't be called a whistleblower protection act if it doesn't protect whistleblowers. All it does in essence is provide a legal channel for IC employees to disclose classified information to politicians in the house intelligence committee- by going through the ICIG and director first, seeing if their complaint is valid, and whether or not its passed along once that process is completed they're allowed to.

And furthermore, Eric Ciaramella did not go through the proper channels. Refer to the text of the ICWPA:



Its quite explicitly clear, he's only allowed to go to congress under the ICWPA if he goes through the ICIG first and furnishes the complaint to him and obtains his direction.
Yet we already know that Eric Ciaramella went to Adam Schiff before going to the ICIG, then concealed that from the ICIG;

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/whistleblower-spoke-to-schiff-aides-before-filing-complaint
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/us/politics/adam-schiff-whistleblower.html
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/schiff-wrong-on-whistleblower-contact/

As such, he's not a valid whistleblower under the statute that wouldn't protect him as a whistleblower anyway. He did not go through legal channels.
Fortunately for him, just like the ICWPA has no remedy for those who use it, it also has no punishment for those who don't. There's very little in the way of laws concerning classified information relevant to what this guy did and least of all for leaking directly to congress, which means that he's not necessarily an "illegal leaker" either- particularly through his passing of word-of-mouth information rather than classified documents. Maybe an overreaching prosecutor from Robert Mueller's goon squad could invent some legal fiction to prosecute him, but back in civil libertarian land, you can't prosecute someone where a law doesn't make it illegal.

So in review- there's no statute that exists so IC employees can whistleblow without retaliation. The whistleblower did not go through proper channels. Legally there's nothing barring retaliating against him, leaving that exclusively to the domain of ethics and politics. The ICIG was supposed to investigate and determine if its a valid complaint, but Ciaramella concealed the fact he went to Schiff first from the ICIG. And the only 'rules' that anyone really broke was when Adam Schiff failed to disclose the outside information brought to him to all members of the committee (see HIC rules and procedures 9.4), and I guess you could argue that the whistleblower 'lacked candor' in concealing his contact with Schiff from the ICIG, a fireable offense in the FBI but I'm not sure about the CIA, I'd have to look it up.

Fair enough. Although there was a law passed in 2014 which does outline some protections:
https://www.va.gov/ABOUT_VA/docs/President-Policy-Directive-PPD-19.pdf



The whistle blower provided a vague outline of what the complaint would be to a Schiff intel aide in an effort to seek guidance. Yes, he should've included that in the whistle blower form, but it doesn't negate the fact that filing the complaint to the ICIG was a legal and proper process.

This post was edited by IceMage on Nov 8 2019 09:48am

is that a distinction? Schiff clearly knew about the Ukraine / Trump / Phone call stuff before the story went live, he was tweeting about it, couldn't have been that vague.
I don't think any reasonable definition of leaking or whistleblowing can provide for a loophole where you simply relay the information through a 3rd party, or in this case a 2nd party since he was working for Schiff. Its the same action, same consequence, just an extra step. Its no different than McCabe or Comey hiding behind the proxies they used to relay leaks to the media. If there actually was going to be a prosecution for 'leaking classified information', the substance and nature of the leak and recipient being congress notwithstanding, it wouldn't matter that the whistleblower went to an aide instead of directly to schiff. It would be an irrelevant quibble.

But I think there's a good argument that it does negate filing the ocmplaint to the ICIG as a 'legal and proper process'. I mean, if the statute says you shall not go to congress without the ICIG's directive, and you first go to congress, then apply for the ICIG permission- doesn't that really negate the process? If a demolition company had to apply for proper permits and approval from the city to knock down my house with a wrecking ball, and they instead simply went and knocked down my house with a wrecking ball without permission, then after-the-fact went to city hall and applied for permission- kind of violates the requirement for approval, doesn't it?

Its all one big irrelevant quibble over definitions though. Because if the whistleblower has basically nothing to protect him either way and its not a crime what he did either way, all it winds up being is a way for partisans to spin the story in a different light and take the same set of facts and circumstances and cast them as either "The leaker scheming to undermine Trump" or "The whistleblower exposing what he believes is wrongdoing". They aren't mutually exclusive.

It's not that hard to just accurately describe what happened. It's literally an extra word. Schiff aide. I don't feel like reviewing Schiff's tweets from months ago, but the NYT story says that the whistle blower provided a vague outline of the complaint. My recollection is when Schiff started talking about this, it wasn't even clear whether the president was the official accused of wrongdoing.

Well, there's two issues. One is, does providing a vague outline to a congressional intel aide in an attempt to seek guidance qualify as giving your complaint to the intel committee? Second, I don't see why going to an intel aide for guidance first would somehow disqualify you from then going through the whistle blower process with the ICIG. As you said, the whistle blower form has a section where you should say whether you talked to anyone in Congress about the complaint.

I agree that this discussion is kind of irrelevant.

"Schiff aide" and "Schiff" are in this context synonymous, unless the implication is that the aide was operating independently of Schiff, which beggars belief.

The origins are relevant. Trump gets a pass on so many questionable actions because there has been an immense effort on the part of the bureaucracy to get rid of him.

I mean, if the information is making its way to Adam Schiff and it clued him into harping on about Trump, Ukraine & the phone call, I don't think it can be excused as vague enough or indirect enough to have any distinction from 'leaking the complaint to Schiff'
I do think that given what we know right now, there is reason to speculate that the 'whistleblower' was a long-time leaker who had been cluing Schiff's office into this sort of palace intrigue for some time (Schiff's staff were Eric Ciaramella's former coworkers and buddies from the CIA, and Ciaramella has been named in previous leaks). And its an open question just who's idea it was to file a whistleblower report and open an impeachment probe based on it. We already have reporting from the NYT/etc saying it was Schiff's office's recommendation that he go to the ICIG with it. Was this opportunism as democrats jump on a complaint brought to them, or was it political strategy to hoist up their 'asset' in the CIA to manufacture their casus belli for impeachment? By all accounts, he was a true believer in Euromaidan and seething anti-Trump, so he could have gone either way.

From the legal lens, from the procedural lens, it might be all irrelevancies. From the ethical and political lenses, its fodder for a narrative and a big liability for Adam Schiff.
This is why republicans want Schiff and the whistleblower to testify so badly that they're even rumbling about subpoenaing him to the senate, before the house has even concluded its probe- which would be a pretty ludicrous gambit.

Is there a world in which we could look at the same facts of the events and have disputes over geopolitics, domestic politics, ethics and procedure and not contest the facts yet arrive at the two very different scenarios of "Biden conducted lawful foreign policy, Trump extorted Ukraine, Ciaramella blew the whistle, and Schiff and Pelosi brought fair impeachment proceedings" vs "Biden extorted Ukraine, Trump conducted lawful foreign policy, Ciaramella and Schiff conspired to bring a witch hunt of impeachment"

I think one element that sticks out is the double standard and hypocrisy over Biden's conduct and Trump's phone call. You could ethically excuse Trump looking into Ukraine as the only recourse to actions outside of US jurisdiction, but I don't see how you could excuse Biden for the sovereignty of the executive to conduct foreign policy regardless of if it had personal gain, then turn around and say Trump doing the same thing is illegitimate. In that case it boils down to people saying crap like that "our allies all supported it so it was okay", as if we don't hold elections for president to decide which policy reigns. Or at its most basic, its "Its okay when we do it because we're right and you're wrong"

This post was edited by Goomshill on Nov 8 2019 12:09pm

For someone reading this sentence and not knowing the story, what is the obvious meaning? Well, that the whistle blower went directly to Adam Schiff.

If the right-wing is constructing a narrative of a partisan whistleblower coordinating with a supposedly partisan intel committee chair, it's useful to pretend the whistle blower went right to him. The fact that the whistle blower hasn't met Schiff, and only met with his aide, isn't helpful to the conspiracy narrative. So it is a worthwhile distinction.

The origins are only relevant in a political sense. The whistle blower's complaint was extremely accurate, as the various testimonies have shown.

This post was edited by IceMage on Nov 8 2019 12:10pm