Obama Administration Harsh on Whistleblowers

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Obama administration is being accused of getting away with crackdowns on government whistleblowers that President George W. Bush would have been publicly admonished for.

 
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has allegedly gone after an ICE agent who told the media in March about new quotas for immigration arrests.
 
In another example, the Department of Defense is restricting media access to military officers following General Stanley McChrystal’s comments to Rolling Stone magazine, and the Pentagon has gone after an Army intelligence officer who leaked a controversial video of a U.S. air strike in Iraq.
 
“Some of these prosecutions wouldn’t have happened when [George W.] Bush was president, because there would have been a more partisan backlash,” Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, told The Washington Post. “The problem when you have a Democratic president—it’s not like Obama is signing the indictment—but it mutes the criticism.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 

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