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The Defense Intelligence Community Whistleblower Program (DICWP) is a sub-mission of the Department of Defense Whistleblower Program. In administering the DICWP, the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense (DoDIG) balances the competing national security and separation of powers interests raised by whistleblowing within the Defense Intelligence Community.The DoDIG provides a safe, authorized conduit for Defense Department whistleblowers to disclose classified information. The Inspector General also has authority to investigate whistleblowing reprisal allegations filed by civilian and military members of the Defense Intelligence Community. It therefore accepts the disclosures and provides source protection for those providing the information. The Department of Defense funds and supervises much of the Republic’s intelligence gathering. DoD IG accordingly provides protection to a large number of civilian and military intelligence personnel.
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Defense Intelligence Community & Whistleblower Protection
The Defense Intelligence Community includes the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), all military service and combatant command intelligence components, as well as those DoD components providing counter-intelligence mission capability. The DoD does not receive disclosures or investigate reprisal involving intelligence personnel outside of DoD, such as persons employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA or Act) was passed in response to public concern over the efficiency, integrity, and accountability of the federal workforce. The Act codified the merit system principles governing the federal workforce. One of these statutory principles states that employees should be protected from reprisal in response to whistleblowing. The CSRA provided the first substantive protections for agency whistleblowers, creating the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board. A little over a decade later, the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (WPA) enhanced CSRA whistleblower protections. The WPA recognized that whistleblowing federal employees “serve the public interest by assisting in the elimination of fraud, waste, abuse, and unnecessary government expenditures.” Through the WPA, whistleblowers gained an independent right to pursue an appeal to MSPB.
Neither the CRSA nor the WPA provided protection for employees of the Defense Intelligence Community. The Church Committee hearings concurrently led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). To enable and implement the FISA, the Department of Defense issued DOD Regulation 5240.R. Procedures 14 and 15 of this regulation provided whistleblower protection for Defense Intelligence Community service members and employees reporting “questionable activities.” In a separate move, the Congress legislated to protect its own access to Defense Intelligence Community whistleblowers through the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (ICWPA). Whistleblower reprisal allegations under both the FISA and the ICWPA can be docketed and filed through the Defense Hotline. The ICWPA’s protection, however, is narrow. The ICWPA does not contain general protections against reprisal. Subject-matter experts in the field have suggested that a more appropriate name for the ICWPA would be the Intelligence Community Disclosure Act because the statute addresses only a very specific dilemma, namely, how one reports wrongdoing to the U.S. Congress when the wrongdoing involves classified information.
Recent Defense Intelligence & Counter-intelligence Cases
Notable examples of the Defense Intelligence Community Whistleblower Program work within the last three years include:
As partners of DoD IG in the Defense Intelligence Community Whistleblower Program, the NSA and DIA are thought by subject-matter experts in the field to be at the forefront of whistleblower protection within the general intelligence and counterintelligence community. By fostering these partnerships, as well as utilizing the IG Act of 1978, DoD IG investigates claims of whistleblower reprisal from the defense intelligence community in order to protect all of its employees from reprisal.