Whistle-Blower Advocacy Groups Forecast Changes as a New President Takes Office

Leaders of groups that represent whistle-blowers make a point of demonstrating that they are not politically partisan.

“We pride ourselves on being an equal-opportunity irritant,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington group that represents whistle-blowers.

But some organizations do point to a purely political cause for the uptick in their workload: the president.

“It’s an unfortunate irony that President Bush has been a boon to whistle-blower groups,” says Mark Cohen, executive director of the Government Accountability Project, in Washington. “We’re the kind of organization that wishes it didn’t have to exist, but when disregard for the law and abuse of power become part of the daily grind for workers, as we’ve seen during this administration, people see the value in becoming whistle-blowers.”

Widespread Concern

Leaders of whistle-blower groups point to what they consider to be a culture of dysfunction in Washington.

A groundswell of employees from across the political spectrum have spoken out against what they see as incompetence at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, negligence at the Environmental Protection Agency, poorly conceived experiments and political interference at the Food and Drug Administration, Medicare-related fraud, and illegal or no-bid contracts made by the Pentagon. What’s more, the explosion of complaints regarding federal contractors, many of whom serve the military, has been a major factor in the backlog of nearly 1,000 unheard whistle-blower cases at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Attracting most concern: The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the entity formed to investigate claims by whistle-blowers who are federal employees, is under a cloud. Employees there have accused J. Scott Bloch, who runs the office, of summarily dismissing a backlog of cases and working to further conservative political causes. Mr. Bloch, who reports to the White House, has also been under investigation for the past three years for retaliating against whistle-blowers in his own office. (White House spokesmen declined to comment for this article.)

As whistle-blowing groups look to the future, they expect changes no matter which presidential candidate wins.

Leaders of organizations say that a John McCain presidency might hew more closely to the rule of law than Mr. Bush’s administration has.

And Mr. Ruch says a Democratic win in the November presidential election might take the spotlight off whistle-blowers, and possibly hurt fund raising. “We saw that happen when Bill Clinton was elected” in 1992, he says. “There’s this thought that the need for scrutiny would be less under a Democrat. But there’s no guarantee of that.”

Whistle-blowers will still be needed, even if the next administration inspires less mistrust and rancor, Mr. Ruch says. “Besides,” he adds, “there’s always a lot of need for oversight at the state level.”