Marenco
03-28-2019, 12:39 AM
95,613 Whistleblower Complaints, Trillions of Tax Dollars Unaccounted For
OVERVIEW
According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, in fiscal years 2013 – 2018, the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) received 95,613 whistleblower complaints. As trillions of tax dollars in military spending have gone unaccounted for, the DOD IG has been receiving an average of 15,936 complaints per year.
The overwhelming majority of those complaints are not investigated, and there is presently a record number of whistleblowers who have been retaliated against and silenced.
In the first three sections of this report, we will take an in-depth look into critical systemic breakdowns throughout the whistleblowing process. In the last section, we will update you on the latest Pentagon audit findings and highlight their long track record of unaccountability concerning taxpayer money and assets.
In summation, as you will read throughout this report, the evidence is clear; the Pentagon systemically silences and retaliates against thousands of whistleblowers, while losing billions in weapons and trillions in tax dollars.
Corruption throughout military spending has significantly weakened combat readiness, while diverting trillions of tax dollars away from infrastructure and burying our nation in record-breaking debt. As a top National Security priority, Congress must fulfill their Constitutional duty to begin wide-scale investigations into the epidemic of systemic corruption throughout the Pentagon.
Inspector Generals Overwhelmed By Whistleblower Complaints: “Department of Defense Fraud, Waste and Abuse Hotline, Please Hold”
The Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) has a dedicated hotline for whistleblowers to “report violations of laws, rules, or regulations; mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; and serious security incidents.”
According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), in fiscal year 2018, the DOD Whistleblower Hotline received 12,470 complaints.
As shocking as that is, the hotline is one of several ways in which whistleblowers contact the DOD IG. Overall, they get an average of 15,936 complaints per year. In fiscal years 2013 – 2018, the DOD IG received 95,613 complaints.
The overwhelming majority of these complaints are not investigated.
“A number of my colleagues and superiors told me that attempting to contact DOD IG as a whistleblower was futile, and they have been proven totally correct.
It is clear that DOD IG is either one of the most incompetent investigative agencies in the history of that profession, or is deliberately being obtuse.”
~ Kirk McGill, Senior Auditor at the Defense Contract Audit Agency, whistleblower on a $433 million contract.
As the new GAO report stated, “In fiscal year 2018, [out of 12,470 complaints] the DOD Hotline referred 3,872 cases to other entities for inquiry, and it performed oversight of 945 completion reports from DOD components.”
The 3,872 case referrals to “other entities for inquiry” may sound like progress for those whistleblowers, but most of those referrals remain unresolved. For example, the Office of Special Council (OSC) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) have been overwhelmed by a record number of whistleblower referrals and complaints, with a record-long case backlog where complaints sit for years without being resolved.
According to a 2018 GAO report on the crisis at the OSC:
“The backlog of whistleblower and prohibited personnel practices cases at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel nearly doubled… A sustained backlog puts OSC’s ability to fulfill its mission of protecting federal employees at risk. As OSC noted in its fiscal year 2017 Performance and Accountability Report, a longer backlog risks further delay for processing newly received cases.
Further, lengthy processing times delays attaining desired favorable actions and remedying wrongdoings. Without timely resolutions, whistleblowers may be discouraged from filing whistleblower disclosures.”
As critical as the problem at the OSC is, another vital whistleblower agency, the MSPB, currently has a record-long eight-year case backlog and has been effectively shutdown, as Government Executive reports:
“MSPB Likely to Remain Powerless….
MSPB lost its quorum in January 2017 – and with it, its ability to render decisions — resulting in the largest ever backlog of cases before the board.
Mark Robbins has been the lone remaining board member. He has been able to perform administrative and executive functions, but not act on any petitions for reviews of decisions made by regional administrative judges. Those judges have continued to issue rulings, more than 1,500 of which employees or agencies have appealed to the central board where they now sit in limbo.
Robbins has continued to weigh in on the appeals, but nothing can happen to them until a new member is confirmed….
Jim Eisenmann, who joined MSPB as its general counsel in 2010 before becoming its executive director, a position he held until September, said the situation at the agency is going to get worse. ‘The backlog keeps growing,’ Eisenmann said. ‘People keep waiting, including agencies.’
He added that MSPB employees themselves suffer from a lack of top political leadership…. Career attorneys will continue to prepare opinions for board members, but their work will stall at the top until a quorum is restored. ‘It’s bad all around,’ Eisenmann said.”
When it comes to the DOD IG’s “completion reports,” whistleblower case oversight and referrals to DOD component offices, evidence proves that scandalous corruption is standard operating procedure.
Even worse than being referred to an office that delays or ignores your complaint, the cases that the DOD IG refers to DOD component offices are often referrals back to the offices that the whistleblower is accusing of misconduct, which is a significant part of this crisis and has led to a record number of retaliations against whistleblowers.
The DOD IG has a well-proven track record of referring whistleblower complaint cases to the very people and offices who are being accused of corruption and crimes in those cases. As the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported, “whistleblowers felt the [DOD] IG needlessly exposed them to additional retaliation, and had they known the IG was going to refer their disclosures they would have chosen to withdraw their complaints.”
To get a more in-depth understanding of what whistleblowers are up against, in a rare case where a whistleblower was able to get justice for American taxpayers — after spending over two years battling against many retaliation attacks, which led to his demotion, involuntary transfer, unpaid suspension, character assassination and eventual resignation — Kirk McGill, who was a Senior Auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), summed up his nightmare in dealing with the DOD IG by saying:
“A number of my colleagues and superiors told me that attempting to contact DOD IG as a whistleblower was futile, and they have been proven totally correct. It is clear that DOD IG is either one of the most incompetent investigative agencies in the history of that profession, or is deliberately being obtuse.
As noted repeatedly… DOD IG was told in a disclosure that DCAA IRD [Internal Review Directorate] was compromised…. Yet, despite this fact, DOD IG continued to refer complaints to IRD as if nothing was wrong. In doing so, DOD IG handed the very people that were retaliating against me, related to the whistleblower disclosures, specific details of the allegations I was making against them.
Even Inspector Clouseau would recognize that something is wrong with this picture.”
After the DOD IG referred McGill’s case to the DCAA IRD, the DCAA IRD then engaged in a series of highly scandalous actions in attempts to discredit and silence McGill. They even falsely accused him of being a terrorist who wanted to blow up the Capitol Building, and they also made false accusations that he was mentally ill.
A Wikipedia page featuring information about McGill’s case was vandalized and derogatory comments smearing his reputation were added to the website. The IP address that made those “edits” to the Wikipedia entry came from internal DCAA servers. In addition to all of that, McGill’s social media accounts were hacked.
Keep in mind, this all happened to a Senior DOD Auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency who was vindicated after multiple Congressional hearings.
As a military spending auditor, in this case alone, McGill saved American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and this is how the DOD IG and Defense Contract Audit Agency, who oversee trillions of tax dollars, tried to silence him.
It took McGill over 10,000 hours of work, two trips to Washington D.C. and incredible personal costs — while under constant intimidation and retaliation attacks, which ultimately led to him resigning — to eventually get justice for American taxpayers.
How many people in the military have the time or money needed to pull that off?
McGill’s heroic battle featured common obstacles that many DOD whistleblowers face. In a letter to Congress, McGill further highlighted the DOD IG’s systemic failure:
“DOD IG closed this allegation without discussing the matter with me directly in any way. It then either closed or referred every complaint (with two exceptions) right back to DCAA-IRD.
I do not believe that any faith can be placed in DOD IG if it passes the buck to the very people accused of the misconduct in question, putting them on notice of exactly what they are accused of, and who did the accusing.
Frankly, DOD IG’s conduct is, in and of itself, worthy of Congressional attention and possible action; no whistleblower with two brain cells to rub together would trust the DOD IG after this conduct, and that should seriously concern the Congress that relies on such whistleblowers to uncover Executive Branch misconduct.”
Not surprisingly, with the DOD IG working in partnership with agencies and officials who are being accused of corruption and crimes, there are now a record number of whistleblowers who have been retaliated against and silenced.
Here are several key findings from the GAO’s investigation into DOD whistleblower reprisal cases, which were also highlighted in my previous report:
“According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, over 1000 whistleblowers have been retaliated against and silenced at the Office of the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG). Over a three-year period, the DOD IG closed 1094 whistleblower retaliation cases without investigating them. A stunning 91% of whistleblower reprisal complaints formally filed at the DOD IG are shutdown without any investigation.
On average, one whistleblower is retaliated against and silenced at the DOD IG every single day, 365 days a year. Over the time frame that the GAO investigated, DOD audits reported $6.87 trillion ($6,871,000,000,000) unaccounted for.
According to publicly available data from the DOD IG’s semi-annual reports to Congress, from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2016, they dismissed 86% of Military Reprisal cases, and found in favor of whistleblowers in only 0.9% of cases.
Citing that data, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said the DOD IG ‘substantiated only 7 out of over 1,300 complaints received.’ Over that time frame, DOD audits reported $8.58 trillion ($8,582,000,000,000) unaccounted for.
When it comes to cases of retaliation against whistleblowers, the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) appears to have an even worse track record than the DOD IG. An internal review of 190 whistleblower reprisal cases from six national security agencies revealed that the IC IG ruled in favor of only one whistleblower.
The IC IG ‘ruled against 99% of intelligence community employees who claimed they were retaliated against for blowing the whistle.'”
To make matters even worse, during the GAO’s audit of reprisal investigations, as scandalous as their findings were, the DOD IG was caught manipulating case records to make their whistleblower reprisal track record look better than it actually is. As POGO reported, the DOD IG’s manipulation of case records “had a significant impact on the GAO’s findings.” Therefore, when it comes to whistleblower retaliation throughout the Pentagon, the crisis is even worse than the GAO’s report reveals.
In Congressional testimony, POGO said they have “also heard directly from whistleblowers within DOD IG who have expressed serious concerns about the integrity of the office’s processes and investigations, including pressure to back-fill whistleblower case files for the GAO’s review. It is extremely rare to have whistleblowers from an IG shop come forward, but in this case we have a number of them.”
In addition, the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) was also caught trying to cover-up their whistleblower reprisal records. The IC IG’s internal review of whistleblower reprisal cases was abruptly shutdown when then-acting head IC IG Wayne Stone, “sequestered the mountain of documents and data produced in the inspection, the product of three staff-years of work. The incident was never publicly disclosed by the office, and escaped mention in the unclassified version of the IC IG’s semiannual report to Congress.”
POGO obtained a leaked copy of the report, which they summarized by saying “the document produced by the Intelligence Community’s IG, which covers 17 U.S. spy agencies, found that many components are not following, ‘legally mandated… policies, procedures and standards…. Causing non-substantiation of reprisal claims, incomplete investigations, and for complaints not to be processed.’… As evidence, the document reports that the Intelligence Community IG substantiated ‘only one reprisal allegation’ during a six-year period… and that case took 742 days to complete – well beyond the 240-day limit prescribed in regulation.”
Here are two quotes from the IC IG’s internal review report that sum up the crisis:
“The deficiencies in reprisal protections policies, procedures, and standards in the evaluated agencies are causing a failure to provide reprisal protections for individuals making protected disclosures.”
“A complainant alleging reprisal for making a protected disclosure has a minimal chance to have a complaint processed and adjudicated in a timely and complete manner.”
For more: https://degraw.media/pentagon-95613-whistleblower-complaints-trillions-of-tax-dollars-unaccounted-for/?mc_cid=f228d752fc&mc_eid=7f301b7b3b
OVERVIEW
According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, in fiscal years 2013 – 2018, the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) received 95,613 whistleblower complaints. As trillions of tax dollars in military spending have gone unaccounted for, the DOD IG has been receiving an average of 15,936 complaints per year.
The overwhelming majority of those complaints are not investigated, and there is presently a record number of whistleblowers who have been retaliated against and silenced.
In the first three sections of this report, we will take an in-depth look into critical systemic breakdowns throughout the whistleblowing process. In the last section, we will update you on the latest Pentagon audit findings and highlight their long track record of unaccountability concerning taxpayer money and assets.
In summation, as you will read throughout this report, the evidence is clear; the Pentagon systemically silences and retaliates against thousands of whistleblowers, while losing billions in weapons and trillions in tax dollars.
Corruption throughout military spending has significantly weakened combat readiness, while diverting trillions of tax dollars away from infrastructure and burying our nation in record-breaking debt. As a top National Security priority, Congress must fulfill their Constitutional duty to begin wide-scale investigations into the epidemic of systemic corruption throughout the Pentagon.
Inspector Generals Overwhelmed By Whistleblower Complaints: “Department of Defense Fraud, Waste and Abuse Hotline, Please Hold”
The Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) has a dedicated hotline for whistleblowers to “report violations of laws, rules, or regulations; mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; and serious security incidents.”
According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), in fiscal year 2018, the DOD Whistleblower Hotline received 12,470 complaints.
As shocking as that is, the hotline is one of several ways in which whistleblowers contact the DOD IG. Overall, they get an average of 15,936 complaints per year. In fiscal years 2013 – 2018, the DOD IG received 95,613 complaints.
The overwhelming majority of these complaints are not investigated.
“A number of my colleagues and superiors told me that attempting to contact DOD IG as a whistleblower was futile, and they have been proven totally correct.
It is clear that DOD IG is either one of the most incompetent investigative agencies in the history of that profession, or is deliberately being obtuse.”
~ Kirk McGill, Senior Auditor at the Defense Contract Audit Agency, whistleblower on a $433 million contract.
As the new GAO report stated, “In fiscal year 2018, [out of 12,470 complaints] the DOD Hotline referred 3,872 cases to other entities for inquiry, and it performed oversight of 945 completion reports from DOD components.”
The 3,872 case referrals to “other entities for inquiry” may sound like progress for those whistleblowers, but most of those referrals remain unresolved. For example, the Office of Special Council (OSC) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) have been overwhelmed by a record number of whistleblower referrals and complaints, with a record-long case backlog where complaints sit for years without being resolved.
According to a 2018 GAO report on the crisis at the OSC:
“The backlog of whistleblower and prohibited personnel practices cases at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel nearly doubled… A sustained backlog puts OSC’s ability to fulfill its mission of protecting federal employees at risk. As OSC noted in its fiscal year 2017 Performance and Accountability Report, a longer backlog risks further delay for processing newly received cases.
Further, lengthy processing times delays attaining desired favorable actions and remedying wrongdoings. Without timely resolutions, whistleblowers may be discouraged from filing whistleblower disclosures.”
As critical as the problem at the OSC is, another vital whistleblower agency, the MSPB, currently has a record-long eight-year case backlog and has been effectively shutdown, as Government Executive reports:
“MSPB Likely to Remain Powerless….
MSPB lost its quorum in January 2017 – and with it, its ability to render decisions — resulting in the largest ever backlog of cases before the board.
Mark Robbins has been the lone remaining board member. He has been able to perform administrative and executive functions, but not act on any petitions for reviews of decisions made by regional administrative judges. Those judges have continued to issue rulings, more than 1,500 of which employees or agencies have appealed to the central board where they now sit in limbo.
Robbins has continued to weigh in on the appeals, but nothing can happen to them until a new member is confirmed….
Jim Eisenmann, who joined MSPB as its general counsel in 2010 before becoming its executive director, a position he held until September, said the situation at the agency is going to get worse. ‘The backlog keeps growing,’ Eisenmann said. ‘People keep waiting, including agencies.’
He added that MSPB employees themselves suffer from a lack of top political leadership…. Career attorneys will continue to prepare opinions for board members, but their work will stall at the top until a quorum is restored. ‘It’s bad all around,’ Eisenmann said.”
When it comes to the DOD IG’s “completion reports,” whistleblower case oversight and referrals to DOD component offices, evidence proves that scandalous corruption is standard operating procedure.
Even worse than being referred to an office that delays or ignores your complaint, the cases that the DOD IG refers to DOD component offices are often referrals back to the offices that the whistleblower is accusing of misconduct, which is a significant part of this crisis and has led to a record number of retaliations against whistleblowers.
The DOD IG has a well-proven track record of referring whistleblower complaint cases to the very people and offices who are being accused of corruption and crimes in those cases. As the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported, “whistleblowers felt the [DOD] IG needlessly exposed them to additional retaliation, and had they known the IG was going to refer their disclosures they would have chosen to withdraw their complaints.”
To get a more in-depth understanding of what whistleblowers are up against, in a rare case where a whistleblower was able to get justice for American taxpayers — after spending over two years battling against many retaliation attacks, which led to his demotion, involuntary transfer, unpaid suspension, character assassination and eventual resignation — Kirk McGill, who was a Senior Auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), summed up his nightmare in dealing with the DOD IG by saying:
“A number of my colleagues and superiors told me that attempting to contact DOD IG as a whistleblower was futile, and they have been proven totally correct. It is clear that DOD IG is either one of the most incompetent investigative agencies in the history of that profession, or is deliberately being obtuse.
As noted repeatedly… DOD IG was told in a disclosure that DCAA IRD [Internal Review Directorate] was compromised…. Yet, despite this fact, DOD IG continued to refer complaints to IRD as if nothing was wrong. In doing so, DOD IG handed the very people that were retaliating against me, related to the whistleblower disclosures, specific details of the allegations I was making against them.
Even Inspector Clouseau would recognize that something is wrong with this picture.”
After the DOD IG referred McGill’s case to the DCAA IRD, the DCAA IRD then engaged in a series of highly scandalous actions in attempts to discredit and silence McGill. They even falsely accused him of being a terrorist who wanted to blow up the Capitol Building, and they also made false accusations that he was mentally ill.
A Wikipedia page featuring information about McGill’s case was vandalized and derogatory comments smearing his reputation were added to the website. The IP address that made those “edits” to the Wikipedia entry came from internal DCAA servers. In addition to all of that, McGill’s social media accounts were hacked.
Keep in mind, this all happened to a Senior DOD Auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency who was vindicated after multiple Congressional hearings.
As a military spending auditor, in this case alone, McGill saved American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and this is how the DOD IG and Defense Contract Audit Agency, who oversee trillions of tax dollars, tried to silence him.
It took McGill over 10,000 hours of work, two trips to Washington D.C. and incredible personal costs — while under constant intimidation and retaliation attacks, which ultimately led to him resigning — to eventually get justice for American taxpayers.
How many people in the military have the time or money needed to pull that off?
McGill’s heroic battle featured common obstacles that many DOD whistleblowers face. In a letter to Congress, McGill further highlighted the DOD IG’s systemic failure:
“DOD IG closed this allegation without discussing the matter with me directly in any way. It then either closed or referred every complaint (with two exceptions) right back to DCAA-IRD.
I do not believe that any faith can be placed in DOD IG if it passes the buck to the very people accused of the misconduct in question, putting them on notice of exactly what they are accused of, and who did the accusing.
Frankly, DOD IG’s conduct is, in and of itself, worthy of Congressional attention and possible action; no whistleblower with two brain cells to rub together would trust the DOD IG after this conduct, and that should seriously concern the Congress that relies on such whistleblowers to uncover Executive Branch misconduct.”
Not surprisingly, with the DOD IG working in partnership with agencies and officials who are being accused of corruption and crimes, there are now a record number of whistleblowers who have been retaliated against and silenced.
Here are several key findings from the GAO’s investigation into DOD whistleblower reprisal cases, which were also highlighted in my previous report:
“According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, over 1000 whistleblowers have been retaliated against and silenced at the Office of the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG). Over a three-year period, the DOD IG closed 1094 whistleblower retaliation cases without investigating them. A stunning 91% of whistleblower reprisal complaints formally filed at the DOD IG are shutdown without any investigation.
On average, one whistleblower is retaliated against and silenced at the DOD IG every single day, 365 days a year. Over the time frame that the GAO investigated, DOD audits reported $6.87 trillion ($6,871,000,000,000) unaccounted for.
According to publicly available data from the DOD IG’s semi-annual reports to Congress, from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2016, they dismissed 86% of Military Reprisal cases, and found in favor of whistleblowers in only 0.9% of cases.
Citing that data, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) said the DOD IG ‘substantiated only 7 out of over 1,300 complaints received.’ Over that time frame, DOD audits reported $8.58 trillion ($8,582,000,000,000) unaccounted for.
When it comes to cases of retaliation against whistleblowers, the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) appears to have an even worse track record than the DOD IG. An internal review of 190 whistleblower reprisal cases from six national security agencies revealed that the IC IG ruled in favor of only one whistleblower.
The IC IG ‘ruled against 99% of intelligence community employees who claimed they were retaliated against for blowing the whistle.'”
To make matters even worse, during the GAO’s audit of reprisal investigations, as scandalous as their findings were, the DOD IG was caught manipulating case records to make their whistleblower reprisal track record look better than it actually is. As POGO reported, the DOD IG’s manipulation of case records “had a significant impact on the GAO’s findings.” Therefore, when it comes to whistleblower retaliation throughout the Pentagon, the crisis is even worse than the GAO’s report reveals.
In Congressional testimony, POGO said they have “also heard directly from whistleblowers within DOD IG who have expressed serious concerns about the integrity of the office’s processes and investigations, including pressure to back-fill whistleblower case files for the GAO’s review. It is extremely rare to have whistleblowers from an IG shop come forward, but in this case we have a number of them.”
In addition, the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) was also caught trying to cover-up their whistleblower reprisal records. The IC IG’s internal review of whistleblower reprisal cases was abruptly shutdown when then-acting head IC IG Wayne Stone, “sequestered the mountain of documents and data produced in the inspection, the product of three staff-years of work. The incident was never publicly disclosed by the office, and escaped mention in the unclassified version of the IC IG’s semiannual report to Congress.”
POGO obtained a leaked copy of the report, which they summarized by saying “the document produced by the Intelligence Community’s IG, which covers 17 U.S. spy agencies, found that many components are not following, ‘legally mandated… policies, procedures and standards…. Causing non-substantiation of reprisal claims, incomplete investigations, and for complaints not to be processed.’… As evidence, the document reports that the Intelligence Community IG substantiated ‘only one reprisal allegation’ during a six-year period… and that case took 742 days to complete – well beyond the 240-day limit prescribed in regulation.”
Here are two quotes from the IC IG’s internal review report that sum up the crisis:
“The deficiencies in reprisal protections policies, procedures, and standards in the evaluated agencies are causing a failure to provide reprisal protections for individuals making protected disclosures.”
“A complainant alleging reprisal for making a protected disclosure has a minimal chance to have a complaint processed and adjudicated in a timely and complete manner.”
For more: https://degraw.media/pentagon-95613-whistleblower-complaints-trillions-of-tax-dollars-unaccounted-for/?mc_cid=f228d752fc&mc_eid=7f301b7b3b