Why the FBI has so few whistleblowers

By Monica Showalter

If there is any question as to why a hyper-politicized FBI has failed to attract many whistleblowers, Thursday's coming congressional testimony from real FBI whistleblowers should show how they treat their whistleblowers.

According to JustTheNews:

Three FBI whistleblowers will testify to Congress on Thursday about the bureau's alleged retaliatory efforts against them for questioning FBI practices and narratives on sensitive political issues.

As House lawmakers continue to investigate the politicization of federal agencies under the Biden administration, numerous individuals within those organizations have come forward with claims of misconduct at the highest levels, and have often reported severe professional backlash from their superiors in the process.

Just the News has obtained the prepared opening statements of whistleblowers Marcus Allen, Garret O'Boyle, and Stephen Friend, who will testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The three FBI special agents who did blow the whistle were treated to an astonishingly vindictive retaliation -- starting with pullings of their security clearances, which left them unable to work -- and a whole host of other petty, mean-spirited actions that would put the KGB to shame.

Whistleblower Marcus Allen, using internal channels, not the press, questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray's congressional testimony claiming there were no FBI informants among the Trumpsters on January 6, politely suggesting that perhaps the Director was being misled by his own men who were involved with such activity.

What did he get for that?

Allen, on Thursday, will tell Congress that the bureau subsequently suspended his security clearance, questioned his loyalty to the United States, and accused him of holding

"conspiratorial views."

More specifically, he got his clearance pulled while they "investigated" and while he was waiting for this big investigation of some kind, got his paycheck withheld, too. To make matters worse, the FBI brass refused to let him find some kind of outside employment while he waited for them to 'investigate' his questionings, apparently trying to starve him to death -- or more likely, force him to resign when he got hungry. They also yanked his health insurance, which of course, would put him in violation of federal Obamacare law on mandatory health care coverage. Good luck if anyone in his family got sick.

There also was FBI Special Agent Garret O'Boyle who questioned the FBI's targeting of pro-life activists even as radical leftist graffitied, trashed, menaced and set fire to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers without consequence.

For him it started with a demotion to a remote outpost. Then as the move was happening, the bureau decided to suspend him instead, rendering his family homeless and keeping his furniture and household effects en route for weeks, basically, all his stuff.

That's the kind of stuff Castro does to dissenters and people who try to flee over in Cuba. Even going along with their humiliating demotions is a recipe for worse to come.

As for Special Agent Stephen Friend, who internally criticized their use of SWAT teams and manipulation of crime statistics, they had a special bowl of hate for him -- not just a suspended security clearance, but special leaks of his private HIPAA-protected health care information to the New York Times. They also refused to give him his training records, presumably to defend himself or to show to a future employer, violating the Privacy Act, refused to let him seek outside employment as he waited out their suspension and issued an illegal gag order declaring he couldn't talk to his own attorneys.

It's beyond creepy stuff, and not just based on bad internal FBI behavior, but on bad behavior above the bureau at Merrick Garland's politicized Department of Justice.

According to trade journal Government Executive, a rule is coming up to strengthen whistleblower protections for FBI employees:

The Justice Department published a proposed rule on Wednesday that would revise regulations on FBI whistleblower policies. The new rule would include changes from a 2012 presidential policy directive on protecting whistleblowers with access to classified information, and the 2016 FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2016, both enacted under the Obama administration.

It's not there now. It seems the important detail is that it would still fall short of allowing agents to have their cases heard in court. They will instead have to rely on Merrick Garland's politicized Justice Department to make the final rulings -- which just happens to be the agency directing the bureau to make its violations.

Creepier still, a court ruling from six years ago, seems to leave the bureau/DoJ exempt from sanctions for bad behavior, in this case, that of a whistleblower who reported FBI agents using company aircraft to solicit hookers:

FBI employees do not have the right to defend themselves in federal court or a third-party appeals agency against adverse personnel actions using whistleblower retaliation, according to a recent ruling from the Federal Circuit.

That leaves all whistleblowers, even those who report hooker behavior and let's not even think of political offenses, to the tender mercies of Merrick Garland's DoJ if they have a problem with retaliation for their whistleblowing. Just leave it up to Merrick for a fair ruling.

In an atmosphere like that, who would want to be a whistleblower? Who would dare it. One of the whistleblowers who came forward anyway, O'Boyle, spoke of an Orwellian environment in the bureau now, while whistleblower Friend participated in a live-talk panel on Twitter I heard where either he or a colleague described most agents as being generally conservative in line with most law enforcement and military personnel.

But with this kind of trash going on from Biden's politicization of agencies, who would want to stand up or speak out? That three agents did is remarkable testimony as to their courage and fortitude, given what has happened to them.

Rep. Jim Jordan, who is going to hear this testimony today, will have a hell of a case for defunding the bureau or at least cutting its funds for its new headquarters until it cleans its politicized act up. Not only is it outrageous that whistleblowers should be treated in the positively Stasi-like way they have been treated, it's proof positive that the FBI is no longer an apolitical law enforcement agency interested only in justice, but a politicized organization that targets opponents with Castro- and Honecker-like tactics. The case for either reforms or defunding after testimony like this signals that it should be done on the double.

Image: kmf164, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.5