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Congress steps in to protect whistleblower December 14, 1998 Righting wrongs in federal law enforcement isn’t easy. Dr. Frederick Whitehurst can vouch for that. Whitehurst was an FBI chemist who in 1995 charged that FBI Crime Laboratory managers lacked proper training and routinely ignored or tried to cover-up problems in handling evidence. He said FBI labs were dirty and dusty, which made accurately analyzing chemical evidence all but impossible. He said lab employees sometimes lied as witnesses to bolster government cases, and that he discovered some lab officials had rewritten reports he and others had produced for high-profile cases, such as the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, so that they more closely adhered to the government version of what happened. Whitehurst began reporting his concerns to OPR in 1986, and continued to do so for several years. He got no response. In the spring of 1993, he began sending letters to the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General. The Inspector General is charged with promoting economy, efficiency and effectiveness at the Justice Department and investigates individuals who are accused of financial, contractual or criminal misconduct in the department’s programs and operations. Inspector General Michael Bromwich said that while his department found "serious and significant" deficiencies in the way the FBI laboratories operated, Whitehurst’s allegations that "many employees within the lab repeatedly committed perjury, fabricated evidence, obstructed justice, and suppressed exculpatory evidence" could not be substantiated. As soon as the Justice Department received the report, Whitehurst was suspended from his $95,000-a-year job and escorted from the building by security. He then filed suit against the Justice Department for violating the federal whistleblower’s law, which is supposed to protect employees who reveal wrongdoing, and for violating the federal Privacy Act for making public his allegations. Eventually, he agreed to mediation and so far has received $1.16 million from the government in exchange for agreeing to leave the FBI. The Justice Department also paid his $258,580 legal fees and agreed that it wouldn’t pursue criminal or disciplinary actions against him. The FBI’s removal of Whitehurst caused an outcry in Congress. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, accused the Justice Department of exacting retribution against Whitehurst for whistle-blowing. "The FBI would have preferred to get rid of the messenger," Grassley told the media after the FBI announced Whitehurst’s ouster early this year, hailing the chemist for his "immense public service." Whitehurst has since founded the National Whistleblower Center’s Forensic Justice Project, located in Washington D.C. The group is reviewing past FBI laboratory work to check for errors. "These [lab technicians and scientists] were violating the civil rights of people in the courts of law, denying them fair trials and due process," he said last week. "I want to know who got hurt. I am going to figure this thing out. I’m going to make a living figuring it out."
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