Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Acting Director of National
Intelligence Joseph Maguire informed the House Intelligence Committee chairman
that he'd been directed by "a higher authority" to withhold the
complaint
Experts are warning that
protocols put in place to protect government whistleblowers have been put in
serious jeopardy—potentially at the direction of President Donald Trump,
according to a top Democrat—as the acting Director of National Intelligence is
refusing, despite legal requirements, to share an official internal complaint
with Congress.
After announcing last Friday
that the independent Inspector General of the office of the Director of
National Intelligence (DNI) had alerted him to a whistleblower complaint, House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told Margaret Brennan
on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday that acting DNI Joseph Maguire
was refusing to turn over the complaint because it involved "privileged
communications" between people outside the intelligence community.
Maguire also told the chairman
that "he is being instructed not to" respond to the committee's
subpoena regarding the complaint, Schiff told Brennan.
"This involved a higher
authority," the chairman said.
"It's a pretty narrow group of people that it could apply to that are both
above the DNI in authority and also involve privileged communications. So, I
think it's fair to assume this involves either the president or people around
him or both."
"Make no
mistake," tweeted Washington
Post columnist Greg Sargent Wednesday. "The refusal to turn the
whistleblower's complaint over to Adam Schiff's committee constitutes another
serious erosion in checks on Trump's norm-shredding." At the Post, Sargent
wrote that an order from the White House to Maguire to ignore Schiff's subpoena
would be similar to other conduct by Trump.
"Trump's White House, of
course, has asserted various forms of presidential prerogative to block
oversight on many fronts, including preventing Judiciary Committee Democrats
from questioning multiple direct witnesses to Trump's extensive corruption and
wrongdoing, as documented by the special counsel," wrote Sargent.
The developing story, Sargent
added, is likely "about to get a whole lot more media scrutiny, because it
involves secretive back-channel maneuvering, a possible threat to national
security and potential lawbreaking at the highest levels of the Trump
administration, possibly at the direction of President Trump himself—all with a
whole lot of cloak-and-dagger intrigue thrown in."
The DNI's refusal to forward
the whistleblower's complaint to the committee represents "an ominous new
turn," he wrote, "one that should only underscore concerns that
serious—and dangerous—lawbreaking might be unfolding."
On social media, Trevor Timm,
executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote that the news
of high-level flouting of laws served to affirm the importance of
whistleblowers and helps demonstrate how difficult it can be for them to
operate within the government.
In accordance with systems
meant to insulate whistleblowers from possible retaliation from agency heads,
the Inspector General received
the complaint on August 12 and assessed it as "credible"—a
determination which by law requires the DNI to turn the complaint over to
congressional intelligence committees.
The whistleblower's
disclosure described (pdf)
"a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or executive
order, or deficiency" regarding national intelligence, according to the
alert Schiff received from the Inspector General, which did not include further
details.
"Under the statute as
written, the Director of National Intelligence doesn't have the discretion to
not act or get a second opinion," Margaret Taylor, senior editor of
the Lawfare Blog, told the Post. "He just has to forward it
to the intelligence committees."
As Daniel Drezner, a professor
of international affairs at Tufts University, put it on Twitter: "I really
want to know what the hell is going on here."
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