Prominent whistleblowers share experience with students, faculty
Rick Piltz (from top), Thomas Tamm and Louis Clark
Rick Piltz and Thomas Tamm do not consider themselves
heroes, but they feel justified by their efforts to expose abuses of power by the
federal government agencies they worked for.
Piltz and Tamm visited several JMU classes during the day Tuesday
to discuss their experience as whistleblowers and also participated in an
evening discussion in the Health and Human Services Building. The two men are speakers
for the "American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for
Accountability" organized by the Government Accountability Project, the
nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.
Piltz is a former senior associate in the coordination
office of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. In 2005, he blew the whistle
on the White House’s improper editing and censorship of science program reports
on global warming intended for the public and Congress. Piltz released edited
reports to The New York Times that documented the improper editing, which
downplayed the reality of human-driven global warming and its harmful impacts.
The changes also introduced an element of scientific uncertainty that had not
been part of the original reports.
Tamm was a well-regarded Justice Department attorney in the
capital cases unit who, in 2003, transferred to the Office of Intelligence
Policy and Review. While working there, he became aware of a program that
bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court in an arrangement
where only the attorney general would sign certain wiretap requests. After
Tamm’s inquiries about the program repeatedly ran into walls of silence, he
contacted The New York Times, which in 2005 ran a Pulitzer Prize-winning cover
story about the George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping
program. The program was part of a wide-ranging covert surveillance activities
authorized by President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11.
Piltz said it took some time for him to decide to blow the
whistle on the edited science reports, which he gradually kept copies of. "This was a story that needed to come
out, but it wasn't a story I could put out unless I wanted to be
unemployed," he said. "You're not going to challenge the White House
on something like this."
Piltz said it was obvious the reports were being edited by a
Bush appointee to play down the global warming problem. The person responsible
for the editing, Phillip A. Cooney, did not have a science background. "He
was an oil industry lobbyist, but he was running the White House environmental
office," Piltz said.
Piltz said he tried to do his job and make his office
function to the best of its ability, but it became clear at the start of Bush's
second term that the policing of the climate reports was only going to get
worse. Unable to find anyone who would
champion the right values, he decided to resign. Piltz did not have another job
lined up and wasn't sure what to do next, he said, but he wanted to expose what
was happening. He eventually turned to the Government Accountability Project,
which led to contacting the New York Times.
The story gained the attention of other media around the
nation and the world, and while it didn't change the administration's policy on
global warming, the administration did ease up on its editing and censorship of
scientists, said Piltz, who is now the director of Climate Science Watch, a
government watchdog agency sponsored by GAP.
Cooney resigned after the story broke and took a job with
Exxon Mobil.
Tamm said he knew he needed to do something when a
supervisor and a congressional staffer gave him vague answers to questions he
asked about certain surveillance requests that were handled differently than
the rest. Rather than being heard by the full special court of 11 judges, they
went to just one judge. Tamm's supervisor also told him it was probably
illegal.
"I agonized about it for months," Tamm said,
before making the decision to talk to reporters from the New York Times. It
turned out the reporters had sources in other departments and were
investigating other alleged transgressions by the administration. "They
new more about it than I did," he said.
The story finally broke in 2005, about a year after Tamm had
approached the reporters about it. And
while the New York Times was lauded with a Pulitzer Prize, Tamm became the
subject of a federal investigation. In August 2007, his home in Maryland was
raided by 18 federal agents looking for information about the leaks that led to
the New York Times story. It took three years for the government to drop the
investigation.
"My biggest regret is what I put my family
through," said Tamm, who received a Ridenhour Truth-Telling Award in 2009.
The award, which comes with a $10,000 stipend and was presented to Piltz in
2006, is the highest honor for whistleblowers.
"In our view these people are patriots," said
Louis Clark, president of GAP and moderator of the evening discussion. "The purpose of this tour is to have you
meet some of the heroes who have really had an impact on your life and in many
cases you might not have even known that."
The GAP visit was sponsored by the Madison Collaborative:
Ethical Reasoning in Action and the departments of integrated science and
technology; political science; and writing, rhetoric and technical
communication.
By Eric Gorton ('86, '09M)
Published April 11, 2013
