Smear Campaigns Against Whistleblowers
Hunter asks for probe of Pentagon actions against whistle-blower
House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) has asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate why the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) revoked the top security clearance of a whistle-blower involved in a classified intelligence cell that may have identified the Sept. 11 terrorists a year before the attacks.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has accused the agency of trying to put a lid on the information the intelligence unit uncovered.
Weldon says that the DIA stifled crucial information about Mohammed Atta, who became the lead Sept. 11 terrorist, and then destroyed related documents.
Weldon told The Hill that he believes the DIA, a unit of the Pentagon, is carrying out a smear campaign against an officer who spoke the truth.
“I do not want to serve in a Congress if that is what it comes to,” he said. “We talk the good talk. … We talk about how much we support the troops. Here is the time to test: If you support the troops, you will not allow a bureaucracy to ruin someone who has done nothing wrong but tell the truth.”
“If there are people in this administration...who do not want this story to be told, and obviously there are, then that’s all the more reason...to demand that the truth has to come out,” he said.
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FDA Collaboration in Vioxx Smear Campaign Investigated
The recent discovery of handwritten notes by Dr. Ned Braunstein rejuvenated Congress’s investigation into possible collaboration between the FDA and Merck in a smear campaign against whistle-blower Dr. David Graham.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called for renewed investigation based on the notes documenting an October 13, 2004 conversation between Braunstein from Merck and Brian Harvey of the FDA. Braunstein noted Harvey’s call for “an official rebuttal on Graham.” Both the FDA and Merck publicly spoke out against Graham noting differences between his research and their own respective studies.
Dr. Graham was “quite shocked” and felt that it demonstrated “how widespread the organized campaign to discredit and smear” him was.
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