Fighting over a nation's safety

Script by Mark Hertsgaard
Marketplace, Sep 29, 2004

(Host intro) Bills on how to beef up the nation's security are moving through Congress. The White House has submitted its own draft in the wake of the 911 commission's report on how to keep the nation safe. As lawmakers in Washington debate how to protect against future attacks, commentator and writer Mark Hertsgaard says they are ignoring the most cost-effective tool available.

(Mark Hertsgaard) "Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere." So begins the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about the patriot who warned American revolutionaries the British were coming.

As they're jockeying over whether to pass the 9/11 Commission reforms, Congress and the President should re-read that poem.

It might remind them: we had our own Paul Reveres before September 11th — dedicated public servants like Colleen Rowley, Bogdan Dzakovic, and Rich Levernier, who risked their careers to warn their bosses about what was coming.

Reform bills now before Congress contain no protections for these government whistleblowers, who refused to stay silent, even when they were ignored or punished.

The FBI's Colleen Rowley was on to one of the hijackers and pleaded with headquarters to tail him. No one listened.

Bogdan Dzakovic warned FAA superiors that his team of mock terrorists was getting fake guns onto planes more than 70 percent of the time. He was taken off the job.

In drills at the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons plants, Rich Levernier's teams were getting in and getting out with plutonium, more than half the time. His security clearance was yanked.

It's ironic government workers don't have the legal right to warn without fearing retaliation. Congress gave corporate workers that right two years ago as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act intended to prevent another Enron scandal.

Besides killing 3,000 people, the September 11th tragedy cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars. But investing in whistleblower rights would cost nothing.

Supporters hope to attach a whistleblower rights amendment before the 9/11 reforms are passed by the House and Senate. If President Bush sees the light, the Paul Revere Freedom to Warn Amendment could become law with a stroke of the presidential pen.

So get out your Longfellow, Mr. President, Members of Congress. America needs its Paul Reveres today more than ever.

In San Francisco, this is Mark Hertsgaard for Marketplace.