Op-Ed

Jason Foster: The Public’s Business Ought to be Public

Newsweek Last November my organization, Empower Oversight, sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests related to the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Around half a dozen other entities have also been forced to go to court to compel the NIH to make pandemic documents public. It’s worth

Shining a Light on Would-be Cryptocurrency Regulators

Substack Healthy financial markets need clarity and transparency to function properly. Financial regulators are supposed write clear rules so that markets can operate on a level playing field. Instead, they sometimes make arbitrary enforcement decisions that look unfair and undermine public confidence in their integrity. Among the safeguards against the kind of government overreach that

Jason Foster: The Pandemic is not a Partisan Game

Substack Last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) finally admitted that it funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Worse, it also failed to adequately monitor its grantee, EcoHealth Alliance. The NIH letter containing these admissions should have come much sooner and in response to serious bipartisan oversight from Congress.  Instead, the NIH reply came in

Jason Foster: Newly Uncovered Documents Show Senior VA Officials Smearing a Whistleblower to Avoid Congressional Oversight

Whistleblower Network News Whistleblowers—and the truths they tell—far too often become the first casualties in the clash of bigger forces with other agendas. People tend to oversimplify complex stories to fit their preferred political narrative or to protect their own interests. If the facts do not fit neatly into a convenient set of preconceptions, too

Jason Foster: It’s Time For NIH Transparency On Wuhan Research Funding | Opinion

Newsweek The recent spats between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) about how the coronavirus pandemic started made for good television. The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases wagged his finger at a United States senator and called him a liar. Dr. Fauci rejected the premise of tough, evidence-based questions about our government’s support of

Celebrate Whistleblowing—Not Leaking

Holding leaders accountable is an American tradition worth preserving, and applauding lawlessness undermines that tradition. July 29, 2021 By: Dan Meyer and Jason Foster Two hundred and forty-three years ago, on July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the world’s first whistleblower law. As that anniversary is commemorated on National Whistleblower Appreciation Day this Friday, it is