WASHINGTON – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has opened a “leak” investigation into the release of information regarding eight flights on which Air Marshals surveilled former presidential candidate and member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard, Empower Oversight has learned. The move improperly targets Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) who blew the whistle on the wasted resources and abuse of authority in targeting American citizens who pose no threat to fellow passengers.
Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt wrote a letter to DHS IG Joseph Cuffari requesting the IG’s assistance in protecting the whistleblowers, writing: “A retaliatory investigation that hunts for whistleblowers in order to intimidate them into silence is exactly the wrong step for the agency to take. Instead, agency leadership should be investigating the abuses on which FAMs are blowing the whistle. Your office has a duty to help protect whistleblowers—especially those like our client who have asked your office to investigate these abuses. Your office can also play a valuable role in refocusing agency leadership’s attention on the abuses being reported rather than the whistleblowers reporting them.”
Seeking to punish a whistleblower as a “leaker” for making protected disclosures is classic retaliation and is illegal. The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) v. MacLean that information TSA calls SSI is not specifically prohibited by law from being disclosed pursuant to the Whistleblower Protection Act.
In the letter to Cuffari, Leavitt cited an Amicus Curiae brief from a bipartisan, bicameral group of members of Congress which noted that TSA “has misused its SSI designation to withhold embarrassing information.”
Leavitt went on to remind Cuffari: “The Whistleblower Protection Act protects [TSA whistleblowers]…regardless of who they make their disclosure to, whether that be to your office, to Congress, to a professional association such as the Air Marshal National Council, or directly to the press. Here, there is a clear basis for Federal Air Marshals to reasonably believe that assigning three Air Marshals and countless other resources to eight flightsof Ms. Gabbard’s under the Quiet Skies program constitutes a gross waste of funds and an abuse of authority.”
Empower Oversight is seeking to meet with the DHS IG’s Whistleblower Coordinator to ensure that federal air marshal whistleblowers are protected from “unlawful reprisal in the guise of a bogus ‘leak’ investigation.”
Leavitt’s letter to Cuffari on the leak investigation can be found here.