Fifty current and former employees of U.S. national security agencies are demanding that Congress end government retaliation against those who expose national security blunders.
Leaders of the new group, known as the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), have stepped up their efforts to win protection since testifying late last month before Congressional committees in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
They called on congress to take action to permit whistleblowers to sue government retaliators in their personal and official capacities and to bring suit against agencies for failure to rectify misdeeds by employees or provide sufficient safeguards against whistleblower retaliation.
The group is led by Sibel Edmonds, who has been trying to sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for firing her in 2002 after she blew the whistle on agency employees. Edmonds said she was fired from her job as a wiretap translator because she told superiors she suspected a co-worker was leaking information to targets of an ongoing FBI probe. The FBI said it fired her because she committed security violations and disrupted the office.
''In recent years the number of national security whistleblowers has grown exponentially, so has the level of retaliation and harassment against these whistleblowers by the government,'' Edmonds testified.
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