Interior Department Fires Whistleblower

[Khephra]

September 17, 2003, 8:36 PM EDT


WASHINGTON -- The Interior Department has fired an employee who told a court investigator that the department was failing in its duty to protect the Navajo Indians from being cheated by oil and gas companies.

Kevin Gambrell, who had been head of the Farmington, N.M., Indian Minerals Office since 1996, said he protested for six years that Navajo landowners were not receiving fair compensation for the use of their land, but he was ignored.

This year, he contacted Alan Balaran, an investigator appointed by a federal judge presiding in a class-action lawsuit against the Interior Department. The suit alleges that the department has mismanaged Indian money for more than a century.

Balaran filed a report last month that said private landowners near the sprawling Navajo Nation were paid, in some cases, 20 times what the Indians were being paid.

more..........

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-indian-money,0,597109.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[goobergunch]

1. Isn't that against the Whistleblower Protection Act?

:shrug:

ON EDIT: Congratulations Keph on over 38,000 posts! :toast:

[Pastiche423]

2. I thought there was

no longer a whistle blower protection act. Isn't that one of the things that went w/the Homeland Security Act?

What am I thinking of?

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. Whistleblower Protection Act still in force, BUT

Bush Administration Ignores Whistleblowers
7/28/03

PEER represents employees who have filed whistleblower disclosures, defending an important avenue for employees looking to root out waste, fraud and corruption in federal agencies. However, even though employees are blowing the whistle more and more over the last few years, the Bush administration does not appear to be listening. Law requires OSC to resolve cases within 15 working days, however most of the reports in the backlog have sat for more than six months. At the beginning of June 2003, OSC had a backlog of 628 whistleblower allegations awaiting review.

While a recent increase in whistleblowing certainly contributes to the situation, it does not fully explain the ballooning backlog. Records show that the number of whistleblower cases were up 46 percent from 380 filed in fiscal year 2001 to 555 cases in fiscal
year 2002. However, the backlog has grown far more than 46 percent. In fact, the current backlog is up more than 100 percent, or double the number of unresolved cases that OSC had at the end of fiscal year 2001.

more...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=102&topic_id=120314&mesg_id=120340


Last-Minute Inclusion of Protections For Homeland Security Whistleblowers
<<A .pdf file worth reading>>
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2001/h072301.html

The Whistleblower Protection Act
http://www.wulaw.wustl.edu/Students/Courses/Clark/Congclinic/whistle-art.htm

And the Amendments introduced:
Senate introduces Whistleblower Protection Act Amendments

http://www.whistleblower.org/article.php?did=457&scid=80

[gristy]

4. Thanks for all the info, Angel

Man, it's all enough to make a guy just want to crawl into a hole for the rest of his life...

I'm going to bed.