to point out information. have you looked at the briefing in the court case recently? have you checked on the contract data base lately? little tidbits that keep us straight and guidance to a story. -- that is to start. finally, because of the pressures and the range of emotions that it was a blur goes through, i found that the end of the process, when you go get the other side of this story, often times whistle-blowers feel this moment of the trial. we need to have both sides of the story. we need to ensure that what you told us is accurate because it does not serve your case in course -- case in court if i did something wrong or if i do not have a balanced story. those principles have guided my

relationships with whistle- blowers. as the art of whistleblowing becomes increasingly dangerous with fewer and fewer legal protections, having a sense of how to work with the media and the court of public opinion it is becoming more and more important. >> thank you. . . i really want to thank you, john, for that. and he did cover all of his principles, which i'm happy because i was going to ask them to cover if he had. i was checking them off one by one. and i'm going to get the last presentation and assist from an attorney's perspective who represents whistleblowers. first i like to say that, and i hope in the questions and answers more that comes out, one of the very first cases that i'd worn, and i consequence this with my brother mike kohn, we

actually won it in the press, literally. literally. it was a case of a savanna river site, roger wenzel, great guy and he blew the whistle on illegal drug use and some major safety issues in the construction of atomic weapons. and he was the first national whistleblower on an atomic weapon site concerning health and safety. and what we learned very quickly was that the law for atomic safety excluded weapons industry. so he had no right. but he had an extremely interesting story and a lot of credibility. so we took it to -- it was a journalist at the "washington post," cass peterson and she ran a good story about his case. it was on page three, excellent story. we were going to win anything, but the contract your overreact

to it and fired his number one but as. so the firing of the witness then became a page one story in the "washington post" and then continued coverage because that's how just outrageous the contractor reacted to the story. so then the journalist confronted the secretary of energy at a press conference about what the secretary of energy was doing, which triggered an inspector general investigation that ordered -- that eventually ordered the whistleblower salt to be reinstated with back pay. they say this is how this was one of the press because he went down to a hearing in south carolina for the whistleblowers. but the hearing with absolute sham because there were no real legal rights. so mike went into it and he said, we want to process. we will not participate in a hearing without due process. in the hearing examiner said, well this is our hearing, we are

going to run the rules as they want to run it. would you please have your whistleblower come in and tell us what happened to her. and mike said no, goodbye. he got up in my spirits of the whistleblowers never showed up at their own hearing. yeah, we won the case. that the a true story. they got reinstated because of the public rusher and i will also state on the record that even if it's not winning a case and that's the exception to the will and must say, don't think you're going to win your case that way. he can put pressure on an intelligence employer or government agency to back off because it's pretty much what jen said,, for the press to run a story based will do and should do an extensive review and investigation. they have to check the credibility come the facts, they have to put the devils advocate

in the whistleblower has to participate in that process here do know come you got to give them the good, the bad and the ugly. you have to show them all the words, all although weaknesses because if you can't essentially win your case with a journalist coming or going to win it in court anyway. you're going to have a tough time. so the journalist has to their job, but once they run the story and stand behind ultimately those allegations, either implicitly or explicitly, but they viewed it as newsworthy. i can actually think save the job of a whistleblower, especially unlike the contractors that savanna river, if they realize that the reason it's in the press is because there's probably a lot of issues here they should be dealing with instead of firing and shooting the messenger. there's a second point i want to make, which i think is often lost. in the united states, i like to

say this, we know there's no major large whistleblower law and that we often think that whistleblowers but reductions. but what i like to state is a discount information. believe it or not, congressman in session, this is true, and passed a sweeping whistleblower law covering and protecting americans to blow the whistle to the press. they did it unanimously and they had such faith in our system, they presented it to other states to back it up, too. in three quarters of it very quickly and they all signed on. and it's called the first amendment of the united states constitution, the number-one whistleblower law in the world and in our country the number-one whistleblower law. congress shall make no law of breaching freedom of speech or press. that is the law of the land.

and in 1968, the u.s. supreme court found that if you are a whistleblower working for the government and you blow the whistle to the press, you have constitutional protections and cannot be fired or retaliated against. now the gap between that constitutional principle and even those decisions and the reality is like the grand canyon. only a twisted lawyer loving the difficult arguments with a it's as beautiful as the grand canyon. but the gap is as wide as the grand canyon. the right in the implementation of that rate. you literally have to hike down and i thought the way back up and hope you have enough water in your well supplied because there is a right, but if you think that right is just going to come to you because the founding fathers wrote it in an

important document, you are not living in the united dates of america today. the retaliation is the norm. government officials who swear allegiance to the constitution for god about the first amendment. not. that's the reality. because those rights exist, you will be surprised how far you can go here for example, in 1995, we surprised a significant effect your of the national news media and most lawyers in washington when we had an active duty fbi agent with top-secret clearances they were told top-secret peek at not only with the clearances were. who was responsible for managing the kind seen in the first terrorist attack on the world trade and are, who had detailed

information about the oklahoma city bombing case and do as a supervisory agent within the fbi, working manner on those cases and reasserted his first amendment rights and eventually got permission for an to speak on television, criticizing the f. e. i am those terrorist cases and keep his job. why? because when push comes to shove, the first amendment actually does exist. and i may take you have to go to court, you may have to get an injunction, but there is such a thing as the first amendment and it does apply. how many government officials have the audacity to assert those rights publicly? very few. you can probably count them on your hands. and that's a shame because the public right to know is timed. in the private sector, most

court will be blowing the whistle to the news media as they protected the dvd and try to -- and to get protection under statute. unfortunately, just recently come in february of two 2010 the court in an unpublished decision went the other way. was the first decision and a federal court i thought going another way. you think it's now finer, i think it should be repealed and reversed. usage of the district court will obviously there's now differences of opinion in the court system, but the good thought in the majority of court and agencies that have looked at it i found going to the news media to be protected under the normal whistleblower statutes. all of that being said, going to the press as a whistleblower is always, in my view, a radical step because he's gone -- you have a chain of command and did

you exhaust it? there or government agencies often designed to get the information. e.g. use them? to go into the press will open you up to heightened scrutiny and it will open you up to the types of leaks, to the types of counterpunch that you heard from our speakers, that a whistleblower can expect. go into the news media is often the very end of the line, not the beginning of the line. that doesn't mean in the law there's a difference, but in reality there is. there's an important decision from the united is department of labor that is still good law within the labor department and it vandalize whether going to the press should be dead in the air as we say under the first amendment, it should be protected for government workers, but should it be protect in the private sector? and the analysis was those: a

whistleblower who goes to the government with an allegation of wrongdoing is protect it. what about a whistleblower who goes to the press? should they be protect the? and the statute is silent. the statue says going go into the government is protected. and what the analysis was, how do you get the government to take an allegation seriously? had you actually make change in the united states? how do you force a bureaucracy to be responsive? and the analysis was by going to the press. a politician or bureaucrat may ignore allegations of a whistleblower for years, but when they hit the newspapers, they have to take it seriously

often. and that's what happened in that case we did in 1986. the issues raised at savanna river had been raised for at least two years. this the sky had been hammered down. the department of energy had originally from its case out. the department of energy had lobbied against it. i mean, looking at this case in 1986, he was a loser he is the contractor fired him and the local doe office of science and down. but once the facts got up to the national news media and a new light was shed on it and pressure was put on the secretary of energy, it was all reopened, all reinvestigated here it so it's clear, but had a whistleblower shown up to the "washington post" day one, there probably wouldn't have even been a story because he wouldn't have had a track record to back it up. so i think the good law is going

to the press is protect it, but the reality of the law is it's risky. in the unfortunately you can't say with uncertainty anymore whether it's protected or not, although that the good law says it is. and the government sacked her, it should be, but reality is very different. i also want to state that no whistleblower laws currently protect did the disclosure of secret classified authorization to an unknown source is the reason of the first amendment says freedom of speech, that does not mean that that kids a whistleblower immunity for violating other laws that maybe in effect. that could also include in the private sector roles on confidential business information, secrecy agreements,

nondisclosure agreements, et cetera. there's a host of landmines, especially when you're going to the press. why? because if you blow the whistle and the letters say to an auditor, no one actually see@@@ you may have signed your employment deathwatch -- death warrant. going to the press has a lot of downside and difficulties. it also can be the way to vindication or getting a change. the bottom line is -- there are legal protections if you need to go to the press and those have

to be carefully studied and implemented on a case by case basis with a lot of review and care. finally, i would like to say that you have to work with a journalist that understands the six roles that were talked about. that is to understand what a about. blower goes that is professional to understand what a whistleblower goes through in both the vetting process and in their own personalized. and there are a lot of journalists he do that. i'm honored to have three of them here. so that is the legal summary and what we'll do is when i'll open it up for questions. i have a whole slew of written down, but before doing going to open it up to the floor. so any questions? >> steve, when we're talking about dr. waiters and the fbi

and when push came to shove, and you are able to get a sitting fbi agent top-secret clearance to be able to talk to the news media. now, what's missing from the discussion is the meetings that you have had with your partners before that happened, where you had to go over the risk of whether you were simply practicing law when you were done with this process and what would we do if push came to shove. so i think maybe when you're talking push comes to shove him into her not really putting the full deck of cards on the table as the risk factors that avoid years enter into when they deal with whistleblowing at the highest level. >> i think any of the panelists can respond. i'll respond first.

in dealing with a whistleblower with high-level information and you know the whistleblower has classified information and you're trying to make sure no classified information is ever disclosed, everyone who's participating in that process has a risk. and i know mr. solomon has personally had some of those issues and he can talk about them with some of the searches. but yeah, when you're on, when you are standing up for a client and that client is very controversial, not because they're good or bad person, but the information they had his electric, is radio act did and can cause change. there are risks both to everyone who's involved in that process and that has to be weighed. and again, if you are a whistleblower, you need to partner up with lawyers and with journalists who are willing to

take that risk. if they're not, you know, they may abandon you and your time of need. on the other hand, it's the understanding and the respect for that risk that i think would lead to the caution necessary that you never have a disaster. not as kind of open about those comments to the other panelists if you'd like to say something from a journalist respect it or have you worked on it. >> about the risk? >> not just the risk of the whistleblower, but the rest are implicit in a controversial story. >> excuse me. when you're dealing with classified information, that's always the riskiest, that combined with an anonymous source who more than likely is not willing to go on camera or go public because, you know, maybe with larry franklin case

and all of that, you know, there is a separate national security blog that you have to deal with. and so come you proceed very slowly and cautiously and generally what i've been able to do and i'm sure it's true to everybody here is that you take -- if i caught the record information. you are not going to broadcast at her publisher, but you're going to use it as the lead to verify the knot of it and either i'm classified way or with senior government officials who will in effect declassified it for you. and i know that that's happened to me in a couple of instances where somebody way down in the trenches like something and couldn't go with it and i worked my way up the chain and got to a senior intel official and they

completely laid it out for us. sometimes in the hope of getting us just do not read a story, but other times just to make sure we got it right because the other risk when you're dealing with classified information is coming up, in the world of intelligence in the world of espionage in all, it's so hard to get through the smoke and find the fire and to realize if you're being manipulated, if you're being used, if it's the quality of the intelligence to begin with, it's all very tricky and we spend a lot of months, year, two years trying to verify inks. and the networks who are the people who all of the news business, you know, they don't want to, you know, if you're accused of violating national security, that is x. the

company's reputation. they carry about battle lodge. ndp defined, they care about that a lot. so you've really got to negotiate a very tricky road. but often you can't, it just takes time. >> yeah, i personally have endured a little bit of the legal consequences of reporting on national security and in some cases grand jury cases. in 2001 just before 9/11, the justice department took my home phone records in my work phone records tried to figure out who i was talking to him a story about all of the things, all of the ethical misdeeds that senator torricelli of new jersey engaged in at that time in examining why he was prosecuted in criminal court and they got a judge to sign a subpoena and they took my phone records trying to find out my sources. for shy, they didn't. i thought that was enough of a

near-death experience i've had my one and life and i could move on in 13 months later the bush administration, using a very arcane, 19th century local search and seizure authority at the border to document, non-classified documents that are then sent to me from a source in the philippines and hold onto them. i never got my package impact fedex who was delivering my package was instructed by our government to lie to me if it fell off the package in a horse cart and we and they paid me my $100 insurance money. but the fbi actually cut without a warrant by mail and tried to ascertain how i got it and why would we finally figured out what they've done a pathetic story was just a cover story they set for a chance to apologize. i was wondered why took forages to apologize. so there are consequences. not that worried about the consequences to me as i was cognizant of the consequences of anyone who comes to talk to me as if i miss identify them, if i slip up even one time too someone who is listening or tried to figure out the identity

of a source that may jeopardize an a persons life. i use these two aberrations in my own career sort of just chalk up to some unusual behavior by the government. but there are consequences for us come but they're always consequences for the people who step forward in the thing that always his funds on her and i know all three of our minds. >> jim, do want to comment? next question, please. >> how do you deal with keeping a story alive when public opinion kind of meson or public-interest moves on. son. a lot of times issues so far as raising our large problems that might take a lot of time to finally get resolution. the public outrage can, you know, change quicker than the problems get resolved. >> jim, we'll start with you on that one. >> like is coming up, i don't really look at it that way because i want to get the story out. i'm not so much that is kind of

a tinge of maybe advocating for the person or the cause. so i really haven't had a situation where i've wanted to keep the fire burning for that reason. so i guess if you really speak to that as a journalist. i don't know if you guys are great. >> i think jim's right. our role is not to be the advocacy role fit the facts of the public and the paranormal effects to give to the public than move on. but it is from ensure legal perspective and obviously a perspective a challenge. >> i would just say that coming and no, it is important, it's important. and you go for it and you look into it. and if by the time you get to proving that, the issue has moved on. there really is nothing you can do about it if it's just not important anymore come either to

your editors or to the public. i mean, i do argue with my bosses, but i mean if the practical reality is what was an issue in 2007 isn't an issue in 2009, you know, you're not there to put the story on, just to put the story on. gorgeous they are to come you know, report something that continues to be important. >> and here and part of our invitation list was to have three different types of journalists, newsmagazine, nightly news and print. and in terms of the follow-up any story and this is something to always think about because a whistleblower can establish relationship with the journalist and a sense that the journalist becomes interested in the story. there is usually lots more to the story than it's ever initially reported. but a magazine show like 60 minutes is harder for them to do lots of follow-up because their

format is as newsmagazine, 10, 15 minute feature piece. nightly news is the same way. they're the very limited amount of time on the nightly news show to do a story and a follow-up is very rare and much more difficult. print, on the other hand, is your best chance of getting a follow-up because of the nature of the story and also -- i hope i panelists here don't take offense to it, but at some point it comes like a baseball game, like a sporting event. you wince at the end? you know, you have an issue and there are people that will want to follow that issue all the way through to a conclusion. and print is the best way to do that from my days. if they come back into the electronic media, some big event changing event happened, but print is the best way to follow-up on it. and again, we have here are three representatives from the national news media, i know some

of them have root and local news media and often a story that was a national story at one point they become a focal story because there's just a lot of interest in that local energy. so it's just a question of how that story has moved. >> i would beg to differ slightly to protect my own broke real interest. and that is i think sometimes particularly a broadcast like 60 minute which is much watched broadcast in the country. like a national newspaper, the "washington post," "the new york times" and it can set the agenda. and we will put a story that might land on page 815 of the daily newspaper. unlike the clark story, like the number have done it then gets picked up by the daily papers. and the daily papers made to the

incremental follow-up that we won't do. but listen, it's a whistleblower goes on camera and then suffers some serious retaliation, will be all over that and there will be a follow-up story. but there also will be in the newspaper. and they're sort of a symbiotic thing going on with print and tv. i think particularly when you're dealing with the national broadcast media. >> in its 100% right. i was going to tell a story from 60 minutes as an example. we did a show, worked with 60 minutes on a show, a translator from the fbi and is part of the show we just had a one minute segment of it who is a unit chief who went on the show and said what she was saying was shed credibility. while that unit chief got retaliated against immediately after the show and 60, to its credit, restaurant and there and

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