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tv   Documentary  RT  June 10, 2023 11:30pm-12:01am EDT

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the the, the release of russian states never is as tight as i'm assuming the most sense community. not getting all sense enough in the system
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must be the one else holes. question about this, even though we will then in the european union, the kremlin. yep. mission, the state on russia routing and split the ortiz full neck, even our video agency, roughly all the band on youtube. the services for the question, did you say a request to check the . 2 2 depending on is a massive bureaucratic mess with hundreds of thousands of employees and a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars led by political appointees hovering over career civil servants. it can be a governmental nightmare laws or meant to keep the place running as honestly and as
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efficiently as possible. what then happens when a political appointee flowed? so those laws, who does the law protect? i'm john kerry. aku welcome to the whistle blowers the today. we're going to tell you the story of a pentagon whistleblower. she's not a household name. academics probably will not base their dissertations on her case . she hasn't been the subject of funding expos and the media, but she is a clear example of a person doing the right thing, bringing to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety jacking. garrick grew up like many americans who came from immigrant families intensely patriotic and wanting to give something back to the country that had given them so much in the 1980s. she did an internship at the veterans administration medical center in new york and developed
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an interest in post traumatic stress disorder or p t. as the in veterans who had returned from service in vietnam. in 1992, she joined the army as a captain and a social worker. following the adage, if you want to work with veterans b one. after leaving the military, she worked as the deputy director of health care at the american legion, and then went onto a position on the veterans disability benefits commission in the department of veterans affairs. and after a few years on capitol hill, the obama administration asked her to organize the defense suicide prevention office, which over so disability policies impacting wounded warriors, mental health care, accessability, suicide prevention and diversity and inclusion. jackie survived a period of great turmoil at the pentagon, serving under 10 under secretaries and 12 supervisors, and only 8 years. in 2014 jackie began working for a politically appointed supervisor, who seemed to be hostile to her after she made legally protected disclosures
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regarding possible conflicts of interest and possible contract fraud. she was moved to another chain of command and soon after found that her performance ratings were being lowered and job openings were being close to her. she filed whistleblower complaints with both the office of the special counsel and with the defense department's office of the inspector general for purely bureaucratic reasons, jackie never received any satisfaction from her whistle blowing, and indeed in the end, she lost her job and was deemed in eligible for federal retirement, it was only after a freedom of information act request and an appeal beyond the u. s. office of personnel management that she was finally able to retire. and once she did, she created the group whistle blowers of america, where she provides peer support for other whistle blowers who have suffered retaliation after having identified harm to individuals or to the public. jackie garrick, welcome to the show. we are very happy to have you. thank you, it's
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a honor and a pleasure to be here with you to know. thank you. the pleasures ours. let's start at the beginning of your story, jackie, you are one of those unusual people who brought a great deal of experience when you begin working at the pentagon. you had already had experience at the department of veterans affairs, for example, with the american legion, which is a private organization. and also in congress. you were then asked by the obama administration to go to the pentagon. what were you 1st asked to do there? and why was there such turmoil when you arrived? well, so the term why it wasn't when i arrived, it was after i made my disclosures, i was very honored and excited to join the obama administration. i actually stayed for the entire 8 years. but when i went over initially to work on wounded warrior issues and then got moved around and ended up working on the suicide prevention office and then got moved again and again and again. and to some extent,
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you know, that's the life of the political appointee. but it was at the defend suicide prevention office that i made my disclosures and, and that's when things really went sideways for me. mm hm. so you are at the pentagon and you finally feel comfortable. tell us what it was that you saw that made you uncomfortable for that 1st time. what was the nature of your initial whistle blowing? yeah, so, you know, it doesn't take long to be at the pentagon and realize how complex and complicated things can be over there. in d, m, i was learning a lot about contracts and programs, and i had known a lot about how to manage and how budget's operated because of my experience is on the hill, the difference between an authorization and appropriation. all of these nuances
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become important when you're working in these environments. and so when i was working in the suicide prevention office, and we had set that up after a um, a congressionally charter task force had said that the one thing the department of defense was lacking was the suicide prevention office. as you mentioned, that a background in mental health by myself, a former army officer. so i got asked to help set up this office and um with a lot of back and forth and what it should look like and how it should run. we were up and running and we were doing some really good things. we have a number of contracts in place and we were following federal acquisition regulations before and, and how we set up those contracts from the deities. there's no shortage of ethics training and compliance training. i'm. there's a lot of this training and i,
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i felt like i understood how these programs should run. so it was when another political appointee. she wasn't my direct supervisor, but she was at a lateral position above me. and she asked me about moving contract money that we had that one company to a contract with another company. we didn't how that company on contract at the d o . d. so it would've not having to move money over to the v a. and because she had been a vice president there because her husband was a sub contractor to the prime. i thought, well, you shouldn't be reducing yourself, you shouldn't even be talking about this company. right. and i thought i and i said i was seeing a friend. no, i was naive about all of this so much. i don't know, you, you shouldn't even say those things. and as the time went on and i was getting emails and, and this feeling that i was being influenced,
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i went to another political appointee who was about both of us. and i made a disclosure to him about what was going on and she was kind of in tune that there was a lot of back and forth and all these emails. and so i made that disclosure, and it was really at that point in time that i thought i did my job, i did what i was supposed to. i was done and i thought it would all and, and then of course it didn't and, and the retaliation began a little bit different. um, uh, eventually the person i had made my disclosures about ends up sharing an executive re cannel. she's the only one who doesn't rate me at, at an above a edit acceptable standard. look at it that way. and so i eventually get
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moved out of the job as the defense suicide prevention office director. and that's when i go to a jar and i, i say to her, how is this all possible? what's going on? i don't understand, you know by then i'm like more shocked and confused. and of course all of this other stuff was unbeknownst to me at the time and it was when i tell her the story about all of this. and she had told me, well one person didn't rate you as high as the others. and i said, well let me guess and she told me i cannot confirm or deny, but you're a whistleblower and you should file a p p p and i didn't even know the p. p. p at the time stood for prohibited personnel practice. and so it was add her coaching that i went to v o i g a o s c. the administrative just wanted to everybody because i wasn't
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really sure at the time what to do and i was, i was just kind of learning the ropes. there was no one to talk to know when to ask questions i, i felt very alone and trying to figure this out. i'm sure i made mistakes early on . there were lessons to be learned, but i do remember, i know i g telling may you know, be in for a penny, be in for a pound. he said to go to o. s a. so i, i, you know, i kind of followed the advice of these people in authority that i thought were helpful, or there to help me. right. and that wasn't always the best and pockets, right? well, in, in government we're all taught to go through the chain of command when we see evidence of waste, fraud abuse or illegality. you, you went through your chain of command and then you ended up going to the, to the inspector general and to the office of the general counsel, you later said that that was a mistake. can you explain that to us or so or so i think the mistakes that i'm
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that i made was one, there was no guidance in any of this process. you really are hunting, impacting with your, your, with a blindfold on trying to figure out what's the right way to manage these things. you know, i'm a social worker by background, not an attorney. i didn't know if i needed to even hire an attorney at that point. so you're relying on reading websites, looking at, after looking at like, what do they say? evidence is trying to figure this all out for yourself. and the mistake i made earlier on was not having me o i g investigate the case at the time. i've been to the d o d o i j probably 3 times asking for help. and 3 times they didn't even they didn't open a case or they referred me to somebody else. so the day of g o i g, at the time,
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never investigated on these things that i complained about. and they sent me the o. s a. and it was said, oh i see where, you know, they, they tell you were attorneys were helping you were representing you. and it isn't until you get through some of that process that you realize. no, these are government attorneys, they're not really your attorneys representing you. that's right, which is which is why so many whistleblowers end up needing an attorney even at the o. s. c process. i think that's, that was an important nuance said in the beginning i didn't understand. so i eventually hired an attorney to help me get through some of the a c process where i got my prima facia recognition as a whistleblower. and then um, this individual right to appeal letter to take my case to the m s p b. so this, there's nothing simple about any of this, and it's definitely you learn lessons along the way. and it was one of the reasons
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that i set up with the lawyers of america because it made me realize no, it should be alone in the us. and i was starting to a more public about looking for wisdom lower information. and i went online, i was on social media, connected with somebody else who was at another federal agency. and she told me that she was in law enforcement, had a gun and was contemplating suicide. and for me, investors triggered everything i knew about combat trauma about suicide prevention . that we needed to do more and be more for each other because no one is, is looking out for the whistleblower in any of these kinds of cases. we are speaking with us. defense department was the blower, jackie garrick, about her experience at dependent gone during the obama administration. we're going to ask her and you to stay with us as we take
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a short commercial break. we'll be right back. 2 2 2 2 2 on the the, with the end of world war one, the movement for indian independence from the british empire flared up with renewed vigor. the british responded to the growth of the national liberation movement with arrest and brutal violence. repression cause active resistance. in march 1919 at the call of mahatma gandhi, a peaceful strike began in the country. but the british responded with
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a new round of violence and far bade the indians to gather more than 4 people. on the day of the sea bass at t festivals. a huge crowd of civilians gathered in the center of the city of i'm to start the northern india. seeing bays as outright defiance. general reginald dyer gave the order to open fire on the on arms people. the barbaric execution claimed the lives of at least.

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