but for the whistle blowers, but for the whistle blowers, the navy and the e.p.a. would have approved additional transfers of property, parcels at hunters point that were still contaminated because they did not know, and they did not look. we urged them 1.5 years ago to conduct a realistic investigation, to interview all of the employees who worked on radiation control at hunters point to determine the full extent of the fraud. they said it's not our job. if you don't look, you're not going to find things. they didn't look. now, the whistle blowers came to golden gate university, our clinic, our environmental clinic. we interviewed them, we found them highly credible. there weren't just one or two of them, there were a lot of them. we obtained seven or so declaratio declarations under penalty of perjury where they admitted they committed fraud on behalf of tetratech. we brought that to the navy. now, how is it possible that a handful of second and third-year law students directed by a qualified investigator like myself -- how is it possible that a handful of law st

who i >> the office of controllers whistle blower program is how city employees and recipient sound the alarm an fraud address wait in city government charitable complaints results in investigation that improves the efficiency of city government that. >> you can below the what if anything, by assess though the club program website arrest call 4147 or 311 and stating you wishing to file and complaint point controller's office the charitable program also accepts complaints by e-mail or 0 folk you can file a complaint or provide contact information seen by whistle blower investigates some examples of issues to be recorded to the whistle blower program face of misuse of city government money equipment supplies or materials exposure activities by city clez deficiencies the quality and delivery of city government services waste and inefficient government practices when you submit a complaint to the charitable online complaint form you'll receive a unique tracking number that inturgz to detector or determine in investigators need additional information by law the city employee that provide inf

hear the whistle blower who claims he was sidelined because he spoke up and questioned his boss. abc's kyra phillips and the interview tonight. >> reporter: he was part of donald trump's presidential campaign from the start. >> he's great. he's been with me right from the beginning. he's tough as hell and he's great. >> reporter: kevin chmielewski then got a ticket to washington, eventually becoming deputy chief of staff for epa administrator scott pruitt. but tonight, chmielewski says what he saw there, and what he said about it, cost him his job. he describes how a manager told him bluntly. >> administrator pruitt wants me to fire you or put you in a office where he never has to see you again. >> reporter: chmielewski says he raised concerns about lavish spending early on. like the $43,000 secure phone booth for pruitt's office and he says a plan he over heard for the agency to rent a private jet for $100,000 a month. >> i said, "do you realize we can't do that?" and she just said, once again, "this is what the administrator wanted me to look into." >> reporter: the deal never h

the problem is with whistle-blowers themselves. a target again and again at the same agency that was supposed to be listening to some of the criticisms they were raisinrais. they are in and the problems are many as well. scott davis on being targeted for getting this sort of stuff out. take a look. >> one of the former managers at the health eligibility center filed a complaint about myself and several other whistle-blowers caming that we illegally accessed e-mail and/or hacked e-mail accounts. they said that we violated the consumer -- the computer fraud act, which is a law designed to address cyber security issues. this law should have been turned over to doj or the office of the inspector general. it's my understanding when this particular manager went to the office of the inspector general, they declined to investigate. the charge had no merit. the office of the special counsel decided to investigate and turn the matter over to v.a. who in turn dr. clancy, had the office of the medical inspector had a criminal witch hunt against

. >> reporter: the investigative teams reviewed two whistle-blower investigations by the faa. one followed four southwest mechanics who continued to work at l.a.x. according to their attorney. they say they were pressured to avoid documenting maintenance issues in planes because that could cause delays. the faa noting in their report at the southwest airline l.a.x. line station, there is the absence of a just safety culture. a lack of an environment of trust and effective communication that ultimately leads to a degraded level of safety. that is what the faa concluded in this investigation involving southwest maintenance employees at l.a.x. obtained by the nbc investigative unit. it is one of two reports detailing whistle-blower complaints since last year. attorney lee seham represents the whistle-blowers. >> we're pleased that the faa corroborated that the atmosphere has been degraded. >> reporter: in both the investigations, the faa did not find southwest planes were unsafe to fly. most of the complaints were not substantiated, but he says what the faa did say is telling. th

before the whistle blower? >> yes. long before. >> supervisor kim: long before? >> mm-hmm. >> supervisor kim: i guess, could you determine that a little more. what did the navy do? 'cause it was not in the press. we read about the whistle blower and the two that are going to jail, so that is the public narrative. can you explain what the navy did when they detected the discrepancy first. >> right. so in 2012, when we detected that irregularity, we worked -- >> supervisor kim: in 2012? >> yes, in 2012. >> supervisor kim: six years ago? >> yes. >> supervisor kim: why is it i only found out about the discrepancy in 2018? >> yes. in 2012, we detected the irregularity. we worked with tetratech to say we need to understand what this irregularity is. they did an investigation, an evaluation. they issued a report. i think that report has been heavily covered in the media, and there was -- there was thought to be really limited issue there, and corrective actions were taken and rework was done. so in 2014, it was thought that that had been completely addressed. however, su

the time. i appreciate night thank you very much, neil. neil: what if you're a whistle-blowere bad stuff going on at your company, in this case the veterans administration and no one responds? they ignore your whistle? meet the guy who says they ignored my whistle and he is blowing a stack right now with us, and only us. ♪ and market volatility isn't top of mind. that's because they have a shield annuity from brighthouse financial, which allows them to take advantage of growth opportunities in up markets, while maintaining a level of protection in down markets. so they're less concerned with market volatility and can focus more on the things they're passionate about. talk with your advisor about shield annuities from brighthouse financial- established by metlife. neil: all right. the president has been hitting a lot of the media response to reports that he is looking at trying to help zte, the chinese telecommunications concerns, brought up on charges of espionage stealing from us, but the president insisting a part of a broader effort to secure a trade deal where the chinese

although i did read the allegation of the whistle-blower. seth, when you look at these reports breaking over the last five minutes, that paul manafort's estranged former son-in-law has flipped, as far back as january, is cooperating with investigators and that we don't know whether that directly comes from the mueller probe or separately, this is a person that was on their radar, that was investigated, that did meet with mueller's investigators. walk us through just as a line prosecutor, how this kind of thing works, why, for example, is it a secret plea deal? other plea deals have been released in the course of normal investigation. your analysis? >> i think it couldn't be any more clear to me. i want paul manafort. there were three people in that meeting, kushner, don jr. and paul manafort. they are trying to get someone on the inside of that meeting to cooperate and roll them up on don jr., kushner, and potentially the president. be it an indictment in d.c., an additional indictment in virginia. which as i understand it, is about 300-plus

. >>> important new context about the whistle blower who admits to leaking michael cohen's financial rds. a law enforcement official motivated by missing files and the whistle blower was unable to track down two of what was believed to be three suspicious activity reports filed by first republic bank, the same bank used to pay stormy daniels. law enforcement officials tell nbc news that it's not uncommon for government databases to be restricted especially in criminal investigations. government intelligence agencies can request certain records to be removed or restricted. we should also mention that the leak of cohen's financial documents is under investigation by the treasury department's inspector general. >>> let's switch gears and get a check on your weather with bill karins. bill, the only good news i think out of what you're going to tell us is you and i are wearing the same exact suit. >> that and it's friday. that's the only two good happy news we have to report. the rain is endless right now in the mid-atlantic. the yellow and reds here are imbedded thunderstorms and it is po

to take the leaks seriously all depends on whose ox is being gored you know the leak is glass half empty word for whistle blower right best movie i've seen in months is the post you know tom hanks and meryl streep you know riveting retelling of the story of the pentagon papers what a set of never leaked right you know some people actually. here in washington still have a vertebra. and we have both of us spying. so you know acts of political courage depends on what the issue is you know it's a very so i was there something i mean obviously now we've never had a moment in this country where everyone agreed that something was great or anything you know when nixon was thrown out you know obviously not everybody thought that was a great thing but this is a very it's hard to understand where the political motivations and the patriotic i guess motivation as particular administration is allergic to leaks you know we've heard the stories out of turn in your phone when you go to the white house stuff like that so obviously it touches a nerve with them but what touches a nerve with us is this stuff about the press the stu

but first what is your burning question that you have for christopher wiley the whistle-blower today?>> i want to know how it worked from the inside. the fbi and the justice will get to the bottom of any legal violations, allegedly cambridge analytica obtained the data about all of us, unlawfully from facebook but i don't think cambridge analytica did anything that the other social media platforms, like facebook don't mean to pick on them, like facebook do every day. i mean, the goal of all these platforms and websites is to sell us something, candidates, products, ideas, votes and the larger issue here -- >> just to stop you right there, isn't cambridge analytica different from all the rest they were involved in targeting voters and trying to figure out how to perhaps -- >> you can do that on facebook too. you can do that on facebook too. facebook -- i don't mean just to pick on facebook, when i say facebook, i mean all the social media platforms, facebook reaches and has data on 2.1 billion people. that's 27% of the world's population. they have the ability to influence what we beli

> the good news, the oig report is about to come out and the oig has the ability to protect the whistle-blowers within the department of justice and within the fbi. so hopeful and optimistic that some of those folks will do the right thing and get protected by the oig, and we might see some of their content coming out in his report. >> jesse, they need to break down the blue wall of silence. when the ship is sinking, no one will throw you a life raft. >> according to the constitution, you have recourse to congress. and that's exactly what i did in 2002, and i won. i went to congress to report some of the spying on u.s. citizens. it's all a lie when they tell you they are after the russians. their tapping points in the fairview program are internal in the u.s. there are 11 points that they could pick up every foreigner into or out of or through the united states, if they stay at those 11 points, they get them all. >> jesse: the russians that they did indict, all they were doing was calling hillary names on facebook. not that bad. guys, gotta run, thank you. up next to incredibly compost fbi agen

news because of the audit committee and the board of directors which of the knowledge that the whistle blower has gone to the securities exchange commission but potentially related to improper reporting by the company on the news late last week semantic stop druck like a stone twenty percent in a day and then yesterday on a call with reporters the c.e.o. greg clarke didn't do any good by saying he couldn't comment on the matter what's going on with semantics melissa. well it did drop it dropped in the last week and the stock is now in a down trend it's definitely not a buy list a little bit since that first big drop but also really the company really isn't stating much and so it's turned out there that they're counting practices are being investigated by the f.c.c. which which is trouble that signals trouble and because they're not really disclosing a lot of information about it i think it's worrisome for investors and the stock really is not a buy and we don't know what's going to happen or how long the investigation is going to take but supposedly they've been being investigated since april

leaked which is what happened as a result. >> isn't there a difference between a leaker and a whistle blower? for the most part whistle blowers are protected. they're viewed as champions. but by going to someone like michael avenatti, do you lose that stat us? >> i gave a talk last summer about this. normally you can't take it upon yourself to share it with an outside source. you're supposed to take it up to superiors within your organization to show that. the right step would have been to go up to his superiors within law enforcement to say i've noticed this irregularity. maybe we need to investigate as opposed to michael avenatti. i wonder if this wasn't a story created after the fact to correct himself as a whistle blower for someone who may have leaked. >> and i'm guessing if that leaker did try to raise it within his own department and they denied him or turned him away, that would have been part of the story. we would have heard about it. rosalyn, i want to share this other piece. you're reporting michael cohen went after $1 million payment from the qatar government in exchange for access to th

the whistle-blower from the political data mining company cambridge analytica says data it got from facebook strategies for the trump campaign. >> there were segments of the population that responded to messages like drain the swamp or -- or images of walls. >> facebook's ceo mark zuckerberg is expected to head to brussels next week to discuss data controversy with the european lawmakers. zuckerberg accepted the invitation to meet with the eu just as an aggressive new data protection law is going into effect. >>> amazon prime members will soon get 10% off of some sale items at whole foods supermarkets along with discounts on other items. the program began in florida today and will extend to whole foods stores across the country this summer. amazon prime members need to download the whole foods app on their smartphones to get these deals. amazon got into the supermarket business last year when they bought whole foods in a $13.7 billion deal. >>> a new danger thousands of feet into the atmosphere. coming up next, hawaii's kilauea volcano is sending a giant plume of smoke and ash high over the

when the whistle-blower leaked one of the documents, that's how we found out that at&t and the drug companyovartis were paying michael cohen for information on how the new white house would operate. the two missing sars detail $3 million in other transactions, and now a lot of people would like to know who made those payments and if the money made its way to michael cohen's personal bank account. oregon senator, ride widen wants treasury to hand over the missing sars. even though they're missing from the treasury database, first republic bank would still likely have the companies and as you imagine, stormy daniels company wants the documents to be made public. shep? >> shepard: the experts are telling us it's highly unusual for this type of a document to go missing. >> very unusual. the database is maintained by the government. the new yorker was told that he had never seen something pulled off the system, a former prosecutor that spent years working with defensive data systems said she didn't know of any mechanism for restricting access to suspicious activity reports. but she says that it

the moment. you know, this individual is clearly trying to turn himself not into a leaker but into a whistle-blowerwhether he'll be able to enjoy the protections that whistle blowers get, that remains to be seen. the information is, you know, at least on the surface alarming that these records supposedly disappeared from the record system where suspicious activity reports would normally be found and accessible to government employees who have a right to utilize them. >> so i just want to read, josh, some of what the law enforcement official told ronan. okay, he said i have never seen something pulled off the system. that system is a safeguard for the bank. it's a stockpile of information. when something's not there that should be i immediately became concerned, that's why i came forward. so there's a question as to whether these financial records are truly missing or just restricted and, and t the source leak couldn't access them. but if it did, does that concern you? >> this is his optic or his or her view on what happened. i think what we have to do is divide this into two parts. the first part b

the report says the whistle-blower became alarmed after being unable to find two important reports onbase. the author of the "new yorker" article, row 9 farrell, tell us about what motivated the source to come forward. >> so this is a somewhat dense area of financial databases minted by the government. there's a database in which reports that banks are mandated to file when they see suspicious activity are held. and this law enforcement official searching for records related to michael cohen, which as fairly routine thing a law enforcement official might do in response to seeing news about cohen, to for instance see if there was anything happening related to this case in their jurisdiction. what this official found was that there was a fairly striking suspicious activity report, which has been public for the past week, about cohen's activities. but also two additional reports that were withheld from search results in the system. and every expert we spoke to familiar with this data base said that is extraordinarily unusual. we discuss in the piece of the possibility maybe this isn't fo

the whistle-blower who leaked president trump's personal attorney michael cohen's bank records is now speaking out, saying this they leaked the financial documents when they noticed other critical records were missing. cnn's mj lee joins me more with more on this. what do we know the mixing records and the database this is centering around. >> this document is called a suspicious activity report and this is basically a report that banks have to file to the treasury department if they suspect that something weird is going on. one of the banks as you know, that filed one of these reports, is first republic bank. this is a bank that michael cohen used to set up a bank account for essential consultants, the shell company he used to make his payment to stormy daniels and we now know that he also used that bank account to receive a lot of money from companies where he was trying to do business consulting for. now, a law enforcement official is now telling the new yorker's ronan farrow the reason he decided to leak some of the reports to the media is because he happened to notice that two of

maybe we can move onto the whistle blowers themselves, mr. antoine. >> sure. this is don wadsworth, and this is burt bowers. he was responsible for radiological safety and at some point held a license -- >> supervisor kim: could we have the microphone because no one can hear you. both individuals can just speak at the mic. >> okay. let me introduce them, and then, you can ask whatever questions you want of them. don wadsworth, he has experience at hunters point for about a decade. he has a nuclear regulatory license issued in his name. he is a health phycisist. his company supplied the rag teches. many of those switched over to the companies that did the cheating. he's involved personally with the parcel a review that was done. this is burt bowers. he also had a decade at hunters point. he worked his way up to be the top radiological safety officer for tetratech, and he was one of the people who was fired from tetratech for objecting to what they were doing. i'll let you ask the questions that you want. >> supervisor kim: all right. can we ask questions? >> you

. >> neil: scott davis, the whistle-blower was back with us to say despite the big words and promises, things are not changing. the wait times are still bad for a lot of veterans. but they do have some progress on the legislative front here. tennessee republican chairman of the house veterans affairs committee, phil rowe with us on that. i know this measure passed overwhelmingly that addresses this issue. it's still potentially in limbo here and we still don't have someone heading the v.a. on a full time basis. we have a lot of candidates. if this guy is right, the problems remain. what do you make of that? >> the problems aren't solved. there's no question about that. the v.a., neil is a huge organization, 370,000 employees, 168 medical centers, 800 outpatient clinics. it's a big organization. i think it's headed in the right direction. what we did yesterday, recognized the fact that veterans are having difficulty getting appointments. so we passed a community care act which will make it easy when fully implemented for the new secretary to implement the plan. if the v.a. can't meet s

requesting more than a thousand pages of documents from the epa and an interview with pruitt's former head of security. now this comes as an epa whistle-blower abc news in an exclusive interview he was fired after reporting a laundry list of what he considered to be red flags. overnight, the whistle-blower who calls his former boss a liar is speaking out. it was just days ago epa chief scott pruitt telling congress he never retaliated against staffers who defied him. >> i don't ever recall a conversation or -- >> was he just straight out lying? >> bold-face lying. >> reporter: now kevin chmielewski, a trump campaign veteran -- >> he's great. >> reporter: -- anlater dety chief of staff at the epa, tells abc news after he raised concerns over what he considered to be lavish spending by pruitt, a manager said he had to go. >> hey, administrator pruitt, either wants me to fire you or put you in an office that he doesn't have to see you again. >> reporter: pruitt under fire for renting a room in a capitol hill townhouse tied to a top lobbyist for 50 bucks a night and allegations he improperly spent tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money i

i just came from a hearing with christopher wily, the whistle-blower from the cambridge analytica controversythat's a firm, a political consultants firm, inpaperly accessed facebook information to affect voters. each expressed unease, democrats and republicans, with the kind of information facebook collects and what it's going to address many of the programs. >> you mentioned christopher wily in that testimony. he was testifying before the senate judiciary committee a short time ago, and notably, and again, you were probably a bit closer than i was, but he told lawmakers there that facebook, not only knew about the data graph since 2015 but that the company threatened to sue the guardian if they broke the story and banned while fri faom faceb. if those things are true what does that tell you about the social media behemoth? >> facebook not only threatened to sue and kick wily off, it also told british lawmakers a few days ago it didn't think it had much of an obligation to tell users what happened with cambridge analytica. this speaks to the fact the reason the app appeared on facebook in the

the door. and, you know, at whistle-blower after whistle-blower told me is they feel there is a culture of denigrating expertise. and as we barrel into, fo instance, the north korea crisis and this latest effort to tackle it, the experts who have been embedded in that crisis for decades say time will tell what a meeting between leaders in that situation will achieve or not. we could get played.ha we do know is we need it to be embedded in strategy, built by diplomons, and we have them anymore. >> woodruff: welk you amongth o things were one of the very few people to get access to sit down with formesecretary of state rex tillerson. he told you in that conversation, he admitted some mistakes were made. what did he say to you>> ou know, every living secretary of state went on the record for war on peace, and i think they were each candid in different and surprising ways. rex tillerson to his great credit gave a lot of access, and for the first time in this interview really did say, look, maybe it was just too inexperienced. he said when he defended these very deep cuts to te state department budget, he

senator stephen's investigation and still not satisfied that the agency properly investigated the whistle blower who called attention to the misconduct in the investigation and the prosecution. but i want to make very clear, i have not lost faith in the fbi as an institution. i had an opportunity just a few months back to meet with the special agent in charge in anchorage and his senior team. but to look them all in the eyeball and just let them know that we have great faith in the work that they do. and it is hard and it is difficult. and we worry. i worry about the morale of the men and women for some of the same reasons that you have heard here today. and i hope that the message that you convey back to them is that we need them to do the jobs that we have kept them to do. we respect the work that they have in front of them. and i was able to share my direct -- thanks. i wanted to speak just very quickly to the issue that really is front and foremost in the minds of many people in anchorage and around the state, our state has been dubbed most dangerous in the country. anchorage has one of the

iet the whistle blowers who share their st in this book are hopeful that he may pull out of the nose dave at is right now triggering a transformation of america's place in the worldt where we are g our ability to negotiate and make peace and incasingly shooting first and asking questions later. hingsodruff: one of the you start the book writing about is the so-called "mahogany massacre," where people who played key long-time roles in the state department were just summarily dismissed, a lot of them in the very early weeks of the trump administrauetion. i the pushback on that is doesn't every new president, every new secretary of state have a right to come in and put their own people in? >> absolutely, and this was done in a very different way from that normal scenario you just described where non-political appointees, career officials who had decades of expertise in important subject matter areaso relatedr most important challenges around the world were just shown the door. and, you know, what meistle-blower after whistle-blower tols they feel there is a culture of denigrating expert

the leaks in washington are shockingly self interested. some prevent defense on policy and others legitimately are whistle blowers. when the president is talking to the russian foreign minister the day after firing comey, yes, that is a breach of national security protocol and at the level of whistle blower given he's talking to the foreign power which attempted to influence our elections on his behalf about why he fired the fbi director. >>> next topic, let's talk about this on going controversy with the white house aide kelly sadler who made the nasty joke about john mccain. can i take the white house's position for a minute, a.b. let's do this exercise. isn't this an internal matter. she didn't say this publicly. she said this in a meeting. it was leaked. who are we in the press to tell the white house how to deal with an internal nasty joke? >> well, it's not really up to the media at this point. the daughter of john mccain, meghan mccain told the public she requested a public apology and hasn't got one and doesn't believe kelly sadler still has her job. that's a pretty important point here. cindy mccain, the w

counsel of the company, and he acted as a scarecrow giving credence to litigation threats, so the whistle blowers did so at great personal risk. >> other thing too, emblematic that the board was star-studded. everybody associated with the company was a huge name, and i don't know if that's one of the main lessons people should take from this. >> well, they took advantage of the fact, first of all, silicon valley is who now owe,knows, th might have something. >> we've seen stanford dropouts do it before. >> one of her strategies was always to surround herself and win the backing of someone with credibility and someone with a prestigious reputation, draper and stafford engineering professor were the first, then donald illusion who helped groom ellison and schultz. schultz came along in 2007 and joined her board and introduced her to buddies at the hoover institution, think tank on the stanford campus. that's how she came to have henry kissinger and bill perry and all these former aging statesmen, sort of larger than life pictures on her board. >> i heard jennifer lawrence is going to play her in a