Last week, McClatchy’s Marisa Taylor reported on two cases showing the new appeals process for whistleblower retaliation claims ordered by President Obama is now operational; in the cases of Army whistleblower Michael Helms and CIA whistleblower John Reidy, the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Charles McCullough, has bounced the appeals back to the agencies in question for re-review.
That McCullough has chosen to bounce these two appeals back to the agencies is notable enough, because his commitment to whistleblower issues has never been apparent. Instead, McCullough has spent his time as IG conducting leak investigations. And last year, a complaint email sent to Daniel Meyer, who oversees whistleblower issues for the intelligence community, somehow got shared with the subject of the complaint. So McCullough’s record on these issues is less than stellar.
But McCullough’s move is particularly interesting when you consider the details of the appeal of the second complainant, John Reidy.
Reidy was not a CIA employee – his complaint spans the time from 2005 to he 2011, during which he was a subcontractor to SAIC and then, after he lost his contract with them, with Mantech, although another CIA contractor, Raytheon, got involved in alleged retaliatory actions leading to his firing from Mantech in 2011. In addition, Reidy’s whistleblowing appears to have led to an adjudication flag that has held up his security clearance renewal, which prevents him from getting any more contracts going forward.