No One Noticed When Clinton and Obama Abused Whistleblowers

Commentary from Jack Cashill on American Thinker.com (Oct. 1):

Here are two unfortunate realities: the first is that whistleblowing becomes virtuous only when a Republican is the one being whistled on; the second is that deep state Democrats have a habit of manipulating whistleblower laws when it suits their purposes. I could write a book -- I’ve written several, in fact -- on whistleblowers the major media chose to ignore. The two examples that follow, one regarding Bill Clinton, the other Barack Obama, should give a sense of how the worms in Washington turn.

The first case involves TWA Flight 800, the 747 that inexplicably crashed off the coast of Long Island in July 1996. As to deep state involvement, the Clinton Department of Justice illegally seized control of the investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board and handed it off to the FBI, which, in turn, ceded real control of the investigation to the CIA.

In 2008, the CIA’s Randolph Tauss went public with an authorized explanation for the agency’s involvement. According to Tauss, the FBI immediately requested CIA assistance given “the possibility that international terrorists may have been involved.” Tauss claimed the agency responded to the FBI’s request for help less than twenty-four hours after the plane’s destruction and cited Executive Order 12333 as justification. A clause in that order authorizes the CIA to “conduct counterintelligence activities outside the United States and, without assuming or performing any internal security functions, conduct counterintelligence activities within the United States in coordination with the FBI.” It would not surprise me if the contemporary culprits cite this Reagan-era order to justify their involvement in the Russia collusion hoax.

Although President Clinton preferred to work through his fixers, on March 11, 1997, Clinton quietly signed Executive Order 13039, effectively removing all federal whistleblower protection from anyone, civilian or military, associated with U.S. Navy “special warfare” operations. This would include any Navy divers charged with finding TWA 800’s black boxes. There is compelling evidence that divers secretly removed the boxes and put them back into place after they had been doctored. When finally “found” a week after the crash, neither the cockpit voice recorder nor the flight data recorder offered any clues as to why the plane crashed. [read more]

It’s okay when a democrat abuses his authority. At least the press doesn’t care.