Sep 28, 2019 7:00 AM

What Past Whistle-Blowers Think of the Trump-Ukraine Complaint

Two former intelligence community whistle-blowers say the life of whoever wrote the Trump-Ukraine complaint has been permanently altered.

US President Donald Trump speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Two weeks of speculation, one call recap, and the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry later, Congress on Thursday released the whistle-blower complaint at the center of an unfolding scandal over President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. The partially redacted document reveals not only that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate a political rival, but also alleges that the White House tried to hide it. At a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, called the situation “unique and unprecedented.”

Among the many remaining open questions: What happens now to the whistle-blower who initially reported the misconduct?

“I’m having major, major flashbacks,” says Thomas Drake, a National Security Agency whistle-blower indicted under the Espionage Act in 2010, after he shared information about abuse and waste inside the NSA with a Baltimore Sun reporter. “His life is never going to be the same again, I can tell you that right now.”

The Ukraine whistle-blower's complaint is perhaps one of the most politically charged of its kind in US history. It outlines how, during a July 25 phone call, the president leaned on a foreign nation to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate and former US vice president Joe Biden. Those details were largely confirmed by a recap of the call released by the White House this week. The complaint further alleges that after Trump and Zelensky hung up, White House staffers then tried to hide the record of the conversation in an electronic system “otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.”

The law protects intelligence officials who flag wrongdoing through official channels from retaliation. (Drake initially took a similar path as the current whistle-blower, then turned to the media when those efforts went nowhere.) But Trump seems otherwise inclined. During an event with State Department officials Thursday, the president said he wanted to know “who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information, because that’s close to a spy,” according to media reports. Trump doubled down on that rhetoric Friday morning on Twitter, questioning whether “the so-called whistle-blower” received information from a “spy” or “partisan operative.”

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Some details about the whistle-blower's identity have already trickled out. The New York Times reported Thursday that the person behind the complaint is a CIA official who was at one point dispatched to the White House, significantly narrowing the number of potential authors.

“Intelligence, unlike law enforcement, is a small, closed private world,” says John Kiriakou, a CIA whistle-blower who spoke out on ABC News in 2007 about the Bush-era torture program. He was later sent to prison under the Obama administration for giving the name of a covert CIA officer to a freelance reporter, who didn’t publish it. “I think for all intents and purposes, whoever [the whistle-blower is], his career is probably over.”

Unlike Drake and Kiriakou, it doesn’t appear the Trump whistle-blower has spoken with journalists or other members of the media, which likely protects them from criminal prosecution. That doesn’t mean, however, they are in completely settled legal territory.

It's not entirely clear, for instance, how fully the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act shields people from retaliation, says Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit that works to expose misconduct in the US government. “Retaliation protections that intelligence community whistle-blowers have are not very enforceable,” she says. “It’s a problem because, on paper, they look pretty good.” The issue, in part, is that the protections rely a policy directive from the Obama administration rather than a statute written by Congress.

Hempowicz hopes that, as a result of the current complaint, Congress will step in and provide greater clarity about how whistle-blowers from intelligence agencies will be protected in the future. “The silver lining to all of this is that there is an appetite to address the deficiencies in the law,” she says. If the White House is “questioning if someone is even a whistle-blower—who followed all the proper channels—what is the incentive for anyone else to come forward?”

One thing working in the current whistle-blower’s favor, says Drake, is the amount of media attention the complaint has received. Any attempt by the Trump administration to retaliate will likely be met with significant scrutiny from both journalists and Democratic lawmakers. Drake credits media reports, including a lengthy investigation from Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, with helping to change public perception of his own case. The felony charges against Drake were eventually dropped; as part of a plea deal in 2011, he agreed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor and served no jail time.

The downside of media attention, however, can already be seen in that New York Times report. Whistle-blowers often seek to remain anonymous, but it seems plausible that the author of the Trump complaint could eventually be revealed. “The whistle-blower shouldn’t even be part of the equation, now that the information is out there,” says Kiriakou. “We should be looking at an investigation, and what we’re seeing instead is people taking political sides.” Trump has called the whistle-blower’s complaint “just another political hack job.”

“We must protect those who demonstrate the courage to report alleged wrongdoing,” said acting DNI Maguire in Thursday's hearing. Maguire also said he was unaware of the whistle-blower's identity, thanks to a system that intentionally safeguards it. The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act requires those who report misconduct to submit their complaints to the inspector general of the intelligence community, who is currently Michael Atkinson. If deemed credible, the complaint is then passed on to the DNI, who passes it to Congress. In that entire chain, only Atkinson and his office would know the whistle-blower's identity.

Whether their name is released or not, the whistle-blower’s role in detailing Trump’s alleged misconduct likely isn’t over. The Democratic chairmen of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Oversight and Reform announced Thursday they were seeking for the whistle-blower to testify before Congress, along with the individuals referenced in his complaint. The whistle-blower did not witness Trump’s July 25 call firsthand but wrote that “half a dozen” US officials informed them about it.

Both Kiriakou and Drake stressed that whistle-blowers are rare and that whoever filed the complaint against Trump likely took what they were doing incredibly seriously—including the possibility that they would become a political target. Drake points to how the whistle-blower took care to note that their complaint was unclassified and that if it were to be classified retroactively, "it is incumbent on the classifying authority to explain why such a marking was applied." In other words, the person who wrote the complaint knew the White House or another authority might try to keep it secret. "That complaint is stunning in its detail," says Drake. "[The whistle-blower] would be well aware of what the risks were. There is no question he or she knew what the risks were."

"Do you remain silent or do you risk it all?” asks Kiriakou. “If you believe in your heart you’re right, you risk it all.”