![](\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2019.04\/thumbnail\/5cb9a3abdda4c833328b4569.JPG\")
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In an ironic twist, the agency tasked with protecting those who blow the lid on illegal activity inside the government is ITSELF being accused of retaliating against whistleblowers \u2013 can anyone protect them from the protectors?<\/p>\n
While Trump opened the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) in order to watch over those reporting potential crimes inside government agencies, some government employees are saying it ended up doing exactly the opposite.<\/p>\n
The investigation is being led by the Veterans\u2019 Affairs Department\u2019s Inspector General, which has fielded a flood of complaints from those who came to the OAWP for help and ended up in an even more dangerous situation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a crooked system where literally the fox is guarding the hen house,<\/em>\u201d VA Administrative Officer Jay DeNofrio told<\/a> Government Executive. He says he was shocked to find that the agency seemed to be more interested in investigating him than the VA doctor he reported for putting veterans at risk by continuing to practice despite his dwindling mental capacity.<\/p>\n In one particularly heinous case, the chief engineer at the VA\u2019s Northern Indiana Health Care System, Dan Martin, asked the office for backup after he reported his superiors for possible contracting violations. Martin says that instead of keeping him protected, the OAWP essentially blew the whistle on the whistleblower. They gave the people who Martin had informed on his name, and actively sabotaged an investigation by letting them know they were being secretly recorded.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of them are so crooked they swallow nails and spit up corkscrews,<\/em>\u201d Martin quipped. \u201cOAWP set me up.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n VA spokesman Curt Cashour said that things have changed, and the agency now tells claimants if the investigation they initiated has been resolved, and allows them to keep their names out of the reports which notify suspects they are being investigated. However, the agency says it will not stop \u201creferring cases of misconduct back to facilities and program offices where the misconduct occurred,<\/em>\u201d which essentially means that calling in OAWP protection could continue to actually make matters worse for whistleblowers.<\/p>\n The whistleblower-protection initiative was a key piece of President Trump\u2019s 2017 reform package for the VA, a notoriously troubled agency with a \u201cculture famous for intimidation and reprisal.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Like this story? Share it with a friend!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an ironic twist, the agency tasked with protecting those who blow the lid on illegal activity inside the government is ITSELF being accused of retaliating against whistleblowers \u2013 can anyone protect them from the protectors? While Trump opened the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) in order to watch over those reporting potential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":403370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-403369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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