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Credit to Author: Louise Matsakis| Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2019 11:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Two former intelligence community whistle-blowers say the life of whoever wrote the Trump-Ukraine complaint has been permanently altered.<\/p>\n Two weeks of speculation, one call recap<\/a>, and the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry<\/a> later, Congress on Thursday released the whistle-blower complaint<\/a> at the center of an unfolding scandal<\/a> over President Donald Trump\u2019s dealings with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. The partially redacted document reveals not only that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate his political rival, but alleges that the White House tried to hide it. At a hearing<\/a> on Capitol Hill yesterday, Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, called the situation \u201cunique and unprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the many remaining open questions: What now happens to the whistle-blower who reported the misconduct in the first place?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m having major, major flashbacks,\u201d 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<\/em> reporter. \u201cHis life is never going to be the same again, I can tell you that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n "There is no question he or she knew what the risks were."<\/p>\n NSA Whistle-Blower Thomas Drake<\/p>\n The Ukraine whistle-blower's complaint is perhaps one of the most politically charged of its kind in American 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<\/a>. 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<\/a> \u201cotherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cwho\u2019s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information, because that\u2019s close to a spy,\u201d according to media reports<\/a>. Trump doubled down on that rhetoric on Twitter Friday morning, questioning<\/a> whether \u201cthe so-called whistle-blower\u201d received information from a \u201cspy\u201d or \u201cpartisan operative.\u201d<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1177579380819845120<\/a><\/p>\n Some details about the whistle-blower's identity have already trickled out. The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIntelligence, unlike law enforcement, is a small, closed private world,\u201d says John Kiriakou, a CIA whistle-blower who spoke out<\/a> about the Bush-era torture program on ABC News in 2007. 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\u2019t publish it. \u201cI think for all intents and purposes, whoever [the whistle-blower is], his career is probably over.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Drake and Kiriakou, it doesn\u2019t appear the Trump whistle-blower has spoken with journalists or other members of the media, which likely protects them from criminal prosecution. That doesn\u2019t mean, however, they are in completely settled legal territory.<\/p>\n It's not entirely clear, for instance, how fully the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act shields people from retaliation, says Liz Hempowicz, the director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit that works to expose misconduct in the US government. \u201cRetaliation protections that intelligence community whistle-blowers have are not very enforceable,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a problem because on paper, they look pretty good.\u201d The issue, in part, is that the protections rely a policy directive<\/a> from the Obama administration, rather than a statute written by Congress.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cThe silver lining to all of this is that there is an appetite to address the deficiencies in the law,\u201d she says. If the White House is \u201cquestioning if someone is even a whistle-blower\u2014who followed all the proper channels\u2014what is the incentive for anyone else to come forward?\u201d<\/p>\n One thing working in the current whistle-blower\u2019s 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<\/a><\/em>, 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<\/a>, he agreed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor and served no jail time.<\/p>\n The downside of media attention, however, can already be seen in that New York Times<\/em> report. Whistle-blowers often seek to remain anonymous, but it seems plausible that the author of the Trump complaint could eventually be revealed. \u201cThe whistle-blower shouldn\u2019t even be part of the equation, now that the information is out there,\u201d says Kiriakou. \u201cWe should be looking at an investigation, and what we\u2019re seeing instead is people taking political sides.\u201d Trump has called<\/a> the whistle-blower\u2019s complaint \u201cjust another political hack job.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe must protect those who demonstrate the courage to report alleged wrongdoing,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n "The whistle-blower shouldn\u2019t even be part of the equation, now that the information is out there."<\/p>\n CIA Whistle-Blower John Kiriakou<\/p>\n Whether their name is released, the whistle-blower\u2019s role in detailing Trump\u2019s alleged misconduct likely isn\u2019t 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<\/a> 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\u2019s July 25 call firsthand, but wrote that \u201chalf a dozen\u201d US officials informed him about it.<\/p>\n 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\u2014including 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."<\/p>\n "Do you remain silent or do you risk it all?\u201d asks Kiriakou. \u201cIf you believe in your heart you\u2019re right, you risk it all.\u201d<\/p>\n