House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

Well. This is awkward. Congressional oversight of our intelligence agencies is actually being performed by the overseers. The House Intelligence Committee -- or at least Rep. Adam Schiff -- wants to know what's being withheld by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Something fucked up has happened and the ODNI doesn't want to talk about it. What "it" is remains unknown, but it's apparently damaging enough the Intelligence Community is blowing off its obligations to its oversight.

"A month ago, a whistleblower within the intelligence community lawfully filed a complaint regarding a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law, or deficiency within the responsibility or authority of the Director of National Intelligence. The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community found that complaint not only credible, but urgent. More than ten days since the Director was obligated to transmit the complaint to the intelligence committees, the Committee has still not received the disclosure from the Director, in violation of the law.

"A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the IC IG determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never. This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct."

Given the ONDI's refusal to cooperate and Schiff's angry letter, it's probably safe to assume this whistleblowing involves domestic surveillance and another abuse of the NSA's powers. If it was just some "inadvertent" collection of phone records or someone blowing tax dollars by pretending to telecommute, this would have been handed over to the HIC. But this one has been denoted as being of "urgent concern," which suggests an abuse of collection authorities.

Not for nothing do whistleblowers take the next flight to Hong Kong. Going through the proper channels just gets complaints buried and possibly separates the whistleblower from their source of income. This one went through the proper channels. And the proper channels extended a wordless middle finger to Congressional oversight in response.

The ODNI claims it has no obligations to its oversight.

On September 13, 2019, the Committee received a letter from the ODNI declining the Chairman's request and stating that the DNI, contrary to an unambiguous statutory command, is withholding the complaint from the Committee because, in part, it involves confidentially and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community.

Wrong! That's not how this works. Intelligence oversight committee members are "read in." They're allowed to check this stuff out. That's why they hold closed-door sessions and invoke national security concerns when pressed by the public to be a bit more forthcoming about the IC's activities. If the ODNI considers its work to be too "sensitive" for its oversight, we have a problem. I mean, we already have problems, but now the ODNI has placed itself outside the control of the government that created it. If it can reject this demand, it can reject any form of control at all. We don't need the ODNI to be a law unto itself.

Here's the kicker: given the ODNI's recalcitrance, the Intelligence Committee is drawing some very concerning conclusions about the nature of the withheld report.

The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials. This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible "serious or flagrant" misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.

Fantastic. If true, the Administration is weaponizing the Intelligence Community. And someone on the inside is "urgently concerned." If it is the Administration, it can try to Executive Order its way out of this mess. But if it does, this branch is compromised. I mean, more so. That's bad news for America and Americans. And yet another reminder that, when it comes to whistleblowing, the "proper channels" are for silencing concerned employees rather than holding our public servants accountable.