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Search results for jesselyn radack: 9 matches
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2006-12-20 "CANARY IN THE COALMINE"
Jesselyn Radack, the former Justice Department ethics attorney and whistleblower who was forced out of the department, threatened with disbarment and put on the "no-fly" list over unwanted advice she gave in the John Walker Lindh case, has written a book about her experience as a government whistleblower:
The past three years have been the most difficult of my life, but they have also been a cataclysmic growth period that has cemented my commitment to civil rights and liberties. I realize that there are many stories like mine, and that I am just a footnote in a seismic shift that is occurring in our country. But I promised myself that if I could ever speak freely again, then I would use my voice to try to prevent this sort of political revenge from happening to anyone else.
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2005-02-04 DO THE RIGHT THING, MR. CHERTOFF?
Whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, fired from the Justice Department "couldn't believe her ears" at Homeland Security nominee Michael Chertoff's testimony at his nomination hearing that:
"If you are dealing with something that makes you nervous, you'd better make sure that you are doing the right thing. And you'd better check it out.... You had better be very careful to make sure that whatever it is you decide to do falls well within what is required by the law."
Writing in today's Los Angeles Times, Radack recounts that after she served as a legal adviser to the Justice Department where Chertoff served as head of the Criminal Division in 2001, she did "the right thing" in noting improper interrogation of Taliban supporter John Walker Lindh and was subsequently fired from her job, fired from her next private-sector job on the advice of the department, placed under criminal investigation with no charges brought, referred for disciplinary action in the states where she holds bar registration, and placed on airline "no-fly" lists. Radack has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the department.
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2005-02-02 CHERTOFF\'S ROLE AT JUSTICE EXAMINED.
Michael Chertoff is expected to be easily confirmed as the new Secretary of Homeland Security, but questions about his tenure at the Department of Justice are being raised before his confirmation hearing. The Washington Post notes that Chertoff "gave the Senate conflicting answers last spring when asked whether a government ethics office had warned against interrogating John Walker Lindh ... without a defense attorney present." Ethics lawyer Jesselyn Radack says she was retaliated against for not dropping the issue.
During the hearing today, Chertoff defended the department's post-Sept. 11 actions, but according to a Bloomberg news account, "Chertoff conceded that a Justice Department strategy to arrest illegal immigrants on minor charges to gain information on possible terrorist threats 'had not always been executed perfectly.'"
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2004-11-03 JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WHISTLEBLOWER PROFILED.
Department of Justice whistleblower Jesselyn Radack was profiled in-depth in Mother Jones magazine's January/February issue. Radack, a former Justice Department lawyer, recently filed a lawsuit claiming she was forced out of her job after questioning the legality of the government's interrogation of John Walker Lindh. Radack was then effectively fired from a subsequent job with a private D.C. law firm, after her whistleblowing at DOJ became known to the partners there. The article quotes extensively from C. Fred Alford, author of Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power, who says, "The most striking thing about Radack's story was the way the law firm behaved. It begins to look like there really is something called the System, and if you violate the rules in one part, there's no safe haven."
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2004-10-29 WHISTLEBLOWERS CHALLENGE GOVERNMENT, FACE RETALIATION.
An Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower has prompted an FBI investigation into the federal government's dealings with Halliburton Co., The New York Times reported today. Earlier this month, Bunnatine Greenhouse, the top contracts officer at the Army Corps of Engineers, sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Les Brownlee alleging that the government had given Halliburton a no-bid contract. And according to the Los Angeles Times, after Greenhouse objected to the lack of competition, the Army Corps allegedly retaliated by reducing her role in the contract's oversight.
In other whistleblowing news, The New York Times also reported today that Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department lawyer, has filed a lawsuit against the government alleging that she was forced out of her job after she questioned the propriety of interrogation techniques used on John Walker Lindh. Lindh, who subsequently pleaded guilty, is now serving a 20-year sentence.
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2003-05-23 KENNEDY RELEASES STATEMENT ON WHISTLEBLOWER.
The plight of Justice Department whistleblower Jesselyn Radack was underscored again by Sen. Ted Kennedy in a released statement taken from the judicial confirmation hearing yesterday of Justice official Michael Chertoff, who denied knowing about a coverup and retaliation against Radack stemming from the John Walker Lindh prosecution.
Kennedy's prepared statement read, "Nevertheless, I remain very concerned about Ms. Radack's situation. According to press reports -- and the Department
has never issued any statement disputing them -- Ms. Radack was in effect
fired for providing legal advice on a matter involving ethical duties and
civil liberties that higher-level officials at the Department disagreed
with. Furthermore, after Ms. Radack notified Justice Department officials
that they had failed to turn over several e-mails requested by the federal
court, Department officials notified the managing partners at Ms. Radack's
new law firm that she was the target of a criminal investigation. I
submitted questions to Attorney General Ashcroft regarding this matter in
March, and I await his response."
The contacts with Radack's law firm led to her being forced to take administrative leave.
Kennedy, while noting that he was satisfied with a second round of questioning of Chertoff, said that "his answers to my first set of written questions were
non-responsive, evasive, and hyper-technical. They were stingy in
substance, avoiding the questions that were asked, and often answering
questions that were not asked."
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2003-05-22 JUSTICE OFFICIAL CLAIMS NO KNOWLEDGE OF ETHICS ADVICE IN LINDH MATTER.
The New York Times today looked into the case of Jesselyn Radack, the Justice Department ethics attorney who challenged the department's handling of the interrogation of John Walker Lindh and told her supervisor that documentation of her advice had been withheld from a federal judge. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who, as we reported last month, had asked Attorney General John Ashcroft for answers on why she was forced out of her job, got to ask his questions again when Michael Chertoff, the head of Justice's criminal division and now a federal judicial nominee, came before the Judiciary Committee. But at the hearing last week, Chertoff claimed he had no knowledge of the e-mail dialogue between his subordinate and Radack. Kennedy said he was troubled by Chertoff's lack of active involvement in the case, according to the Times account.
"I'm very concerned about this Radack situation," Kennedy later told the Times. "It appears she was effectively fired for providing legal advice that the department didn't agree with."
The dispute has slowed but not derailed Chertoff's nomination. Kennedy, who got the confirmation delayed for one week over dissatisfaction with Chertoff's responses, told the Times that he planned to vote in favor of the nomination, and Chertoff's nomination passed the committee later today. But by the time of the vote, six Democrats -- including Kennedy -- decided they needed more information on a late allegation about the prosecutor's conduct when he was a U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, and only responded "present" when the vote was taken.
At today's confirmation hearing, the Times account of the Radack story came in for special abuse by committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, who opined, "It's disgraceful that at this last minute The New York Times is attempting to impugn anybody," and later noted that Eric Lichtblau, the author of the article, had "shared bylines with the infamous Mr. Blair," the reporter who has admitted faking a number of Times articles. That remark reportedly prompted Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to warn his colleague about avoiding "McCarthyism."
The Times had also reported that a "senior Justice Department official said today that Ms. Radack's accusations regarding the possible concealment of documents and retaliation against her were recently referred to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility for an investigation." Better late than never; the investigation of leaks of Justice's concealment has been underway for a few months now.
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2003-04-10 WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIM STILL UNANSWERED BY JUSTICE.
The Senate Judiciary Committee reportedly still has not received a reply to its March 11 written question to Attorney General John Ashcroft about how the Department of Justice is dealing with whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, the former DOJ attorney who had revealed departmental misconduct in the questioning of John Walker Lindh and pointed out to superiors when evidence had not been turned over in preparation for Lindh's trial. The New Yorker had revealed in its March 10th issue that Radack's opinion on the impropriety of questioning Lindh without counsel obtained for him by his father had been disregarded by officials, and later email messages detailing the problem were never given to the federal court. The written questions from the committee asked Ashcroft for his take on the facts in the magazine article and asked, "Is Ms. Radack in fact now the target of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney's office? For what conduct is she being investigated?"
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2003-03-12 LINDH LITIGATION ISSUES.
CBS News, quoting Jane Mayer's story in the New Yorker on the Justice department's handling of John Walker Lindh's case, discusses the case of former Justice Department attorney Jesselyn Radack, who had given government officials a legal opinion on whether they could question Lindh without an attorney. She was "slammed" in a performance review and is being investigated for possible leaks after she discovered that e-mail messages showing possible FBI misconduct in its interviewing of Lindh no longer exist, and tried to get the restored messages back in the file. Radack had enjoyed a bonus for her work the previous year, according to the account.
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