At least two leaders at the agency overseeing the Pentagon lied to a judge and improperly destroyed documents, a former official is claiming, after they illegally outed whistleblowers at the department.
The claim made by John Crane, a former assistant inspector general at the Department of Defense, was first reported by The Guardian on Sunday. Crane claims the situation arose after National Security Agency analysts filed a complaint with the Office of Inspector General in September 2002, expressing concern that a $3.8 billion telephone surveillance program known as “Trailblazer” was being used illegally.
The complaint was filed by Diane Roark, a senior congressional staffer, and former NSA officials William Binney, Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis. It was also endorsed by one official who still worked for the department, Thomas Drake, under special confidentiality rules.
I love my country, but I hate this. https://t.co/zmxXYymS9O
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) May 22, 2016
However, Crane alleged, instead of conducting an investigation, officials illegally provided their names to FBI agents probing a leak in the media in 2005. When Drake filed a retaliation complaint that required a response from the agency, OIG General Counsel Henry Shelley said the responsive documents had been inadvertently destroyed.
“I told Henry that destruction of documents under such circumstances was, as he knew, a very serious matter and could lead to the inspector general being accused of obstructing a criminal investigation,” Crane said, adding that the wrongdoing was allegedly backed by the agency’s second-highest ranking official, Principal Deputy Inspector General Lynne Halbrooks. Responding to a judicial inquiry, the two assured in a letter to Judge Richard Bennett, the documents had been destroyed by low-level staffers during a “routine purge.”
“Lynne and Henry had frozen me out by then, so I had no input into their letter to Judge Bennett,” Crane said. “So they ended up lying to a judge in a criminal case, which of course is a crime.”
The Justice Department reportedly opened a criminal investigation responsive to Crane’s allegations in late March or early April, subsequent to a ruling by the Office of Special Counsel that there is a “substantial likelihood” of merit. Officials on Monday declined a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
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Another former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, commented on the issue in a statement to The Guardian. “The sad reality of today’s policies is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake,” Snowden said. “Going to the press involves serious risks, but at least you’ve got a chance.”
The report could lend credence to Snowden’s contention that no alternative existed for leaking troves of classified information about the NSA’s surveillance regime to the public in 2013. President Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and most intelligence officials have argued that Snowden should have used approved channels to voice his concerns about the agency.
