The lawyer representing the anonymous CIA employee who blew the whistle on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine once investigated retaliation against a whistleblower who worked with Joe Biden’s staff to accuse the military of failing to provide armored vehicles to troops in Iraq.
Whistleblower Franz Gayl, a Marine Corps civilian ground combat advocate, went public in 2007 with a now-disputed claim that the military had ignored or slow-walked requests for life-saving equipment, such as mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles and nonlethal offensive gear, that would have saved Iraqi civilians.
Gayl’s reprisal case was investigated by Andrew Bakaj, a former CIA officer who specializes in supporting whistleblowers. Bakaj is now the principal attorney for the career CIA officer who worked on the National Security Council under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump before departing and filing a whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general.
The claim from Gayl helped build opposition to the war and to President George W. Bush, who was portrayed as incompetent, and fueled Obama’s 2008 victory, which propelled Biden into the vice presidency. But it has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years.
Gayl’s ability to connect with the staff of a powerful congressional committee, the laudatory media coverage of his complaints, and the link to Biden present striking parallels with the Ukraine whistleblower a dozen years on.
In 2007, Biden, then a senator for Delaware, referred to the report in his criticism of Bush’s handling of the war. “I have absolutely no faith, none whatsoever, in this president to voluntarily do what should be done,” he said. ”The only way it is going to happen is when our Republican friends stop voting with the president and start voting to end this war by supporting our troops.”
Erin Logan, a Biden adviser who worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, connected Gayl to USA Today, which wrote about Gayl’s complaint and exposed the problem to a national audience. Logan went on to become a senior Pentagon and National Security Council official in the Obama administration.
House Democrats, who won back the majority six years into Bush’s term largely from voter opposition to the war in Iraq, weighed impeaching Bush over his handling of the war. But at least one report rejected Gayl’s claim about the vehicles.
Bakaj conducted a “reprisal investigation” as a senior investigator for the Defense Department Office of the Inspector General after Gayl’s security clearance was revoked and he was punished with a pay reduction by the military for disclosing the matter.
Like Gayl’s account, the anonymous whistleblower’s report about Trump’s call has been disputed. Republicans, suspecting political influence, are eager to find out the extent of the whistleblower’s contact with senior House Democrats before the decision to file a whistleblower complaint. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California is working to shield the whistleblower’s identity and said his testimony was no longer necessary after first describing it as critical to the inquiry.
Republicans are demanding the whistleblower testify publicly about the complaint, which does not entirely match a transcript of the president’s call with Zelensky. Among the discredited claims, Republicans said, is one that Trump “instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelensky’s inauguration.”
The whistleblower also claimed that former Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland had “spoken with” Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, “in an attempt to contain damage to U.S. national security.”
“In light of these inconsistencies between facts as alleged by the employee and information obtained during the so-called impeachment inquiry, the Committee ought to fully access the sources and credibility of the employee,” Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, and Michael McCaul wrote to Schiff last week.
Bakaj led the investigation into reprisals against Gayl after his damning claim that the military was allowing U.S. military and Iraqi civilians to die rather than pursue safer offensive and defensive equipment, namely armored Humvees to protect against an onslaught of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which accounted for half of U.S. casualties in the war.
A civilian report issued in 2017 by retired Marine Lt. Col. Steve Chill, who obtained documents and emails, countered the claim by Gayl and found an armored Humvee development program was long in the works and of the “highest priority,” contradicting Gayl’s whisleblower claim. “These perceptions about Marine Corps negligence surrounding the MRAP efforts reflect ignorance of the facts,” Chill said in his report.
Pentagon officials reported success with the MRAPs and said the vehicles saved lives. “MRAP is singularly responsible for saving the lives and limbs of thousands of service members in Iraq and Afghanistan,” then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in 2012.
Bakaj is now fighting to keep the Trump whistleblower anonymous and is resisting the GOP’s call for him to testify. “NO Member of Congress knows the whistleblower’s identity. And that’s exactly the point — to make sure federal employees can come forward to report wrongdoing anonymously and without repercussion,” Bakaj told Jordan via Twitter last week.
[Also read: Joe Biden worked with whistleblower when he was vice president, officials reveal]
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that Andrew Bakaj did not assist or help Franz Gayl. Mr. Bakaj had no involvement with Mr. Gayl’s 2007 whistleblower complaint and no dealings with then-Sen. Joe Biden’s staff. As a Department of Defense Office of Inspector General investigator, Mr. Bakaj was an independent and neutral fact finder assigned to assess whether reprisals had been carried out against Mr. Gayl as a result of his whistleblower complaint. The Washington Examiner apologizes to Mr. Bakaj for mischaracterizing his role.
