Almost immediately after the president noted in his press conference on Friday that his Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 19 would’ve protected Ed Snowden if he had come forward via proper, legal channels, Team Greenwald erupted in a collective “LIAR!” yalp.
A June article from the International Business Times circulated through the tubes as evidence that the president lied. The article quotes an activist, POGO Public Policy Director Angela Canterbury, who says PPD19 doesn’t extend to contractors like Snowden. One person said this. An activist. No one else is quoted in the article.
But a cursory reading of PPD19 shows that it doesn’t exclude contractors and explicitly protects anyone “(1) serving in the Intelligence Community or (2) who are eligible for access to classified information can effectively report.” Combined, this ostensibly includes Snowden.
Furthermore, at the beginning of his term, the president signed the Federal Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The legislation extends whistleblower protections to government contractors and sub-contractors who report fraud, specifically misuse of federal money.
The president also signed the 2013 NDAA back in December which, among other things, expanded whistleblower protections for federal contractors who report “waste, fraud or abuse.” This law doesn’t include intelligence contractors, but the Department of Defense’s inspector general, Margaret Garrison said the PPD19, signed by the president, includes intelligence contractors.
Garrison said she believed those contract employees were already adequately covered by Presidential Policy Directive 19, which President Obama signed in October 2012 and by the 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act.
Add all of this to the fact that the president signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, and yeah, he’s totally waging a “war on whistleblowers.”
That’s four different whistleblower protections signed by President Obama in five years.