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Grassley Wins Declassification of CIA Documents on Monitoring Whistleblowers

By Charles S. Clark November 2, 2018

https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2018/11/grassley-wins-declassification-cia-documents-monitoring-whistleblowers/152546/?oref=relatedstories

After a four-and-a-half year wait, one of the Senate’s key whistleblower advocates succeeded in arranging the declassification of documents he says show that the CIA inappropriately monitored congressional staff correspondence with whistleblowers.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Thursday released a pair of “congressional notifications” from 2014 just delivered to him by newly installed inspector general for the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson.

To trained eyes, the notifications and an accompanying, limited-distribution report show that “during the Obama administration, the Central Intelligence Agency obtained congressional communications about pending and developing whistleblower complaints,” said Grassley. His years-long pursuit of the documents dovetails with his more recent interest in obtaining disclosures of more documents pertaining to the termination of Dan Meyer, who for years was the ombudsman for the Intelligence Community.

One of the documents, written by then-IC Inspector General Chuck McCullough, expressed concern that the CIA’s role creates “a chilling effect” on whistleblower disclosures.
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