Fair enough, I overstated it.
The law isn't specific but it doesn't prohibit hearsay.
The regulations promulgated by the ICIG, to avoid chasing wild gooses, prohibited hearsay and rumor in reporting information.
Funny, the ICIG said:
"...by law the Complainant – or any individual in the Intelligence Community who wants to report information with respect to an urgent concern to the congressional intelligence committees – need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern."
It's true that the ICIG had a rule that they wouldn't transmit a complaint to the DNI without first hand information, but that requirement was moot because the whistleblower stated on the form that he did have first hand information on some of the allegations.
Atkinson changed both the regulations and the form in ad hoc in mid August to allow Eric Ciaramella to comply with the regulations and form in his complaint.
That's not true.
"The Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the Complainant submitted on August 12, 2019 is the same form the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018, which went into effect before Inspector General Atkinson entered on duty as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 29, 2018..."
The whistleblower used the old form.
As the Trump-appointed ICIG said:
"In summary, regarding the instant matter, the whistleblower submitted the appropriate Disclosure of Urgent Concern form that was in effect as of August 12, 2019, and had been used by the ICIG since May 24, 2018. The whistleblower stated on the form that he or she possessed both first-hand and other information. The ICIG reviewed the information provided as well as other information gathered and determined that the complaint was both urgent and that it appeared credible."
The only problem with that statement is that the Form-401 form dated 24MAY2018 on its header is called “Urgent Concern Disclosure Form,” four words, not “Disclosure of Urgent Concern Form,” five words, on the un-numbered, “August 2019” (note, no specific date) form released on September 27, 2019 as a PDF where the meta data shows first creation dates only as early as September 25.
What we see here, in these statements from the ICIG’s office, is what is called “dancing” to cover their tracks. Note the name they use in this particular excuse sentence is the “preferred name” someone renamed the new form, NOT the name of the form the whistleblower actually used, a form of begging the question.
Whoever created the phony new form gratuitously and pleonastically renamed it to what they thought it should be called, rearranging the name and adding unnecessary word “of” (breaking the fewest-number-of-words-on-a-form-is-better rule), rather than using the perfectly good, previously used and already government approved, shorter four word name.
Some people cannot resist breaking that other rule of KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. The form forger should have taken the exact format of the original form and simply slipped the new wording into the old form, keeping the ICIG Form-401 number, changing the revision date in the correct format, and maintaining the name, and resisting the urge to amend the name, i.e., not made editorial changes to suit his or her peculiarities esthetic in writing style.
Government form creation is not the time nor the place to exercise one’s creative writing style, there is a style book one must adhere to. Another rule: when in government do as the government does. If the stupid forger had, the subtle changes would likely not have been noticed, instead, they stand out like they were intended to be noticed.
On the other hand, semimojo, perhaps that was the forger’s intent, similar to the more than fifty “Oh so obvious” unforced errors on Obama’s Long Form Birth Certificate that just begged “Hey! Look over here! I’m a Fraud!”
Unless they handed this creation job to some highschool intern to create (anybody believe they are THAT stupid), then they handed this job to someone really stupid to do. . . A person who did make unforced errors in its creation that called attention to its fraudulent nature with big RED FLAGS that it can’t be an official government form.