Another Unmerry Whistleblower Christmas; MSPB's Cathy A. Harris Stars as The Grinch

In 2024 the world’s oldest democracy risks showing George Orwell’s dystopian and cautionary 1984 is nothing if not just ahead of its time when published 75 years ago. ...


Washington, D.C. — The day before Christmas Eve, the Goverment Executive reported on the 10 federal agencies that saw the worst declines in employee morale since last year. In second place in the aberrational plummet was the U.S. Merit System Protection Board headed by the hapless, if self-promoting, Cathy A. Harris.

“Only 18 agencies with at least 100 employees across the federal government saw declines in their employees’ reported job satisfaction, as measured by OPM’s Global Satisfaction Index,” it noted. At the same time, “Government-wide, the measure ticked up two points out of 100 compared with last year, landing at 64 out of 1

The report singling out the 11-point MSPB decrease in employee morale under Harris mirrored growing whistleblower disgust with current leadership in the federal agency that supposedly protects federal government truthtellers.

“Shame on her, for running the clock on my life by doing absolutely nothing and to the others who were also impacted by her pathetic performance!!” wrote one already vindicated whistleblower who nonetheless was shown the door by Harris.

MORALE VERSUS MORALS
The Government Executive report came just weeks after another case Harris sought to crush resulted in a former National Defense University professor, Jaime Garcia Covarrubias, being sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted in a civilian court for his role in the torture and murder of nine unarmed detainees, including four university students, in three separate cases.

(“Those executed were students of the Universidad Técnica del Estado de Temuco Juan Antonio Chávez Rivas, Pedro Juan Mardones Jofré, Amador Francisco Montero Mosquera and Juan Carlos Ruiz Mancilla, as well as Florentino Alberto Molina Ruiz, the aide Víctor Hugo Valenzuela Velásquez and the farmworker Carlos Aillañir Huenchual.”

The cases in which Garcia Covarrubias was involved included phony “terrorist attacks” by already detained captives. After participating in the murder of nine dissidents, Garcia Covarrubias became a senior official in a clandestine agency that committed real terrorist attacks of a neo-Nazi stripe internationally, including in Washington, D.C. ...

Guilty of more than just dishonorable common crimes and false federal statements, an already decorated human rights and national security truthteller blew the whistle on vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau’s minions (several, like her, veterans of the Defense Intelligence Agency /DIA) who trivialized, justified and even participated in those crimes, diluted the moral awfulness of clandestine death camps, and engaged in other barbarousness and corruption, including the reprehensible promoting of neo-Nazis, coup mongers, palpable traitors and narcotics traffickers. ...

The then-NDU president, vice ADM. Ann E. Rondeau, who protected and promoted the wrongdoers, later went on to be appointed by President Donald Trump as the head of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

“In my 30 years as a professor there, no other president has been viewed so poorly by the faculty,” noted NPS Professor Glenn E. Robinson in public protest last April. “Resignations and retirements have soared since she was appointed president, with some of the best and brightest faculty at the school either leaving or stepping down from leadership roles. Of the dozen people on her current ‘leadership team,’ only the provost is a civilian scholar.

“The result is the creation of a centralized, top-down decision-making culture that might be expected at a regular military base, but would be the death of any high-achieving university. So bad is Rondeau’s leadership that the faculty have met openly to discuss taking an unprecedented vote of no confidence in her.” ...

Rondeau has shown an unmistakable repeated preference for federal service miscreants who support foreign neo-Nazis, coup mongers, uniformed narco traffickers, and other wrongdoers while engaging in their campaign of character assassination against already decorated (and anti-leaker Snowden) national security whistleblowers.

Cathy A. Harris already has the MSPB cowed and whistleblowers are left to choose: between aligning with Russia advocates and national security leakers now on the payroll of Vladimir Putin on one hand; and fighting violations of rules, regulations and law by themselves. Perhaps she hopes to shed herself of future impediments for personal advancement at the continued expense of others’ rights.