A provision that would have forced the President to tell federal employees they could share confidential information with members of Congress without reprisal was struck this week from the 1998 intelligence authorization bill.
President Clinton threatened to veto the bill over the whistleblower provision, which was designed to protect federal employees who share information about waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement with members of Congress, even when the information is classified. The administration contends that federal employees must go through executive branch channels, such as agency inspectors general, to report wrongdoing.
In a conference committee meeting Tuesday night, Senate participants unanimously supported the whistleblower measure, but a majority of House conferees opposed it. House members said the provision was too broad. Instead, the conferees agreed to a sense-of-Congress provision, a non-binding measure explaining federal employees' rights of disclosure.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was disappointed that the whistleblower provision didn't pass, promising to hold hearings on the issue in the next legislative session.
"I urge the President to rethink his threat to veto a provision that would allow individuals within his own administration to come forward to appropriately cleared committees of Congress with evidence of wrongdoing, rather than leaking it to the press, as seems to be the case today," Shelby said.
Duncan Levin, a public policy analyst for the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based civil liberties group, said the provision's defeat does not mean federal employees can't go to Congress with classified information.
"The law still stands," Levin said. "Though the provision was cut out in conference, that doesn't mean executive branch employees don't have that right."
The administration has discouraged federal officials from circumventing the chain of command by going directly to Congress with sensitive information. According to administration policy, "existing congressional oversight mechanisms, as well as inspector general statutes, have proven effective in bringing instances of illegality, fraud, waste and abuse to the attention of executive branch managers and congressional committees."
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