So Many Whistleblowers, So Little Time...

Here's just another example of the difference between a Democrat and a Republican in the White House. Democrats run the Justice Department their way; Republicans run it as an arm of the RNC. In addition, they deliberately bottleneck cases that would be harmful to their corporate contributors.

More than 900 cases alleging that government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars are languishing in a backlog that has built up over the past decade because the Justice Department cannot keep pace with the surge in charges brought by whistle-blowers, according to lawyers involved in the disputes.

The issue is drawing renewed interest among lawmakers and nonprofit groups because many of the cases involve the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising health-care payouts, and privatization of government functions -- all of which offer rich new opportunities to swindle taxpayers.

I don't know if there are more whistleblowers than in the past, or less. What I do understand is that creating a backlog of their cases creates a kind of gag order on those alleging fraud. The Justice Department reviews the charges under seal, and any foot-dragging results in a delay in public disclosure about the case. Government investigations take time and it's clearly not what the Bush Administration is interested in doing. We're talking about big money - billions of dollars that would go into government coffers. But it would go away from military contractors, prescription drug companies, and other friends of the regime. So they languish.

Jessalyn Radack, herself a federal whistleblower, has a lot more in this Kos diary.

the Justice Department has taken extraordinary steps to delay and block these cases. It's normal for the Justicce Department to seek extensions of the seal on a qui tam whistleblower suit for 6 or 12 months while it investigates the case. But in Iraq reconstruction fraud suits, the extensions run into years, meaning that suits filed back in 2003 and 2004 remain entirely under wraps.

In 2006, Taxpayers Against Fraud reported that the Justice Department won damages in 95 separate qui tam cases, recovering a total of almost $3.2 billion. But not a penny of this came from suits against contracting firms in Iraq, even though the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction admits that $9 billion is missing in action.

Last September, Senator Leahy asked why the Justice Department was not intervening in this category of cases. We're still waiting for the answer that we all know: because the orgy of greed and war profiteering are being enjoyed by friends of the Bush administration like Halliburton and KBR. Is it too outlandish to suggest that the same Justice Department that, in concert with the White House, fired U.S. Attorneys for political reasons is suppressing war-related fraud claims for political purposes

Yep.