Speaking Out: Still Too Risky?

By Viveca Novak

Is President Bush trying to soften legislation meant to protect corporate whistle-blowers? Two Senators responsible for writing such protections into the corporate-accountability act think so. Before passage of that measure in July, people who faced workplace retaliation as a result of speaking out against wrongdoing at their companies were at the mercy of a patchwork of state and federal laws. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was supposed to change all that, say Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa. They added a provision shielding people who provide information to any member of the House or Senate. But when Bush signed the bill last summer, he issued a statement suggesting an important qualifier: the government would protect whistle-blowers only after Congress has authorized an investigation.

Leahy and Grassley have sent the President several letters objecting to that interpretation. In one delivered last week, Leahy complained that the White House's position leaves potential whistle-blowers "to guess at whether or not they can be fired for reporting an allegation of corporate fraud to their Representatives or Senators in Congress."

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has all along been oblique about how the Bush Administration reads the measure, which was strenuously opposed by the securities industry. In a response last month to the two Senators' protests, he said, "Questions about the scope of [the whistle-blower provision] will ultimately be addressed by the courts." --By Viveca Novak