The National Security Agency routinely fails to inform employees of their rights under whistleblower protection laws when they sign non-disclosure agreements, the intelligence agency’s inspector general concluded this week.
Although the NSA is not officially subject to the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, Congress has consistently required most of its provisions—minus those relating to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, who lacks jurisdiction to review matters involving counterintelligence and foreign intelligence—to apply to the agency via annual appropriations laws since 1988.
But according to a new report from the NSA inspector general, most of the agency’s non-disclosure agreements lack the required reference to federal whistleblower protections, meaning its employees “may not be aware” of their rights to disclose violations of law or instances of waste, fraud and abuse.
“We identified five unique NSA-developed NDAs. One of the five NDAs, NSA’s Security Agreement, did not include the current required whistleblower provisions but did include language related to whistleblower protections and had some statutory references,” the inspector general wrote. “The remaining four NDAs made no mention of whistleblower protections . . . Additionally, the OIG identified another five agreements that were not titled or identified as nondisclosure agreements but implied nondisclosure obligations and did not include the required whistleblower protection provisions.”
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