A Haven for Whistle Blowers

PARADE MAGAZINE
BY: Jack Anderson

DONALD SOEKEN FOUND HIMSELF WITH A curious clientele back in 1977, when he signed on as a Psychiatric social worker for the federal government. His job at the U.S. Public Health Service was to do fitness-for-duty examinations for government employees whose bosses thought they were going off the deep end. It did not take Soeken long to figure out what the government was really doing. Many of his patients were whistleblowers.

They'd blown the whistle on the agency they worked for when they saw fraud and mismanagement of the taxpayers' dollar. But instead of remedying the situation, the government had labeled the messengers as "unbalanced" and unfit for duty and Soeken was supposed to give Uncle Sam the ammunition to fire them. He refused and became a whistleblower himself, reporting the shameful practice to the late Rep. Gladys Spellman (D., Md.). She held hearings that put an end to the federal government's use of mandatory fitness for-duty exams against whistleblowers.

Unlike many whistleblowers, Soeken was not fired. But his brush with downtrodden whistleblowers turned him into a moonlighter for their cause. Soeken, 54, now counsels them on how to press their cases with the government. And at his home away from home - a farm in the lush hills of West Virginia - he has created a haven for whistleblowers. He calls it, 'The Whistlestop'. Its mission is to give those who tell the truth a place to come for respite when they are persecuted for their honesty. Why would a whistleblower need the equivalent of a safe house? Because, while the federal government may have stopped trying to prove whistleblowers are crazy for speaking up, it still does its best to drive them crazy after the fact.

Take Arnold Watson of Lexington, Ky. He used to work for the Agriculture Department's Soil Conservation Service in 1980, Watson says, he made a suggested to a superior about a change in the agency's funding direction. He was convinced his suggestion was sound--but,, he says it would have endangered a costly-dam project (which he then knew nothing about) that his superiors were planning. Watson says they threatened to fire him if he pressed.

Watson ignored the threat carried his suggestion all the way to Washington. It took his bosses four years, he asserts but they eventually made good on their threat As Watson tells it, first he was assigned to a desk in a hallway by the bathroom door and given work well below his skills; then, when he refused to knuckle under, he was assigned to field work, even though in his records showed a back that excused him from strenuous activity . He says the assignment would have had him climbing fences, carrying heavy equipment walking several miles a day--tasks he was unable to do because of his back injury. At this point, he says, he requested leave without pay, which was refused. When he failed to appear at his new workplace, he was dismissed for not reporting for duty . Watson now has a suit pending against his former superior; at the Soil Conservation Service in connection with his dismissal and at least one of those superiors has declined to comment because of the litigation.

After his dismissal, Watson sought help from Dr. Soeken. "He told me his story, and it checked out with the documents and the usual process whistleblowers are forced through," Soeken says. They never get fired for blowing the whistle directly. It is always a violation of a petty rule they are forced into breaking by higher-level bureaucrats looking out for themselves and their jobs not for good of the government or the taxpayer."

Watson, now 58, still is troubled by back pain, but he says depression has been his biggest hurdle. He talks regularly by phone with Soeken and visits The Whistlestop a few times a year to take his bearings. All whistleblowers have in common a strong sense of justice that is brutally jarred when they are persecuted for telling the truth. The typical whistleblower is caught by suprise when he is blamed for doing the right thing. He is convinced that somewhere there is a Congressman a journalist or a lawyer who will set things right if the facts are presented.

Co-workers often back away from the whistleblower to preserve their own jobs. Family and friends lose patience with the fight. The whistleblower's fact file can become his new friend with memos, phone records and documents proving he is right and the system is wrong.

John Knecht, 42, carries his files around in a minivan, looking for someone to help. Knecht, a CPA, was chief of internal review at the US. Army Proving Ground in Yuma, Ariz, until he was fired in 1985. He had uncovered time-card fraud at the proving ground, he maintains, and raised the issue with his superiors. He says they immediately began a cover-up, so Knecht took his case to the Inspector General of the Army.

The Inspector General took his papers but, for whatever reason, destroyed them and decided not to investigate, Knecht asserts. But he'd planned for that, photocopying all of his documents before turning them over, Knecht says he can prove his case but that proof has meant virtually nothing to those he has asked for help.

Twice, Knecht has driven his van, filled with thousands of meticulously cross referenced papers, from Yuma to Washington to plead his case before members of Congress. He camps out with a sleeping bag in Soeken's office by night and hits Capitol Hill by day. But each time, he has come away disappointed, with empty handshakes and vague promises from politicians and their staffs.

Knecht is not a quitter. While now working with migrant children, he still is actively pursuing his legal claim . "What is frustrating about John's case is that, for every word he utters, there's a document to prove what he's saying," says Soeken.

But it has been six years, and nobody in the government will lift a finger for him." (An Army spokesman said-Knecht was dismissed because of conflict of interest, conducting personal business on government time, making false statements and failing to carryout instructions. He said further that a merit board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the United States District Court had upheld the action against Knecht, who has appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals.)

Perhaps just to see a whistleblower coming with his reams of documents and breathless monologue is enough to paralyze any overworked bureaucrat who sees himself caught up in an endless paper chase with the whistleblower.

Most whistleblowers got a feeling of hopelessness that it probably seems to take a lifetime of therapy to get over, " Soeken says. "blowing the whistle is not easy," He pauses. "And it's almost almost insurmountably lonely."

That's where Soeken comes in. He has formed a nonprofit agency called Integrity International to advise whistle blowers. If they come to him before publicly spilling the beans, Soeken will tell them the best way to make their point without being fired or ostracized. If they have been fired, he'll do his best to help them get their jobs back or at least preserve their pensions. Following the Soeken model, the whistleblower keeps his job and his sanity--just like Soeken did-- and still makes his case.... There is a right and a wrong way to blow the whistle.

The cause of whistleblowers has eaten into Soeken's s personal life, but he says, "I can't quit. It's not my nature." His father taught him growing up in Kansas to help a neighbor or a stranger, whatever the cost. He says he'll only stop helping whistleblowers when the government stops harassing them. Until then, he adds, " I can't imagine doing anything else."