Exclusive: Food and Drug Administration officials reacted to suspected whistleblowing by some of its scientists, about excessive radiation from medical imaging devices, by spying on several. But the larger issue is the need to alert the public to unnecessary risks, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
Controversy generated by recent reporting by Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane of the New York Times about Food and Drug Administration spying on its doctors and scientists focuses on the blatant invasions of privacy, with Sen. Charles Grassley, R- Iowa, complaining of “Gestapo” tactics. But what about us?
What about the thousands of patients exposed to unnecessarily dangerous levels of radiation during mammogram screening and colonoscopies by General Electric medical imaging devices.
Frances Kelsey, whose work for the Food and Drug Administration blocked U.S. approval of the dangerous drug, Thalidomide.
As I prepare for my umpteenth (and hopefully last) scheduled scan over the past five years to check if that grapefruit-sized lymphoma tumor has left my pelvic area for good, I am relieved to remember that most of the scanning devices have had a Siemens, not a GE label.
As the Times reported, the F.D.A. spying focused on doctors who believed the agency gave shortshrift to concerns about excessive radiation coming from medical imaging devices. Lichtblau and Shane wrote:
“The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter dispute lasting years between the scientists and their bosses at the F.D.A. over the scientists’ claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation.
“A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists’ medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed ‘a substantial and specific danger to public safety.’”
During the first few decades of my life, there were no such scan scams to worry about. The influence of the pharmaceutical corporations, however, was already huge, and dangerous. Often, it took courageous whistleblowers, people of integrity unwilling to betray the public trust, to prevent disaster.
Thalidomide
It has been more than 50 years since my first extended visit to Europe as a university student. Most readers will be too young to remember, but a “wonder-drug,” Thalidomide, had just come on the market. This drug gave temporary rest and relief to millions, especially prospective mothers with morning sickness and problems sleeping. It was very popular in Germany.
Stationed in Germany more than a decade later, I witnessed the human results of the horrible side effects of Thalidomide, which had become available all over Europe, and beyond. Over 10,000 babies in 46 countries were born without limbs or otherwise disfigured and disabled. Those still alive would be in their late forties/early fifties now.
How did the United States escape this plague? One whistleblower, a woman named Frances Kelsey of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saw through the charade of the drug company swindlers and stood up to it.
Although Dr. Kelsey came under extreme pressure to fall in step and approve Thalidomide, she scorned the testing that had been done by the Thalidomide manufacturer and blocked introduction of the drug into America.
For her unusual courage and integrity, President John Kennedy gave her the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Serivce in 1962, after it became clear that she had singlehandedly prevented a public health disaster from befalling us in the United States.
Dr. Kelsey will be 98 on July 24; her courage should be celebrated, particularly in the light of the behavior of our present-day F.D.A. The F.D.A.’s current commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, should be put on the griddle, and sooner rather than later.
As the Sixties and Seventies wore on, the horrible damage caused by the drug made itself known. And what also became clear was the reality that a decade of American babies born whole, with all their limbs, owed a debt of gratitude to Frances Kelsey, whistleblower par excellence!
A close friend of mine, Tom Clark, tells me that he is of that generation. Tom added that his mother suffered miserably from morning sickness in bearing him. He is gratefully aware that he might well be missing a limb or two today, had his mother been able to acquire Thalidomide in the United States.
What happens to the likes of Dr. Kelsey at the F.D.A. today? Sadly, modern-day whistleblowers whether in government, industry or even the press more often than not face severe career reprisals, legal action and sometimes imprisonment, like Pvt. Bradley Manning jailed for allegedly leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks. Rarely do truth-tellers get presidential awards.
Which reminds me of an open letter that ten other veterans of government service and I signed nearly eight years ago, on Sept. 9, 2004. Our “Truth-Telling Coalition” directed an appeal to “Current Government Officials.” We wrote:
It is time for unauthorized truth telling.
Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts, for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure, and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public.
Many Americans are too young to remember Vietnam. Then, as now, senior government officials did not tell the American people the truth. Now, as then, insiders who know better have kept their silence, as the country was misled into the most serious foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.
Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that, if brought to light, would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public.
Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Officials Secrets Act, nor even a statutory basis for the classification system. Only very rarely would it be appropriate to reveal information of the three types whose disclosure has been expressly criminalized by Congress: communications intelligence, nuclear data, and the identity of U.S. intelligence operatives. However, this administration has stretched existing criminal laws to cover other disclosures in ways never contemplated by Congress.
There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistle blowing, dissemination and relations with the media.
Needless to say, any unauthorized disclosure that exposes your superiors to embarrassment entails personal risk. Should you be identified as the source, the price could be considerable, including loss of career and possibly even prosecution. Some of us know from experience how difficult it is to countenance such costs. But continued silence brings an even more terrible cost, as our leaders persist in a disastrous course and young Americans come home in coffins or with missing limbs.
This is precisely what happened at this comparable stage in the Vietnam War. Some of us live with profound regret that we did not at that point expose the administration’s dishonesty and perhaps prevent the needless slaughter of 50,000 more American troops and some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese over the next ten years.
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm’s way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties.
A hundred forty thousand young Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose. Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
SIGNATORIES
Appeal from the Truth-Telling Coalition
Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation
Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and State
John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor
Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations, Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism
Lt. Col Karen Kwiatowski, USAF (ret.), who served in the Pentagon’s Office of Near East Planning
John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Department of State
David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency
Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: “The Vargas Report on Government Secrecy” — CENSORED)
Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and U.S. Foreign Service Officer
Dear Ray, what about the whistle blowing regarding Fast and Furious? or, does concern for those whistle blowers not jive with leftist agenda?
I’ve known real CIA men Ray, heroes with amazing skill and bravery, who time and time again risked all – doing remarkable, incredible things for America. As apposed to cowardly, pencil pushing, smarmy, traitors like you – – who like many progressive/leftist politicians, stab the country in the back while enjoying safety and rhetorical leisure, behind those facing forward to keep your ass protected. And, don’t think your Jew Hating is lost behind your bullshit progressive rhetoric either. You’re 70ish now aren’t you? The one good thing about life’s immortality, is that bastards like you will necessarily get old and die, so your backstabbing can’t continue forever.
Never a disappointing article by Ray McGovern!
Thank you Ray for another great well thought out article.
One step in the right direction is an article as above.
As long as people are misled by Murdoch and Fox News the people
in power will tend to lie.
This country has a history of virtually continuous warfare.
What is needed is an antiwar movement by the mothers and fathers
of American cannon fodder and of course the rest of us.
Whistle-blower ‘whack-a-mole’ seems to have successfully stemmed the tide of adverse public opinion. Leaks sufficient to sink our derelict ‘ship of state’ would seem to have occurred, but rather than capsize, she merely lists. From revelations about non-existent weapons of mass destruction to meretricious collusion with a clearly felonious financial sector, nothing seems to be enough to roll this rusting hulk over on its side. Three things are beyond the pale: divulging atomic weapons secrets, divulging communications secrets, and compromising intelligence operatives. With the Israeli nuclear trigger export scandal and the “outing†of Valery Plame, two of those thresholds have been smashed. Freeing Jonathan Pollard would be the Trifecta.
But instead, we are “stuck on stupid†trying to prosecute a kid who exposes war crimes. And, by apparently seeking extradition of a ‘hack-tivist’ who has done no more harm to the United States than the New York Times or the Washington Post back in the days when they actually reported real news. Imagine how much that legal exercise has already cost the taxpayers. To what purpose? Add to that the perhaps spurious insinuation that Assange is just a “limited hangout†CIA asset. His latest info dump has been more useful to Syrian intervention propaganda pushers than anyone else. But perhaps the most despicable affront to American patriotism is the open pandering to the interests of foreign governments by our representatives in congress, most notably to obtain campaign contributions from an organization that should be registered as the agent of a foreign government.
We pander to countries with abominable civil rights records, but brew the case for war against lesser offenders. We squander our resources abroad while our own used-up veterans are hungry, homeless and unemployed here at home. Perhaps a hemorrhage of revelations would overwhelm the whackers’ ability to whack the moles, but I’m beginning to doubt it. How high has the threshold of public indignation been raised? Naked threats of aggression now substitute for the language of diplomacy. Desperation, denial, dissembling and deceit are the new face of American foreign policy. Not a single ‘bankster’ goes to jail. So, what will it take? How high is the bar? How numb have we become?
Do we have to find a mass grave under the Washington Mall, or crematoria hidden in the Federal Reserve Building? The hypocrisy thus far is unfathomable, but nothing seems to raise the collective eyebrow. The ‘ship of state’ has foundered in a shallow, stinking swamp and its keel is stuck in the oozing slime of complacency. It won’t roll over. But neither will the rust nor the rats be discouraged. Such is the fate of empire.
Thanks, Ray
Great comment.
Thanks for Whistleblowers.
Great article!
As a good followup to the NY Times article on the FDA spying and harassment of the doctors who were whistleblowers, also see the Democracy Now interview with their attorney, Steven Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center. The interview can be accessed at: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/17/spying_on_scientists_how_the_fda
This was a massive spying effort, that went far beyond the issue of leaks of protected confidential information, and one can easily imagine that it may be occurring in any number of other government agencies across the board.