Pursuing Holiness

Two men did what they thought was right, but the method makes all the difference.

Whistleblower air marshal P. Jeffrey Black stepped up, did the right thing, and will accept the consequences:

Every air marshal that has whistleblown publicly so far has been summarily terminated one way or another. It is just a matter of time before I receive my retaliatory pink slip. I am sure there are TSA/FAMS management bureaucrats in a basement somewhere at this very moment, scheming and drawing up battle plans to attack my character and veracity. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Transportation Security Administration.

…I know this first hand. In August of 2004, and just two months after the events of Northwest Flight 327, I reluctantly chose to become a whistleblower. The dangerous agency internal policies I wished to expose were so egregious, which seriously jeopardized the health and safety of every air marshal, flight crew member, and passenger, that I chose to take my disclosures straight to Congress. I gave testimony to the Chief Counsel of Oversight and Investigations, and went on the record with the House Judiciary Committee, that I had personally experienced what I believed to be numerous probing incidents aboard domestic flights, and that I believed the Federal Air Marshal Service was not only hiding the details to these incidents from other federal law enforcement agencies, but that they were also keeping this vital information from their own flying air marshals. I also had reason to believe, from speaking to other air marshals across the country, that I was not the only air marshal experiencing these probing incidents aboard domestic flights.

If he does lose his job, others, probably better ones, will be waiting. The only kind of employers who would be unwilling to hire an honest, principled man who is willing to take necessary risks are those who have something to hide.

Leaker Matt Diaz tried to take the easy way out, and later admitted regretfully:

“I could have gone to the chief of staff, I could have gone to the IG (inspector general),” or to his commanding officers in Guantanamo, Diaz said. “There were a lot of better ways to do this, and I didn’t take those better ways.”

He also criticized his decision to send the information to Olshansky anonymously, saying he mailed the information off in a goofy-looking Valentine “for selfish reasons.”

“I wasn’t really willing to put my neck on the line, to jeopardize my career,” he said. ” So I did it anonymously. I’m disgraced, I’m ashamed. I was an inspiration to my family. I let them down. I let the JAG Corps down. I let the Navy down.”

When he gets out of jail in six months, he’ll probably get a job working for some left-leaning person who thinks he’s a hero for leaking. But he knows, as do his wife and daughter, that he is a dishonorable disgrace. He’ll have to work very hard to get his reputation back.

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written by Laura