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Mission: The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is a 30-year-old nonprofit public interest group that promotes government and corporate accountability by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists. We pursue this mission through our Nuclear Safety, International Reform, Corporate Accountability, Food & Drug Safety, and Federal Employee/National Security programs. GAP is the nation's leading whistleblower protection organization.
Current Program Highlights
9/10/2008
GAP Report Calls for Overhaul of Corporate Whistleblower Laws
Today, GAP released a new report, Running the Gauntlet: The Campaign for Credible Corporate Whistleblower Rights. This report surveys the dangerous landscape of corporate whistleblower laws, and recommends strategies for corporate whistleblowers to best protect themselves from future retaliation.
Click here for GAP's press release
Click here for the report
9/10/2008
OpenTheGovernment's 2008 Secrecy Report Card
OpenTheGovernment.org, an important coalition partner of GAP and a great advocate of government transparency, recently released their 2008 Secrecy Report Card. This annual report identifies important trends in public access to government information.
Click here to read the report
9/9/2008
Dramatic Surge in Support for Whistleblower Rights
GAP has announced that seventy new organizations from across the United States have joined a June petition calling on Congress to enact sweeping new whistleblower rights for government employees. The groups are calling on Congress to finish the job before adjourning for the upcoming elections. Both chambers have approved legislation to revive the discredited Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), but efforts to reconcile the different versions have stalled.
Click here to read the full press release
8/25/2008
GAP Internships Now Available
Do you know or are you a student who would be interested in helping support GAP's mission of advancing whistleblower rights and exposing wrongdoing? Check out GAP's internship page to read about several current openings!
GAP Internship Page
8/14/2008
Bush Signs Consumer Protection Bill; Expanding Whistleblower Rights
Earlier today, President Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act, enacting law that protects American consumers by, among other ways, providing whistleblower rights to nearly 20 million workers. The legislation provides protections, enforceable by jury trials, to workers connected with the manufacture, distribution, and retail sale of products ranging from toys to clothes, linens, car seats, hardware and household appliances.
The legislation responds to last fall’s “killer toys” controversy sparked by discoveries of excessive lead in dolls and other common products. The reform significantly tightens safety standards. Its enforcement cornerstone is thorough “best practices” whistleblower protection for employees who refuse to violate the law or who challenge product safety violations.
Since last October, GAP has led a coalition that swelled to 102 organizations demanding whistleblower rights in this reform.
8/12/2008
GAP Report Details Azeri Privatization-World Bank Corruption
Today, GAP filed a report with the U.S. Treasury Department that exposes the World Bank’s role in the widespread corruption surrounding privatization in Azerbaijan during the late 1990’s. The report shows that James Wolfensohn, then president of the World Bank, personally assisted a rogue financier in his efforts to gain control of the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR). While these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, documents show that Wolfensohn silenced Bank staff members who spoke out about corrupt government officials working with Viktor Kožený, a notorious financial operator who had allegedly defrauded investors in the Czech Republic of nearly $1 billion only three years earlier.
Click here to read the report
Click here to read GAP's press release
In response to James Wolfensohn’s contention that World Bank staff members did not warn Azeri officials and others about the risks inherent in an investment with Viktor Kožený, GAP is posting the following documentation:
Letter from Kozeny to Bodmer showing Kozeny team's efforts to affect World Bank opinion
Letter from Chairman of Azerbaijan State Property Committee to Kozeny advising him of World Bank staff member warnings
Letter from Kozeny attorney Andre Wahrenberger to Kozeny attorney Frank Chopin about World Bank staff member allegations against Kozeny
In addition, GAP points out that Johannes Linn, the Vice President of the World Bank cited by Wolfensohn’s spokesman as responsible for verifying Bank staff members’ comments about Kožený, told GAP, when interviewed, that he had “never heard” of Viktor Kožený.
8/1/2008
GAP Releases Report on Corrupt World Bank Project involving Armenian Water Supply
Over the course of the past year, GAP has investigated allegations of corruption in the World Bank-funded Municipal Development Project (MDP) in Yerevan, Armenia. A whistleblower with access to internal documents about the MDP produced evidence showing that the General Director of the Yerevan Water and Sewerage Company (YWSC) in the capital and the international representative of the Italian company contracted to manage and modernize the YWSC were the same person during the crucial period between 2000 and 2002. As a result of this conflict of interest, project objectives were changed without authorization, substandard materials were used, performance standards were lowered, and works to be completed were never undertaken, among other things.
Click here to read more about this scandal, and the full report
7/30/2008
Congress Guarantees Widespread Whistleblower Rights in CPSC Reform
GAP applauds Senate and House leaders for reaching conference committee agreement on major consumer product safety legislation just approved by the House this evening, in a 424-1 vote. The legislation provides whistleblower rights, enforceable by jury trials, to an estimated twenty million private sector workers connected with the manufacture, distribution, and retail sale of products ranging from toys to clothes, linens, car seats, hardware and household appliances.
Click here to read GAP's press release
7/18/2008
Emergency Action Alert! Help Protect America's Families!
GAP is sending out a call to all people and organizations concerned with protecting American families from unsafe products! We need your help!
Click here to find out how you can make a difference!
7/17/2008
EPA Quietly Releases Climate Change Health Effects Report
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a major study by the US Climate Change Science Program synthesizing current scientific knowledge of climate change-induced threats to human health. This information should be critical to the EPA’s previous “endangerment finding” for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. However, the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, the branch assigned rulemaking responsibility, evidently did not rely on and did not cite the CCSP report.
Click here to read GAP's press release!
7/9/2008
FISA Vote Today
GAP is opposed to the FISA bill that grants retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration to illegally spy on Americans. The bill comes before a vote today in the Senate, you still have time to contact your Senator and urge them to vote for any of the amendments that deny or qualify telecom immunity. See GAP's recent Action Alert for how to do this.
Click here to read GAP's Action Alert!
Click here to read telecom whistleblower (and GAP client) Babak Pasdar's op-ed about the legislation (Co-authored by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein)
7/3/2008
GAP Commends UN Ethics Director and Secretary-General for Defending UNDP Whistleblower
GAP applauds United Nations Ethics Office Director Robert Benson and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for defending a whistleblower who was denied due process by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Click here for GAP's press release
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