This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 4th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How has the current whistleblower conducted him or herself in the wake of claims about the president.

How important is it that Americans learned the whistleblowers identity.

Ervin McCullough is a national security analyst for the Government Accountability Project. He specializes in intelligence community and an we talked about how whistleblowing works and why protections for whistleblowers

are so important. The Government Accountability Project is a nonprofit

nonpartisan law firm that represents whistleblowers across the federal government and the private sector.

We've been around for about 40 years and handle cases ranging from intelligence community

and military malfeasance to problems inside the food industry.

So with respect to this current whistleblower, the person who has claimed some poor behavior,

some of that has been corroborated, at least some of the claims have been corroborated,

whether or not everyone agrees that it's wrongdoing remains to be seen. But to the extent that that person did things appropriately how do you how

would you grade him or her well I definitely give him in a plus actually if not two

pluses he is the poster child for following the process I

understand that a time story broke today saying that at one point he filed with the CIA's Internal Descent Channel, and then after that he went and talked

with a staff member of the House Intelligence Committee requesting guidance on how to best report wrongdoing inside the intelligence community.

It's a very convoluted and confusing process.

And at that point he sought counsel and made a disclosure to the intelligence community inspector general whose job it is is to

investigate and correct the wrongdoing inside of the intelligence community.

So when whistleblowers come forward or in this case sort of come forward advance

claims and we're not aware of this person's identity just yet.

What are the things that what are the stresses that they need to to consider?

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