Government Accountability Project

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Project (GAP) exists to eliminate dangerous secrets in government and corporations. They work to protect whistleblowers – employees who disclose information they believe is evidence of illegality, waste, fraud, abuse of power, or dangers to public health and safety. Whistleblowers often risk their careers and livelihoods when speaking up, so GAP also pushes to educate elected officials and the public about the need for stronger legislation to protect these individuals.

During the last two years alone, the Government Accountability Project achieved breakthroughs in its work to protect the First Amendment Rights of whistleblowers in corporate and government environments. As a result of its work, GAP achieved whistleblower protection for employees for all publicly traded companies and even their most opaque subsidiaries, over 40 million workers. Within the healthcare industry, an estimated 5 million employees are now also covered. The stimulus act covers all state employees and government contract workers whose jobs were tied to the stimulus funds. Now, too, all Wall Street is covered, including employees at whatever level who were forced to sign employment contracts requiring arbitration to settle employment disputes.

We support GAP because their mission fits perfectly with our understanding of the connections between transparency, accountability, and a well-functioning democracy. By exposing unnecessary secrets, they make it more difficult for elected officials and others to mislead the public or avoid responsibility for their actions. In connecting whistleblowers with media and government agencies, they help make the public safer and government more efficient. They also strengthen our democracy – after all, it’s hard to hold top officials accountable if the public doesn’t really know what those officials are doing.

Whistleblowers play important roles in American politics. Three whistleblowers shared Time’s People of the Year award in 2002.  One of them, FBI agent Colleen Rowley, exposed significant problems facing the FBI and the intelligence community, including pre-9-11 security lapses; she now sits on GAP’s Advisory Committee.  (The other two – Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom – helped expose corruption at the highest levels of corporations.)

GAP reports exposed illegal tactics used by federal officials to muzzle employees who pointed out security breaches and abuses of power; that is, they were punished for trying to make Americans safer or trying to protect taxpayer funds. GAP exposed poor management of materiel support for American troops overseas and failures to track plutonium shipments domestically. A recent GAP program is helping oil workers understand their rights to free speech and whistleblower protections – a whistleblower could help prevent another major oil spill.

Our support of GAP is an example of the Rockefeller Family Fund acting as a typical foundation, in that we found a great group and support them with grants. We’ve taken some helpful steps by hosting meetings with other funders to enable GAP to expand its contacts and raise more funds for their work, and working with the group to start a new project to protect government scientists. But we understand GAP’s value and are primarily just happy we can be supporters.