Top Protector of Whistle-Blowers Steps Down Amid Criminal Probe
The nation’s top champion of whistle-blowers will resign at the end of his term in January, as federal agents investigate allegations of retaliation against his own employees, the Washington Post reports.
U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch said in a letter to President Bush on Monday that he will step down at the end of his term Jan. 5, although he is entitled to stay up to a year until the Senate confirms his successor. The newspaper reports that Bloch has been widely criticized during his five-year tenure and lawmakers repeatedly demanded he step down as head of the federal agency responsible for protecting federal workers’ rights and guarding government whistle-blowers against reprisals.
“As you well know, doing the right thing can result in much criticism and controversy from every side,” Bloch wrote in a two-page resignation letter, the Post reports. In his statement, Bloch listed cutting a backlog of cases and protecting military personnel from losing jobs or benefits when called to active duty among his accomplishments.
Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel, told the newspaper that Bloch was not asked to resign.
Critics have harshly scrutinized Bloch since he took office in 2004. Among their accusations: that Bloch closed hundreds of whistle-blower cases without investigating them, that he lied to Congress during an Office of Personal Management investigation of his conduct, and that he paid $1,149 in taxpayer money to an outside technology company to scrub his government laptop computer, the Post reports.
