Trust Us! (Not Really)

"You f***ed up. You trusted us!"

TPMmuckraker has the whole sorry tale.

D'Oh: House Panel Screw-Up Reveals Whistleblower Email Addresses

This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".

...Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

Just to really cheer up all the would-be whistleblowers, one of the recipients of both emails was the public email address of the Vice President's office. So remember, kiddies. If you're a government employee and you leak classified programs to the mainstream media, some in Congress will do their damndest to help hide you from prosecution for that felony, and to protect your media accomplices. But if you're want to whine about the bosses to Congress, you may end up in the skilled and able hands of John Conyers and crew. And they'll help you in their own special way.