Who changed the Whistleblower policy to allow hearsay?

Red States:

At what point is a whistleblower not one by definition? Much has been written the complete hearsay of their complaint, not to mention all of the descrepancies. It’s like whoever complained made it all up whole cloth.

The rules were simple before they were magically changed somehow to take away the firsthand knowledge requirement, just in time for this person to squeal from fake news reports and other Trump haters in the government and most likely Dems in Congress.

We actually don’t know if that change was made with the proper Federal Records Act procedures or whatever the applicable process is, of which I don’t pretend to know the ins and out. We deserve a paper trail to determine if this major change was actually done or just stamped on this particular complaint.

One person that commented on The Federalist article by Sean Davis said this:

The Senate Intelligence Committee needs to immediately send to the CIA a documents preservation order so the revision files don’t “get lost”. I worked in the federal government for 40 years and I’ve done dozens of form revisions and the process is the same across the entire government.Shar

The way it works is the office responsible for the program, in this case probably the CIA IG, decides to revise the form. The new form is revised within the technical office by employees within the office. If they’re doing their jobs in accordance with the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedures Act, there is a document written that details exactly the rationale for the change, the impact of the changes, and what the new form looks like.

In the case of this form, since it involves a legal issue (the IC Whistleblower Protection Act) it also should have gone to the CIA or IC Office of General Counsel for a legal review to ensure the new form still complied with the Act. That file should also still be in the OGC’s office.

Finally the form is sent to the CIA’s HR department, specifically the Forms Control Officer. That office then reviews it to ensure the form complies with the CIA’s form control directive. When it does, the new form is formally approved by an official with the CIA’s HR department. The form is then printed (if hard copies are used) and also promulgated online, the old form is removed, and employees SOMETIMES are made aware that a new form is out. The HR file should also still be in the HR department.

If the form was developed and promulgated correctly there is an adequate paper trail to determine who and when the form was revised.

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There is much more.

I have yet to see an adequate explanation as to why the procedure was changed and the curious timing of the change that facilitated the hearsay allegations against Trump. But since most of the allegations have already been shown to be false or misleading it points to the reason why you should not allow hearsay in such cases.