According to documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Bush administration has waived whistleblower protections under the Clean Air Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act. Acting Assistant Attorney General Steve Bradbury wrote a memo in 2005 detailing why whistleblower protections do not apply under the acts. According to PEER, The opinion and the ruling reverse nearly two decades of precedent. Approximately 170,000 federal employees working within environmental agencies are affected by the loss of whistleblower rights. “The Bush administration is engineering the stealth repeal of whistleblower protections,” stated PEER General Counsel Richard Condit, who had won several of the earlier cases applying environmental whistleblower protections to federal specialists. “The use of an unpublished opinion to change official interpretations is a giant step backward to the days of the secret Star Chamber.” PEER ultimately obtained a copy of the opinion under the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking a more extreme position that absolutely no environmental laws protect its employees from reprisal. EPA’s stance would place the provisions of all major federal environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, beyond the reach of federal employees seeking legal protection for good faith efforts to enforce or implement the anti-pollution provisions contained within those laws. This news was also published in the Center for Science in the Public Interest's new newsletter on politics in science. If you don't already receive CSPI's excellent Integrity in Science Watch newsletter, I highly recommend it. They report on some pretty appalling cases of industry influence, conflicts of interest and other ways in which science is subverted to serve special interests over the public.