https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Whistleb...
http://www.dodhotline.dodig.mil/programs/whistleblower/index...
Snowden is not a whistle-blower- he is a coward, a liar, or a traitor. Snowden did not use the whistle-blower protections that are afforded to him and lied that there weren't any.
>He cannot quite make the blanket claim that there are no protections for contractors, but he may have been correct in believing that there appear to be no clear protections, especially from retaliation.
And if you looked at the dates in the third link, you would notice they are from after the leaks.
I would recommend you to read https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ex-us-official-re...
All I know is the last place he should have went was to a foreign country. Official channels -> congress -> media, and this is at great risk but this is what Ellsberg did.
With all this said- whistle-blower protections ought to become mandatory training for all DoD contractors, government employees, or anyone who handles classified information.
If he had noble intentions he took the worst possible route through this minefield.
Personally, I think he did well not to be naive enough to trust that they'd work.
EDIT: Put another way: I'd believe those kind of whistle-blower protections are meaningful when we see these agencies admitting to past failures that have been brought up and taking proper responsibility and demonstrably taking steps to ensure better oversight. Until then, the safest assumption is that making use of any whistleblowing provisions they claim to have is at best ineffective, at worst dangerous.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-newscast/2018/12/pent...
These protections are used all the time- it just doesn't always make the news.
>demonstrably taking steps to ensure better oversight.
Like expanding the protections? We see a whistle-blower complaint right now in the news working pretty much as intended, with the whistle-blower's identity being protected.
As for the Pentagon, you'll note that part of what it covers is that the Pentagon Inspector General has struggled to substantiate allegations of retaliation in most cases, to the point where they ended up resorting to introduce a new system of mediation to resolve cases. Maybe that's because the allegations were bullshit, or maybe that's because the system is totally without teeth. In either case it does not illuminate the case of Snowden at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intellige...