Maybe he’ll be tried for first-degree persuasion?
About Peter Gleick’s admission that he deceived a Heartland staffer into sending him confidential documents, DeSmogBlog writes:
Climate scientist Peter Gleick has acknowledged that he was the person who convinced the Heartland Institute to hand over the contents of its January Board package, authenticating the documents beyond a doubt and further exposing the disinformation campaign Heartland has pursued in the last week, trying to discredit the information… [Emphasis added]
Legal protection for a whistleblower should only apply to the revelation of some kind of criminal activity. What FOIA exposed was fraud.
Crux: Whistleblowing IS about committing a CRIMINAL ACT (information theft, etc), but, having it justified IN A COURT OF LAW.
Unless what was contained in the HI docs revealed criminal activity, one would imagine that a judge would not be amused that Gleick’s defense is: “Hey dude, they, like, you know, spoke stuff that wasn’t, like, groovy for my aura, baby.”
There is something else inherent in whistleblowing: the person doing it must, necessarily, be willing to face jail-time. Why? The courts WILL be involved: and the courts are a cast-iron bitch – justice happening there is a pot-luck event.
Still. It might be interesting if FOIA is ever caught – the case for (the justifying) fraud would then have to be examined in a court of law: something which must make Mann & Co wake up screaming in the darkness of the night.