Those who currently incorrectly claim that whistleblowers must have firsthand knowledge of the wrongdoing they’re disclosing have focused on language in a previous version of the form that intelligence community whistleblowers use to disclose an “urgent concern” to the Intelligence Community inspector general. However, yesterday, the inspector general’s office released a statement that should dispel that conspiracy theory; the statement explained that the office removed that language from the current form because it “could be read—incorrectly—as suggesting that whistleblowers must possess first-hand information in order to file an urgent concern complaint.”

It is rare that a single whistleblower has all the relevant firsthand evidence about the situation they’re blowing the whistle on—their disclosure is often only one piece of the puzzle. That’s why substantiating or refuting a whistleblower disclosure requires investigation, by inspectors general, congressional investigators, journalists, or organizations like POGO. Often, in order for a disclosure to be substantiated, the whistleblower needs to help provide leads for a government investigator to be able to corroborate the disclosure. That is generally how all of us who work with whistleblowers, both inside and outside the government, are able to prove that wrongdoing occurred.

As longtime whistleblower champion Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) noted earlier today:

When it comes to whether someone qualifies as a whistleblower, the distinctions being drawn between first- and second-hand knowledge aren’t legal ones. It’s just not part of whistleblower protection law or any agency policy. Complaints based on second-hand information should not be rejected out of hand, but they do require additional leg work to get at the facts and evaluate the claim’s credibility.

Moreover, the intelligence community inspector general’s office made clear that the issue of the form is a red herring: according to its statement yesterday, the whistleblower who disclosed the “urgent concern” regarding the president’s call with the president of Ukraine used that earlier form and indicated on it that they had both firsthand and secondhand information. Furthermore, both versions of the form ask whether the whistleblower has firsthand knowledge or has information provided by others—meaning, firsthand knowledge is not required for the disclosure to be legal and protected under the law.

