A bill that would protect whistleblowing federal employees was supposed to pass in December. It didn't. Why? After two amendments and almost a year of being worked over, the bill made it through the Senate, and over to the House. Ten days later, as it was about to be voting on, it disappeared. Congress's session ended, and the bill went away. And who wouldn't want to protect people who work for our government, who feel strongly enough about certain misdeeds to speak out?

Ironically, it's a good question. The bill died at the hands of an anonymous, last-minute "secret hold": It's a controversial Senate practice that was just reformed in the first session of 2011's Senate by a 92-4 vote. You'd think Senators would want their constituents to think their government is transparent and protects them, which is why all 100 of them voted for it. But just how transparent? In the "Age of Wikileaks," apparently, too much truth was just too much for one politician to handle.

NPR's On The Media has been on the case to figure out who placed the anonymous hold on the bill, and BoingBoing gave said case some much-needed publicity on Wednesday. They've narrowed it down to three Republican Senators who either refuse to comment on holds or are stonewalling requests for comment: Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and Sen. James Risch of Idaho.

Funny thing about these three guys: All of them voted to reform the "Secret Hold" practice. Only four senators voted to keep it going, and Kyl, Sessions, and Risch weren't one of those four. Yet these are the guys being suspected of killing the Whistleblower bill using a secret hold. It's like voting against concealed weapons, being accused of carrying a gun, and not showing what's under your jacket. So we reached out to all three Senators' offices to see if they could help us understand the circumstances under which they're suspected of killing the Whistleblower bill.

Sen. James Risch had his camp repeatedly answer inquiries with: "anonymous holds are anonymous." But again: If Risch voted to reform the practice of secret holds, why would he so passionately care to hold up their anonymity? Press Secretary Kyle Hines explained to us: "His policy is and remains that [the rules of secret holds were] what he was operating under at that point, and that's what it remains now." But why did the policy exist in the first place? "It's just a policy he set up." And with the new rules, is that policy of Sen. Risch's subject to change? "Certainly with the new rules that [the Senate] is operating under, holds will not operate the same way. This vote that you're discussing was operating under the rules that was [last] year. And that's why he's maintaining that stance."

Sen. Jeff Sessions' Press Secretary, Sarah Haley, would neither confirm nor deny whether Sessions was the source of the hold to other outlets. "As an office policy, we do not comment on holds," she told BamaFactCheck. Haley was not available to answer her office phone, but did respond to an email request for comment, asking what our inquiry was regarding. We emailed her back explaining that it was about the Secret Holds and Sen. Sessions' December vote to end them, and at present time, have not heard back. We'll update for comment when we do.

The office of Sen. Jon Kyl also couldn't dredge up a press representative to speak on-record about Kyl's involvement with the hold, but one staffer was more than willing to point out that the Whistleblower Bill had passed unanimously in the Senate on December 10, arrived in the House on December 14, and didn't move from then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's table for another eight days, insisting that there was a question to be had there (a request for comment from Pelosi's office has, at the time, yet to be returned). Yet the staffer was also more than happy to point out that the bill was amended twice on the way to the House, and that wasn't, in their eyes, nearly enough time to consider a thoroughly revised bill. It might also be worth noting here that Kyl — despite voting for the reform of rules on secret holds — has very vocally opposed this reform before. For what it's worth, that might be because he's a fan of the Secret Hold, having once been revealed as the guy who used it on a bill that would've strengthened the Freedom of Information Act. A vote in which only four people voted "nay" would be hard for him to hide in if he went the other way on it, so it's a good cover for Kyl to participate in going pro for the ending of Secret Holds. Even though this is a guy who (A) has vocally made a case for secrecy in the Senate and (B) has taken action to ensure that the public doesn't get their hands on previously-secret information, © using said "secret hold" method.

Where there's smoke, there's typically fire, and sometimes, even an arsonist. Needless to say, as of this publication, no one Senator has stepped forward and confirmed their participation. But if a volley to the other side of the aisle and being told that certain logic dictates a bill wouldn't be ready for passage isn't a plume, we don't know what is. If it wasn't one of these three guys, it could've been two of them (the intricacies of tag-teaming a secret hold are too lengthy to go into here, but they make for good reading). But whoever put the hold on it — and why Pelosi held something that appeared all but signed and sealed until the last minute — doesn't even really matter, in the end, because this is all just a long-learned lesson that continues to be reinforced: Any ideals you have about our government getting things done can always be precluded by the fact that often, nobody knows, can explain, or wants anybody else to know or say what the fuck is going on down there.

fkamer@hearst.com]

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