Years later, fired air marshal back on public payroll, but what will he do?

[Bob Carswell]

Fired federal air marshal Robert MacLean is officially, and
victoriously, back on the public payroll, more than eight years
after being improperly canned for disclosing “sensitive security
information” in an attempt to protect the flying public, his
attorney confirmed Tuesday.

The action cost MacLean his life as he knew it.

While details of a settlement with the Department of Homeland
Security are still being hammered out, MacLean, of Ladera Ranch,
was officially reinstated on May 3, said Tom Devine, legal
director of the Government Accountability Project.

MacLean is on paid leave while the feds figure out precisely
what to do with him. No one would discuss specifics, but
MacLean’s face is now well-known, due to a legal battle that
went all the way to the Supreme Court. That presumably makes the
undercover work of an air marshal difficult.

MacLean’s saga began in 2003, when he received an alarming
emergency alert from the DHS detailing “a more ambitious,
broader-scale version of the 9/11 plot,” according to court
briefs. Within 48 hours, he got an unencrypted text message from
the Transportation Security Admin-istration scrapping all
overnight missions to save money on hotel rooms.

That, MacLean thought, was crazy. He protested up the food
chain, got nowhere and finally shared the information with a
reporter from MSNBC. Fallout was fast and furious: Lawmakers
decried the cost-cutting idea as foolish, officials backtracked
and overnight missions continued as usual.

Three years later, MacLean’s bosses discovered that he was the
source of the leak.

The message he shared was retroactively stamped “sensitive
security information,” and MacLean was fired.

He fought for eight years, seeking whistleblower protection, but
lost at most every turn. His reputation was battered, his
finances destroyed. In January, Supreme Court justices said the
Whistleblower Protection Act was designed to protect employees
like him.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/maclean-661511-security-
years.html