Before he publicly demanded that the media expose the identity of the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was literally the toast of the whistleblower advocacy world. Six years ago, the Kentucky Republican received an award for his work to protect those who come forward anonymously with allegations of wrongdoing by the powerful.
The honor was issued at the Whistleblower Summit for Civil and Human Rights—a non-partisan conference that had given their Pillar Human Rights Award to other elected officials in the past, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). In 2013, they chose to to acknowledge Paul, among other lawmakers, for being one of a few GOP senators willing to take political flack in defense of Edward Snowden, who had just come forward with a sweeping disclosure of federal government snooping. Many of Paul’s colleagues were livid with Snowden, and though the Kentucky senator believed he deserved punishment, he maintained that the revelations were a service to the country.
In the aftermath, Paul pushed for whistleblower protections to be extended to government contractors such as Snowden. “We’ve got so many millions of government contractors that when they see something wrong, they should be able to report it without repercussions,” Paul said in an address to a libertarian conference in 2014. The following year, Paul introduced an amendment to a Senate cybersecurity bill to that effect: the legislation proposed that contractors with knowledge of surveillance programs could send formal complaints to the Government Accountability Office, the congressional Intelligence Committees, or through internal channels.
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