Joseph (Joe) Carson, PE is a 30+ year DOE employee as a nuclear safety engineer. He is also arguably the GOAT of career federal agency whistleblowers. There is an established legal record of repeated lawbreaking by DOE against Engineer Carson, taken to punish him (and intimidate other DOE employees into silence) for his performing his positive legal duty as a professional engineer (PE) and federal agency employee to protect the health and safety of others.

His whistleblowing and patriotic withstanding of DOE’s reprisal, while pursuing legal remedy, played a positive, perhaps significant role in the passage of the landmark law in 2000 - the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA).

At this point, over 135,000 DOE workers have received over 20 billion dollars in compensation by this law. As the law states, these workers were put in harms way, without their knowledge or adequate protection, while building America’s nuclear stockpile during the Cold War.

Engineer Carson? He has yet to receive an apology from DOE, let alone any positive recognition, for his self-sacrificing actions. DOE’s lawbreaking against Engineer Carson did not occur in a vacuum, it was just another result of the law-breaking failure of the leaders of US Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), now including its Acting Chairman Cathy Harris, to “sound the alarm” to the President and Congress that federal employees - as Engineer Carson’s ordeal clearly demonstrates - are NOT adequately protected from reprisal and other corrupt agency employment practices.

Cathy Harris is stonewalling efforts to resolve the well-evidenced whistleblower disclosure against her and her predecessors since the creation of MSPB in 1979. Their failure to “sound the alarm” impacts your ability to demonstrate compliance with your duty to prevent reprisal and other corrupt employment practices in DOE, per 5 U.S.C.§2302(c)(2)(A).

Several months ago, a number of organizations requested Senate Majority Schumer delay her confirmation vote as Chairman of MSPB until she took action to resolve the whistleblower disclosure, see https://whsknox.blogs.com/2023/schumer_letter_re_MSPB-8-21.pdf.

In August 2021, you made a video, watched by all DOE employees, where you stated your expectations that they bring their concerns forward and that you supported their objective resolution. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSE4fRHpo7E )

(the transcript of your video is here https://whsknox.blogs.com/2023/stonewall/Energy-Sec-Granholm-SCWE-8-21-video-transcript.pdf).

Given your policy to support whistleblowers in DOE, the stonewalling of Cathy Harris and your duty to prevent reprisal and other corrupt employment practices in DOE, we call upon you to direct the Attorney General, per your lawful authority at 28 U.S.C. §512 as the head of an Executive Department, to direct the Attorney General to issue his opinion on the whistleblower disclosure against Cathy Harris.