In 1988, Congress enacted the Military Whistleblower Protection Act (10 U.S.C. 1034) to prohibit anyone from retaliating or taking reprisals against servicemembers who disclose information concerning government fraud, waste, and abuse to designated persons. Examples of retaliatory actions or reprisals against these whistleblowers are transfers, low performance appraisals, and referrals for involuntary mental health evaluations. The law also provides for after-the-fact protection; that is, it provides an avenue to correct a reprisal against a whistleblower. Specifically, the law seeks to assist those military servicemembers who make a protected disclosure by communicating with or preparing a communication to certain designated officials, for example, a Member of Congress, the DOD IG, or an IG; disclose information that they reasonably believe constitutes a violation of law or regulation, mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, or a danger to public health or safety; and have an unfavorable personnel action taken or threatened to be taken, or have a favorable action withheld or threatened to be withheld, as a result of the disclosure. The act requires the DOD IG to expeditiously investigate a whistleblower’s allegations of reprisal that it receives within 60 days of the servicemember’s initial awareness of the adverse action. If an investigation cannot be completed within 90 days of the date of receipt of the allegation, the IG is to notify the Secretary of Defense and the member concerning the reason and the expected date of the report. The DOD IG submits the results of an investigation to the Secretary of Defense, the service secretary, and the servicemember. The law also allows the BCMR to review the results of the investigation in considering a servicemember’s request for correction of records. Furthermore, the law permits the servicemember to appeal to the Secretary of Defense the final disposition of the service secretary’s decision concerning the correction of records. In 1989, DOD issued Directive 7050.6, “Military Whistleblower Protection,” to implement the whistleblower act, which was incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) in 32 CFR, part 98a, in 1990. The directive set forth various responsibilities and requirements for handling whistleblower complaints, including both DOD IG and service IG investigation and reporting procedures. The directive allowed the DOD IG to delegate the responsibility to conduct the investigation to a service IG, in which case the provisions of 10 U.S.C. 1034 applied. Not all military whistleblowers’ allegations of reprisal, however, are processed under 10 U.S.C. 1034; some may be processed under service IGs’ general authority. In December 1991, section 843 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993 required the Secretary of Defense to prescribe regulations prohibiting members of the armed forces from retaliating against whistleblowers who make disclosures to specified individuals. In September 1992, DOD reissued Directive 7050.6, which, among other things, required the services to develop the regulations called for in section 843. In October 1992, Congress enacted the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993, section 546, which established procedures for referring servicemembers for inpatient and outpatient mental health evaluations, and also set forth the rights of servicemembers referred by their commands for such evaluations. It also strengthened protection for whistleblowers by prohibiting the use of mental health evaluations as reprisals against whistleblowers who make protected disclosures under 10 U.S.C. 1034. Congress recently enacted the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995 (P.L. 103-337), which amended 10 U.S.C. 1034 in several respects. The legislation has amended section 1034 to protect communications not only to a Member of Congress or an Inspector General but also to a member of a DOD audit, inspection, investigation, or law enforcement organization, and certain other designated persons. It essentially has placed the protected disclosure coverage from section 843 into 10 U.S.C. 1034. The legislation also requires the DOD IG to ensure that the investigating service IG is outside the immediate chain of command of both the whistleblower and the individual alleged to have taken the retaliatory action. Another important change is that allegations of sexual harassment and unlawful discrimination are now covered by 10 U.S.C. 1034. Under DOD’s current procedures, whistleblowers receive 10 U.S.C. 1034 statutory protection pertaining to reprisals only if they report their allegations to the DOD IG. In effect, there is a two-track system for investigating and processing allegations of reprisal against whistleblowers—one for allegations submitted to the DOD IG and one for allegations made to service and local IGs. DOD’s current directive implementing the law provides that only allegations of reprisals made directly to the DOD IG are entitled to the law’s protections. The DOD IG may delegate responsibility for conducting investigations to service IGs, who in turn often delegate this responsibility to installation-level IGs. When the DOD IG delegates an investigation, it maintains an oversight role to ensure that the criteria contained in its Guide to Investigating Military Reprisals are followed and that the act’s statutory protection is accorded to the whistleblower. The investigating guide details the procedures for conducting investigations of alleged reprisal and documenting the evidence (see app. I for additional details). We reviewed 25 files of investigations conducted by the DOD IG or under its oversight and found that the investigators had generally followed the criteria in the DOD IG guidance. Of the 25 cases, reprisals were substantiated in 11 cases; not substantiated in 11 cases; and partially substantiated in 3 cases (see Scope and Methodology section for discussion of cases selected). We also determined that a military member applied to a BCMR in six cases. Of those six, the BCMR recommended action in two (one was in process during our review). We also researched a number of reprisal allegations that came to our attention during this assignment. However, we were unable to determine if those servicemembers had filed applications for correcting their records due to whistleblower reprisals. Between enactment of 10 U.S.C. 1034 in September 1988 and February 1994, 233 cases of alleged reprisals against whistleblowers were filed with the DOD IG. Of those, 159 were investigated and closed, and 74 were open or under investigation. Of the total cases, DOD had received and completed investigations of 14 cases alleging the use of mental health evaluations as reprisals and was investigating an additional 17 cases. Of the 14 completed investigations, 2 of the allegations were substantiated, and 1 was partially substantiated. Service and local IGs are authorized to investigate alleged reprisals for whistleblowing independent of and without the DOD IG’s knowledge. Accordingly, DOD IG officials informed us that they were unaware of the number of investigations of reprisal that service or local IGs had initiated since September 1988. According to DOD IG officials, servicemembers who report alleged reprisal for whistleblowing activities to the DOD IG have the following benefits that servicemembers who report to a service or local IG do not: The reprisal complaint is handled through a formal statutory process. Upon completion of the DOD IG investigation or approval by the DOD IG of an investigation done by a service or local IG, the servicemember automatically receives a redacted copy of the investigation report, copies of documents considered in the report, and redacted summaries of testimonies taken during the investigation. Although some service IGs can recommend that appropriate disciplinary action be taken by the military service department against anyone who takes action of reprisal, this type of recommendation is more likely to be made by the DOD IG. When the DOD IG investigation report recommends corrective action to relieve harm done to the servicemember by the reprisal, the servicemember, after applying to the BCMR for relief, can appeal the disposition of the service secretary’s decision to the Secretary of Defense. In addition, the service secretary must reach a decision on the servicemember’s application for relief within 180 days. We identified several other benefits or advantages of reporting to the DOD IG, which are higher visibility of the case within the service department because the DOD IG investigation report is sent to the service secretary, greater assurance that the DOD IG’s Guide to Investigating Military Reprisals will be followed during the reprisal investigation, and advice from the service secretary that assistance in preparing an application to the BCMR may be sought from the legal office supporting the applicant’s command in those cases in which the DOD IG investigation (1) substantiates an allegation of reprisal and (2) makes recommendations that require BCMR action. To complicate matters, the whistleblower procedures described in the CFR provision (until late August 1994) required service and local IGs to notify the DOD IG when they initiated whistleblowers’ reprisal investigations. This provision provided the DOD IG with the opportunity to determine whether whistleblower allegations made to local or service IGs should be handled under 10 U.S.C. 1034-type procedures. The original DOD directive, issued in 1989, also required that the DOD IG be notified, but the 1992 revision eliminated the requirement. DOD IG officials said they recently revised the CFR to make it consistent with the 1992 DOD Directive 7050.6, which does not require notification. According to the DOD IG official in charge of reprisal investigations, the 1992 directive did not include the notification requirement because it could not be enforced.