Uncle Sam's corporate lawyers.

• Author: Nader, Ralph
• Position: Waste in government spending

Thousands of lawyers work in-house at the various agencies and departments of the U.S. government. So it may surprise you to learn that more than 120 government agencies are permitted by law to hire outside lawyers and that, each year, the government pays approximately $600 million to those lawyers for representation in litigation or other legal services. This figure happens to be more than twice the amount the government gives the federally chartered Legal Services Corporation to provide basic legal representation to millions of low-income people.

And it gets worse. The government actually pays the legal bills of its outside contractors who run into legal trouble in the course of their work, even when that legal trouble is defending themselves against employees who blow the whistle on their illegal or unsafe activities. At the Department of Energy (DOE), the largest civilian user of private contractors in the executive branch, this indemnification scheme costs taxpayers approximately $30 million in legal fees and costs each year.

The DOE's own regulations require workers to report unsafe conditions. But when they do, DOE contractors can - and often do - use federal funds to battle those same workers. How can this be? To attract private sector companies to run its nuclear weapons programs, the DOE enters into deals that specifically protect contract companies from certain liabilities. This means that in addition to paying these companies, legal fees, the government may be responsible for money damages arising from their improper operations. The DOE accepts such a bad deal in part because it fears that, if contractors were responsible for their own legal costs and liabilities, they might frequently sue the government, claiming that government negligence or misconduct caused the harms alleged. By assuming the costs up front, DOE hopes to maintain greater control of litigation decisions.

Unfortunately, the real-life result is that the DOE allows its contractors to decide whether to defend a case, to choose the lawyers (subject to approval by the DOE), and to exert tremendous influence over decisions such as whether to settle or go to trial. Then, the government rubber-stamps the company's legal bills. This often forces whistleblowers into protracted litigation, fighting companies that want to beat them into the ground and that have little incentive to quit since taxpayers are paying the bills. Meanwhile, whistleblowers frequently must pay their own legal fees, even as they risk losing their jobs.

Just ask Ed Bricker. In 1977 he went to work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a federal facility in Washington State that processes plutonium for nuclear weapons for the DOE. Under contract with the government, Rockwell International Corporation operated portions of Hanford from 1977 until 1987, when Westinghouse Electric Corporation took over the contracts. That same year, Bricker reported what he thought were safety deficiencies that could have exposed workers directly to plutonium, one of the most dangerous carcinogens known to humankind.

Bricker first noticed that alarms in his work area had been shut off because they were malfunctioning. That meant...