As scrutiny intensifies over a sprawling surveillance program the Food and Drug Administration carried out against its own employees, a top Republican senator alleges the controversy goes at least as high as the chief counsel’s office.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed in a letter to the FDA commissioner this week that, despite the agency’s refusal to say who authorized the spying against agency doctors who had complained about medical device safety, the senator’s office can confirm it was “explicitly authorized” by the General Counsel’s Office.
Grassley also accused the FDA of monitoring “communications with Congress” and punishing whistleblowers, and said he was referring the case to the Justice Department for “further investigation.”
“FDA’s misconduct cannot be ignored,” Grassley wrote.
The stern letter from Grassley is the latest development in the rapidly evolving controversy concerning a surveillance program the FDA enacted against several agency doctors. Though Grassley is pressing for more information, the FDA acknowledges that it monitored a group of five employees starting in 2010.
That surveillance was extensive.
After installing monitoring software on the targets’ computers, the FDA began collecting volumes of data. This included screenshots, “taken every five seconds,” of whatever was on their computer monitors; all email traffic; all network activity; all data stored on and printed from the computers; and “all keystrokes.”
The New York Times recently reported that the internal investigation into five scientists, though, grew into a bigger campaign to monitor critics — the Times reported that the agency had a database of more than 80,000 pages from the monitoring campaign. According to the Times, the campaign actually flagged 21 employees, congressional officials and others thought to be putting out “defamatory” information about the FDA. The dispute reportedly sprouted from scientists’ complaints that medical devices exposed patients to radiation following improper agency reviews.
In a July 13 letter to Grassley, FDA Assistant Commissioner for Legislation Jeanne Ireland defended the agency’s practice.
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