No. of Recommendations: 12
Sure I could. There's no federal law that says Subdivision X of Bureaucratic Organization Y has to be the same way every year.
True, but you also can get your actions invalidated by a court if they determine it's a pretext enabling you to fire someone who is protected from being fired under the Civil Service Act and/or the First Amendment. Doing a reorg that accomplishes nothing except getting a single person fired in retribution is almost certainly going to get shot down.
And if by some miracle they get their jobs back, they still won't have access to a security clearance. They're more than welcome to take temperature readings of Alaskan tundra if they want. But they're finished as "intelligence professionals".
Why not? How are you going to deny them their security clearances if they meet the requirements for a security clearance? Again, you're not allowed to act arbitrary or capriciously - or retaliate against them for their exercise of speech in a non-work related context.
So when I would sign the order terminating their jobs and eliminating their means to profit off of intelligence information...I'd also do it with a shit-eating grin on my face.
Again, you can't fire them without providing cause for firing them. You can't revoke their security clearance without providing cause for doing that. And that cause can't be that they exercised their right to free speech outside of work. If you try, they'll get a preliminary injunction stopping it from going into effect, and a permanent injunction (and possibly damages) based on a denial of their Free Speech rights.
It's hard to get reprisals and retribution against government employees who haven't violated any of their legal or workplace obligations. They're fairly well protected by, you know, due process of law. While in the private sector the CEO can fire someone just because they look at them funny, the federal government has a lot of rules that keep that from happening - and it's not easy to get around them. So I don't think you're going to have quite the shit-eating grin you imagine...
