Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is turning up the pressure on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration following the emergence of a growing scandal about the agency spying on its scientists brought to light in a report in The New York Times. A new revelation made by Grassley in a July 16 letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg was his contention that the spying was authorized in writing by the FDA’s counsel’s office.

The New York Times reported July 15 that the FDA monitored thousands of emails of disgruntled agency scientists sent to reporters, Congress members, and others. The newspaper says that the effort began as a narrow investigation into five scientists in mid-2010, but quickly expanded “to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process.

The newspaper revealed that some 80,000 pages of documents relating to the surveillance effort had been erroneously posted on the Internet by an agency contractor revealing the spying was much broader than thought. The Times found that the surveillance operation “identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and ‘defamatory’ information about the agency.”

The FDA acknowledges the surveillance of the five scientists, saying its intent was to make sure information wasn’t being shared inappropriately.

“What the FDA has done has serious implications for the right of federal employees to make valuable protected disclosures about waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, or public safety to Congress or anyone else. This kind of communication is protected for good reason,” Grassley said. “The FDA’s crusade contradicts the pledge the current commissioner made to create a culture that values whistleblowers, and the scope and tone of the surveillance effort reveals an agency more concerned about protecting itself than protecting the public, which ironically is the agency’s mission.”

Grassley began his investigation into the FDA surveillance effort in January following allegations from a whistleblower. In the letter to FDA’s Hamburg, he called on the commissioner to stop “stonewalling” his investigation.

In a July 13 letter responding to questions from Grassley, Hamburg said the data collected by the FDA included screenshots every five seconds from the government computers used by the employees being monitored, all email sent or received from a government computer, all network activity on those computers, all data stored or printed from those computers, and all keystrokes on those computers.

Grassley said the FDA’s contention that employees were free to communicate is “ludicrous” because documents indicate the agency was specifically targeting whistleblowers who were subsequently fired or had their contract lapse. In addition, he noted that repeated investigations by the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services failed to substantiate FDA charges that confidential information was leaked to the press, which the FDA said justifies its actions.