text: Neither Ellard, his lawyer, nor the NSA provided any comment, despite POGO’s numerous attempts to offer them the opportunity.
  POGO also reached out to the NSA employee and victim of Ellard’s retaliation, posing a detailed series of questions about what happened through an official intermediary. POGO has been told that the whistleblower composed answers to at least some of those queries, and was seeking NSA approval before releasing them. So far, there is no sign that such approval has been granted.
  Ellard, a Yale-trained lawyer and former prosecutor with a doctorate in philosophy, was for nine years the top oversight official keeping tabs on NSA, an agency fraught with controversy over its handling of Edward Snowden and other prominent whistleblowers. Ellard in particular chose to enter that debate along with other critics who faulted Snowden for his alleged unwillingness to report his concerns about NSA domestic surveillance through channels inside the agency set up for that purpose.