Philip Haney, an Obama DHS Whistleblower, Found Dead; Coroner Says Suicide Reports Are “Misinformation”

Haney's body was found in an open RV park-and-ride area adjacent to Highway 16.

This was less than 3 miles from where Haney is reported to have been living, which is Plymouth, CA.

Plymouth has a population of less than 1,000 people.

The Sacramento Bee has more information on how Haney's body was discovered:

A former longtime Department of Homeland Security official, described as a whistleblower who penned a book criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of terrorism, was found dead Friday morning in Amador County, authorities said.

Philip Haney was identified as the man found dead adjacent to Highways 16 and 124 near the city of Plymouth. Haney, 66, was found on the ground with a single gunshot wound, according to two news releases from the Amador County Sheriff’s Office.

In an initial release Saturday, the Sheriff’s Office reported that Haney “was deceased and appeared to have suffered a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound,” and that a firearm was located next to Haney and his vehicle.

CBS Sacramento confirms Haney's death and reports that requests have been made to the FBI to get involved:

Authorities have requested help from the FBI to analyze documents, phone records, a laptop recovered from the scene, and from Haney’s RV. They’re also being asked to help analyze Haney’s vehicle, a firearm found at the scene, and Haney’s RV.

The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office is also scheduled to perform a forensic autopsy.

Investigators have spoken with neighbors at the RV park where Haney lived, which is three miles away from where his body was found, and have looked for surveillance video that may have captured footage that could lead to clues in his death.

“We are currently in the beginning phase of our investigation and any final determination as to the cause and manner of Mr. Haney’s death would be extremely premature and inappropriate,” said Redman. “No determination will be made until all evidence is examined and analyzed.”

In 2016, Haney wrote an op-ed in The Hill, where he claimed the "DHS ordered me to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties."

Haney worked at the DHS for 15 years. 

More whistleblower claims by Haney can be found on The Hill:

Amid the chaos of the 2009 holiday travel season, jihadists planned to slaughter 290 innocent travelers on a Christmas Day flight from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Twenty-three-year old Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab intended to detonate Northwest Airlines Flight 253, but the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned and brave passengers subdued him until he could be arrested. The graphic and traumatic defeat they planned for the United States failed, that time.

Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material—the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

After leaving my 15 year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”  Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.

Haney's claims quickly went viral.

After news of Haney's death broke, many went to social media to express their dismay.

Aside from his article in The Hill, Haney also wrote a book titled: "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad."

Haney had even been contacted to a sequel.

Fox News confirms that plans for a sequel were in the works:

Haney, who worked for DHS for about 15 years, was also the author of "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad."

In November, Haney contacted the Examiner about plans to publish a sequel to the book, the newspaper reported.

Haney, who retired in 2015, studied Arabic culture and language while working as a scientist in the Middle East before becoming a founding member of DHS in 2002 as a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture officer.

After serving as an armed CBP officer, he was promoted to its Advanced Targeting Team. He specialized in Islamic theology and the strategy and tactics of the global Islamic movement.

Several initial reports claimed that Philip Haney's death was a suicie.

However, the coroner has spoken out against the spread of misinformation.

The coroner emphasized that it was too early and "inappropriate" to deem Haney's death a "suicide.

Breitbart has more details on the coroner's comments:

The coroner for the Amador County Sheriff’s Office in California on Monday criticized the spread of “misinformation” surrounding the death of Obama administration-era whistleblower Philip Haney, saying it is “extremely premature and inappropriate” to deem it a “suicide.”

Law enforcement reportedly discovered the body of the 66-year-old former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official less than three miles from his home on February 21 in Amador Country, the coroner indicated in a statement to news outlets issued on Monday.

Amador County is located about 40 miles east of Sacramento.

The coroner stated:

Unfortunately, there was misinformation immediately being put out that we have determined Mr. Haney’s death to be a suicide. This is not the case. We are currently in the beginning phase of our investigation and any final determination as to the cause and manner of Mr. Haney’s death would be extremely premature and inappropriate. No determination will be made until all evidence is examined and analyzed.

This investigation is still active and will be ongoing.

We will post updates as this story develops and more information is made public.