Patriot or Traitor: America’s History of Whistleblowers

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People aren’t the only ones who carry secrets. There are a lot of  dark chapters in American history where the government or large institutions did horrible things safe behind walls of silence and complicity. 

Shady practices, incompetence, or outright illegality are all things that these institutions have a vested interest in keeping under wraps, even though dozens or hundreds of people in the institutions may have knowledge of them [1]. 

These organizations take advantage of the fact that most human beings don’t like to disturb existing conditions. Most employers or affiliates walk past injustice with their heads down and allow bad things to happen, rather than upset the lives they have built. 

However, some people reach a point where they can no longer keep the secret. Whether it’s because they are morally outraged or just want plain revenge, some people risk their status, friends, careers, and even their lives to bring the truth to the light of public scrutiny –  no matter how ugly or damning it may be [1]. 

We call those people “whistle-blowers” – a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization [2]. The following will chronicle America’s history of whistle blowers who saw something wrong and could not remain silent.

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Along with Richard Marven, Samuel Shaw was instrumental to the passage of the first whistleblower protection law in the United States. The Continental Congress enacted the first whistleblower protection law in the United States on July 30, 1778 by a unanimous vote [3]. 

Congress was moved to act after an incident in 1777, when Richard Marven – a third lieutenant in the Continental Navy – and Shaw – a midshipman – were part of a group of sailors and marines who blew the whistle and suffered severe retaliation by Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy [3]. 

The group accused Hopkins of torturing British prisoners of war. After being dismissed from the Continental Navy, Commodore Hopkins filed a criminal libel suit against Marven and Shaw in the Rhode Island courts [4].

Congress declared that the United States would defend the two whistleblowers against a libel suit filed against them by Hopkins; resolving that “the reasonable expenses of defending the said suit be defrayed by the United States” and terminated the employment of Hopkins [4].

Congress also declared it the duty of “all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other inhabitants thereof” to inform the Continental Congress or proper authorities of “misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by any officers in the service of these states which may come to their knowledge.” [4]

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In the 1930s, Smedley Butler – a retired U.S. Marines Corps Major General and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor – went public with information that he was approached by powerful industrialists to be involved in a plot to overthrow the United States government [5].

In his book War Is a Racket, Smedley described how the federal military in the late 1800s and early 1900s – at the direction of Presidents and Congressmen – moved globally to support the interests of American corporations, banking establishments, and even that of certain politically important families of the day. It was called war, sometimes occupation, and at times it was publicly accepted as imperialism [6]. 

Led by powerful business magnates with the intention of ousting President Roosevelt and installing a Fascist dictatorship ruled by business magnates and a private army of half a million US soldiers, this coup was disrupted by Butler’s integrity and willingness to be one of the military industrial complex’s first whistle-blowers [7].

Even today, Butler’s essay gives us a realistic and truthful picture of the forces keeping this nation in a perpetual state of emergency, involving us in war after war against other nations, and diverting so much of our wealth and resources to military buildup [7].

“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.” -Smedley Butler [6]

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Peter Buxton came to America as an infant when his family fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. After earning a European History degree at the University of Oregon, he served in the Army as a Psychiatric Social Worker. 

In 1966, he was a 27-year-old venereal disease investigator for the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) stationed in San Francisco. There he learned that since 1932 the USPHS had studied untreated syphilis among 400 African-American share-croppers around Tuskegee, Alabama. 

He was shocked to hear that a physician who had treated syphilis with Penicillin was berated by the USPHS for “ruining one of our volunteers,” so Buxtun decided to investigate. 

He found that infection rates of 20% among Southern Blacks had prompted the USPHS to launch a treatment program in 1929. Treatment – a year of arsenic and mercury injections – was costly, arduous and toxic, but it did control the disease [8]

Because state funding was inadequate, the USPHS obtained grants to cover treatment costs. But the Depression wiped out foundation support and wrecked the USPHS budget [8].

Deciding to salvage data, the USPHS chose 400 syphilitic subjects for annual exams and blood tests – without the expense of therapy. For comparison, another 200 men without syphilis were also monitored. The infected group was simply told they had “Bad Blood” that needed “treatment by government doctors.” [8]

They weren’t told they had syphilis, or that it could be transmitted to spouses who then infected their babies. At best, some got inadequate treatment; at worst, a placebo or aspirin. Spinal taps, performed to develop syphilis tests, were misrepresented as a “new special treatment.” 

Participation was encouraged with hot meals and free rides, as doctors reported the men were “susceptible to kindness.” [8]

He later said – “I didn't want to believe it. This was the Public Health Service. We didn't do things like that.” In November 1966, he filed an official protest on ethical grounds with the Service's Division of Venereal Diseases. This was rejected on the grounds that the Experiment was not yet complete [9]. 

He filed another protest in November 1968, and again his concerns were ruled irrelevant. In 1972, Buxtun leaked information on the Tuskegee Experiment to Jean Heller of the Washington Star [9]. 

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Heller's story exposing the Experiment was published on July 25, 1972. It became front-page news in the New York Times the following day. Senator Edward Kennedy called Congressional hearings at which Buxtun and HEW officials testified, and the Experiment was terminated shortly thereafter [9]. The government was forced to pay the participants and pay for their medical care for the rest of their lives [1].

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Buxtun subsequently testified at the ensuing Congressional hearing. In May 1999, Buxtun attended the launch of a memorial center and public exhibit to the experiment in Tuskegee [9].

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The 1970s saw a surge of whistleblowers as many more people began to speak out in the midst of injustice. One of America’s most famous of whistleblowers is William Mark Felt, Sr. He was a career FBI man who rose by 1972 to become the bureau's second-highest ranking official.

In June 1972, burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic Party's national headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington. Six men were arrested.

Enterprising journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post soon connected the break-in to “a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage” run by the White House and the reelection campaign of President Richard M. Nixon. However, they encountered stiff resistance in trying to document the extent of the conspiracy and subsequent cover-up [10].

Woodward contacted Felt, whom he had used as a source previously. Felt's position was so sensitive, and the story so explosive, that he agreed to meet Woodward only in a parking garage at 2 a.m. on rare occasions. There, Felt provided tips to the journalist on the involvement of Nixon's aides and cronies in various crimes. He insisted on anonymity [10].

The Post's reporting led to the discovery of the president's secret audio-taping system. Those tapes made clear that Nixon had authorized a cover-up. He resigned as Congress moved to impeach him [10].

“The system of justice had been so polluted and corrupted and politicized by Nixon and his men that the FBI could never get to the bottom of Watergate,” Woodward wrote in 2005. “Mark Felt was driven to expose what was going on.” Without Felt and others who rose up against the corruption, “you never would or could have gotten to the Nixon tapes.” [10]

Woodward protected Felt's identity as “Deep Throat” until 2005, when both men went public. Felt was 95 when he died Thursday, December 18, 2008 [11].

The tobacco industry has been knowingly and willfully poisoning people for years. The Surgeon General required labeling on cigarette packages in 1966, but it wasn’t until 1995 that the true depth of greed and corruption within the tobacco industry became public knowledge [12].

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Dr. Jeffrey Wigand – a former Vice President of Research & Development for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation – began making public disclosures about the industry’s complete disregard for the health and safety of everyday people a few short years after he left the company [12]. 

Becoming the highest level tobacco executive to cooperate with the FDA on their investigation into the tobacco industry, Dr. Wigand was instrumental in the lawsuit brought against big tobacco in 1995. The end result of his whistleblowing was a monumental $368 billion settlement between the industry and 40 states [12].

As a former industry insider, Dr. Wigand was able to expose how cigarettes are manipulated to increase levels of the addictive drug nicotine. His own research to develop a safer cigarette was ignored by company officials more interested in turning a profit than protecting their customers, which highlighted the flagrant disregard the tobacco industry shows for human life.

First making this information known during an interview with 60 Minutes, Dr. Wigand later became a key expert in testimony against the tobacco industry, and an inspiration to others who came forward afterward. By putting his professional interests on the line, Dr. Wigand became an admired and respected consumer advocate, later being represented by Russell Crow in the movie The Insider [12].

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For retired FBI agent Coleen Rowley, remaining quiet after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 was not an option. 

When the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th, 2001, the nation and the world were overcome with shock. From out of nowhere and with no warning, a small handful of terrorists had staged a massive attack in the largest city of the most powerful country on the earth. 

The fire, destruction and death that America had been spared for so long were right here on the doorstep. How had these men been able to strike at the heart of the country without raising a single bit of suspicion? Well, the truth is, they didn’t. It turns out that government agencies had intelligence that the attacks were imminent [1]. 

The FBI in particular, received a report from its Minneapolis field office that Zacarias Moussaoui was possibly involved in preparations for a suicide hijacking. That office, and Field Agent Coleen Rowley requested permission to search Moussaoui’s rooms and laptop, but were denied by her bosses [1]. 

Once the attacks happened, Rowley was sure they could have derailed or delayed them if they had had the chance to go after Moussaoui. And she wasted no time in telling her superiors and the 9/11 Commission.

Because of her honesty and willingness to come forward, changes were made in the FBI to improve counterterrorism investigations and intelligence gathering. She soon retired and was named one of TIME’s “People of the Year” in 2002 [1].

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In 2010, US Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning released the largest set of classified documents ever. Serving in Iraq, Manning breached Army security and downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as pages of diplomatic cables.

Frustrated with the war and his treatment by the army, Manning passed the trove on to Julian Assange – Australian publisher and journalist, best known as the editor-in-chief of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Assange then released the documents to several newspapers and published them on Wikileaks. 

The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. Manning was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses and 
sentenced to 35 years in prison [5].

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Last on the list is Edward Snowden, the latest whistleblower to alert the American people to conspiracy in a high-level organization. 

On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong, where in early June he met with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, releasing numerous NSA documents to them [14]. 

On June 9, four days after the first NSA program was exposed by the press, Snowden revealed his identity in a video filmed by Poitras and published by The Guardian. On June 14, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property – punishable by up to 30 years in prison [14].

The U.S. Department of State revoked his passport on June 22. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Snowden had by then spent a couple of days in the Russian consulate in Hong Kong to declare his intention of flying to Latin America via Moscow [14].

On June 23, ticketed for onward travel via Havana, Snowden flew to Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport. After he arrived, Kommersant reported Havana asked Russian authorities not to let him on the plane. Fidel Castro denied the story, calling it a lie [14].

ABC News reported that Snowden “could not enter Russia because he did not have a Russian visa and he could not travel to safe haven opportunities in Latin America because the United States had canceled his passport.” [14]

Snowden remained stranded in the airport transit zone for 39 days, during which time he applied for asylum in 21 countries. On August 1, Russian authorities granted him a one-year temporary renewable asylum [14]. 

Snowden's leaked documents uncovered the existence of numerous global surveillance programs, many of them run by the NSA and the Five Eyes with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments [14]. 

 Mr. Snowden is now living in Russia, on the run from American charges of espionage and theft, and he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. Mr. Snowden is currently charged in a criminal complaint with two violations of the Espionage Act involving unauthorized communication of classified information, and a charge of theft of government property [15]. 

Those three charges carry prison sentences of 10 years each, and when the case is presented to a grand jury for indictment, the government is virtually certain to add more charges, probably adding up to a life sentence that Mr. Snowden is trying to avoid [15]. 

More important, Mr. Snowden told The Washington Post earlier this month that he did report his misgivings to two superiors at the agency, showing them the volume of data collected by the N.S.A., and that they took no action. (The N.S.A. says there is no evidence of this.) That’s almost certainly because the agency and its leaders don’t consider these collection programs to be an abuse and would never have acted on Mr. Snowden’s concerns [15].

The exact size of Snowden's disclosure is unknown, but the following estimates have been put up by various government officials: 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files, according to Australian officials; at least 58,000 British intelligence files, according to British officials; and roughly 1.7 million U.S. intelligence files, according to U.S. officials [14].

On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, and two counts of violating the U.S.' 1917 Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.” Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The charge was initially secret and was unsealed a week later [14]. 

Sources:

1. http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-whistle-blowers.php 
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
3. https://www.consumerdebtassociation.com/whistle-blowers.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Marven
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers
6. http://warisacrime.org/content/whistleblowing-and-how-get-more-it
7. http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/09/war-is-a-racket-major-general-smedley-butler-the-original-whistleblower-2761218.html
8. http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/04302014-whistleblower-peter-buxtun-and-tuskegee-syphilis-study
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=16109050
10. http://articles.philly.com/2008-12-23/news/25244976_1_nixon-tapes-fbi-agents-deep-throat
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt
12. http://silentwhistleblower.com/whistleblower-jeffrey-wigand/
13. http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/coleen-rowley
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
15. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/opinion/edward-snowden-whistle-blower.html