The Sad Fate of America’s Whistleblowers
History may smile on these guardians of the public trust; but during
their lifetimes, they remain outcasts.
By John Kiriakou
October 17, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Other
Words" - What is it about whistleblowers
that the powers that be can’t stand?When I
blew the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program, I was derided
in many quarters as a traitor. My detractors in the government
attacked me for violating my secrecy agreement, even as they ignored
the oath we’d all taken to protect and defend the Constitution.
All of this happened despite the fact that the
torture I helped expose is illegal in the United States.
Torture also violates a number of international laws and treaties to
which our country is signatory — some of which the United States
itself was the driving force in drafting.
I was charged with three counts of espionage, all
of which were eventually dropped when I took a plea to a lesser
count. I had to choose between spending up to 30 months in prison
and rolling the dice to risk a 45-year sentence. With five kids, and
three of them under the age of 10, I took the plea.
Tom Drake — the NSA whistleblower who went through
the agency’s chain of command to report its illegal program to spy
on American citizens — was thanked for his honesty and hard work by
being
charged with 10 felonies, including five counts of espionage.
The government eventually dropped the charges, but not before Drake
had suffered terrible financial, professional, and personal
distress.
This is an ongoing theme, especially in
government.
Chelsea Manning is serving 35 years in prison for
her disclosure of State Department and military cable traffic
showing American military crimes in Iraq and beyond. And Edward
Snowden, who told Americans about the extent to which our government
is spying on us, faces life in prison if he ever returns to the
country.
The list goes on and on.
Baltimore Police Department whistleblower Joe
Crystal knew what he was getting into when he
reported an incident of police brutality to his superiors after
witnessing two colleagues brutally beat a suspect. Crystal
immediately became known as a “rat cop” and a “snitch.”
He finally resigned from the department after
receiving credible death threats.
It’s not just government employees either.
Whistleblowers first brought attention to wrongdoing at Enron,
Lehman Brothers, Stanford International Bank, and elsewhere.
And what’s their reward? Across the board,
whistleblowers are investigated, harassed, fired, and in some cases
prosecuted.
That’s the conclusion of author
Eyal Press, whose book Beautiful Souls: The Courage and
Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times documents
the struggles of whistleblowers throughout history. Press’s
whistleblowers never recover financially or professionally from
their actions. History seems to smile on them, but during their
lifetimes they remain outcasts.
This is a tragedy. Blowing the whistle on
wrongdoing should be the norm, not the exception.
I recently visited Greece to help the government
there draft a whistleblower protection law. The Greek word for
“whistleblower” translates as “guardian of the public trust.” I wish
our own government’s treatment of whistleblowers could reflect that
understanding.
Yet even legal guarantees of protection from
prosecution and persecution aren’t enough — especially if, as in the
case of existing law, national security employees are exempt from
these safeguards.
Instead, society must start seeing things
differently. Like the Greeks, all of us need to start treating
whistleblowers as guardians, not traitors. And if we value what
freedoms we have left, we should demand that our government do the
same.
OtherWords columnist John Kiriakou is an
associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He’s a
former CIA counterterrorism officer and senior investigator for
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
OtherWords.org.