Famous Whistle-Blowers
A whistle-blower is a person who reveals information about crimes and other misconduct to the public or authorities. Although protected by several laws, including the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, whistle-blowers often face risk of reprisal for their actions. Many stories about whistle-blowers have been made into movies and popular books.
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Deep Throat
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One of the most famous whistle-blowers in history was Mark Felt, also known as Deep Throat. Felt was the second-ranking person in the FBI during the Nixon administration and became the most important source to Bob Woodward in exposing the Watergate scandal. For many years, the identity of Deep Throat was a mystery. Finally in 2005, Felt put the speculation to rest by revealing his role in exposing the scandal. Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their book about Watergate in 1974, entitled "All the President's Men." An acclaimed film version was made in 1976.
Daniel Ellsberg
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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Daniel Ellsberg was a military analyst working for the RAND Corp. In 1971, he leaked to the press the Pentagon Papers, a Department of Defense analysis of government decision-making in the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers revealed that successive administrations had lied to the public about central issues. The revelations led to increased public opposition to the war.
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Linda Tripp
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Linda Tripp, who worked in the Department of Defense public affairs office, recorded conversations between herself and a friend, Monica Lewinsky, concerning Lewinsky's romantic entanglement with President Clinton. In January 1998, Tripp provided these tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, leading directly to the impeachment of President Clinton.
Joseph Wilson
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During the George W. Bush administration, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat, alleged that the Bush administration had exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, a primary rationale for the Iraq War. Shortly after Wilson's accusations appeared in a "New York Times" article, "Washington Post" columnist Robert Novak divulged that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative, effectively compromising her covert status. Wilson and Plame allege that Plame was "outed" by high-level Bush administration officials in retaliation for Wilson's editorial. The affair eventually resulted in the conviction of Lewis Libby, an aide to Vice President Cheney, on four felony counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice.
Notable Films About Whistle-Bblowers
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"Serpico," made in 1973, tells the story of police officer Frank Serpico, who revealed details about New York City police corruption in testimony before the Knapp Commission. In 1996, Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco industry executive, revealed on CBS' "60 Minutes" that tobacco companies intentionally manipulated tobacco products to increase nicotine content. His story was made into a 1999 film, "The Insider." The 2009 film "The Informant!" dramatizes the story of Mark Whitacre, an executive at Archer Daniels Midland, or ADM. Between 2002 and 2005, Whitacre worked with the FBI to expose price fixing of lysine, an animal feed additive, by ADM and its competitors. Whitacre, who was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, later became the focus of a separate investigation, and was eventually convicted of embezzling $9.5 million from ADM.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks
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Wikileaks is an international nonprofit organization involved in collecting and disseminating private and classified documents, with the intention of providing greater transparency and public access to information. Wikileaks, under the leadership of Julian Assange, receives documents from a wide range of international whistle-blowers. Although its primary mission is to shed light on the practices of oppressive regimes, Wikileaks also has published considerable content relating to the U.S. war on terror, including protocols of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, gunsight video of a U.S. Apache airstrike in 2007 that left Iraqis and journalists dead, 92,000 documents relating to the war in Afghanistan, and 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War.
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