Primary Source: American History’s Famous Whistle-blowers
The grand American tradition goes back to the Revolution.
The United States is currently wrapped up in the revelation of a whistle-blower’s complaint about President Donald Trump and his call to Ukraine. While the grievance is new, the process of blowing the whistle on wrongdoers and misdeeds goes back to the founding of the country, to the first whistle-blower protection act passed in 1778:
That it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other inhabitants thereof, to give the earliest information to Congress or any other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states, which may come to their knowledge.
The law has been updated multiple times and invoked many more times than that, often at great personal risk to the person calling out the wrong. While the Trump episode plays itself out in the form of an impeachment inquiry, we explore some of American history’s famous whistle-blowing episodes.
A CIA agent blows the whistle on President Trump’s call to Ukraine (2019).
On July 25, 2019, President Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump congratulated Zelenskyy on his recent electoral win, then asked him to do a favor and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, for corrupt dealings in Ukraine. Some White House officials who listened in on the call became disturbed by the conversation. They reported it to a CIA officer, who then contacted White House lawyers. When the whistle-blower, who is still anonymous, felt that the Department of Justice didn’t take his complaint seriously, he wrote a formal complaint to Congress.
Dear Chairman Burr and Chairman Schiff:
I am reporting an “urgent concern” in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). . . .
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well. . . .
Early in the morning of 25 July, the President spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I do not know which side initiated the call. This was the first publicly acknowledged call between the two leaders since a brief congratulatory call after Mr. Zelenskyy won the presidency on 21 April.
Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:
— initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden;
— assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016; and
— meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem. . . .
In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to “lock down” all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced — as is customary — by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.
A biochemist testifies about tobacco companies misleading the public (1996).
Biochemist Dr. Jeffrey Wigand was hired by the Brown & Williamson tobacco company to be their vice president of research and development. When he began work on a safer cigarette, however, he ran into roadblocks from management. In 1996 he appeared on 60 Minutes and blew the whistle on the company, claiming it intentionally added carcinogenic additives into its tobacco products to increase the effect of nicotine.
In a leaked 1995 lawsuit deposition, Wigand was asked about a 1989 meeting in which scientists discussed the creation of a safer cigarette. The minutes from that meeting made it to Brown & Williamson Chairman Thomas Sandefur.
Q: [A]s a result of the meeting that you described, was there any change made in the minutes of the meeting in British Columbia?
Wigand: Yes. . . .
Q: And what did they eliminate, the stuff that said cigarettes were harmful?
Wigand: They eliminated all reference to anything that could be discovered during any kind of liability action in reference to a safer cigarette. Statements were made that anything that alludes to a safer cigarette clearly indicates that other cigarettes are unsafe, and it, furthermore, would acknowledge that nicotine is addictive. . . .
Wigand was then asked if Brown & Williamson management knew that nicotine was addictive.
Q: [W]ere you in the presence of Mr. Sandefur, the president of the company, when he voiced the opinion and belief that nicotine was addictive?
Wigand: Yes.
Q: And did he express that view on numerous occasions?
Wigand: Frequently.
Q: I’m going to show you, sir, Mr. Sandefur’s testimony under oath before the Congress of the United States when he was sworn to tell the truth. . . . He said, “I do not believe that nicotine is addictive.” Do you see that?
Wigand: Yes I do.
Q: Is that the opposite, contrary to what he has expressed to you numerous times?
Wigand: That is correct. . . .
Q: I believe you have seen this document in the American Medical Association journal. It was also an exhibit to Dr. Kessler’s testimony before Congress. Are you familiar with that testimony?
Wigand: Yes, I am. . . .
Q: Will you read that into the record, sir?
Wigand: “We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the release of stress mechanisms.” . . .
Q: [D]id Mr. Sandefur have a position that if science affected sales, the science would take the back door?
Wigand: Yes.
Q: Did he express that to you?
Wigand: Several times.
Q: Indeed, sir, was that the policy of Brown & Williamson while you were there so far as you observed it?
Wigand: Yes.
Q: And, sir, did you make complaints about that particular type of policy, that is sales over safety?
Wigand: I had a number of discussions with Mr. Sandefur, particularly over safety issues. I felt that the additives as they were reviewed and the policy within B&W did not adequately use what I considered the proper duty of care on a scientific level. It was inconsistent with what was being done overseas . . . as well as what I knew was going on in the other industries.
A chemical technician exposes the dangers of a nuclear facility (1974).
Karen Silkwood was hired in 1972 as a chemical technician at Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site plant in Oklahoma. Soon after, she joined the union and began investigating health and safety issues at the company. She found many: exposure to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment, improper storage of plutonium samples, and lack of sufficient shower facilities. In 1974 she appeared before the Atomic Energy Commission to testify about her findings.
Later in the year, as she was driving to meet with a New York Times reporter, she crashed her car and was killed, in what many believe was under suspicious circumstances.
On July 23, 1974, an employee became contaminated. As he was led out, contamination was tracked through the facility. The action of the health physics technician and the operator indicated a lack of training for both . . .
Regular production is conducted in contaminated areas using respirators twelve hours/day up to ten days without cleanup. As in pellet Manufacturing, room 124, for the last one and a half years. Source of contamination is not identified. Masks required or not depends on the continuous air monitor results. When the continuous air monitor alarms, the only action is to press the reset button . . .
There is no routine survey of respirators. Individuals decide when masks need cleaning and place them at a station for health physics to wash. There is no system for routine replacement of filter cartridges. It is believed that cartridges are reused . . .
A vacuum cleaner was allowed to ‘sit’ for about fourteen days in a work area. It was decontaminated only when a worker complained. The worker was instructed to clean it and was contaminated because she had not used proper protection and not been told to do so. The vacuum cleaner was sufficiently contaminated to cause the area to be designated as requiring respiratory protection . . .
Waste jugs are filled in excess of company procedures. After being half filled, instead of absorbent material, more waste is added . . .Plutonium samples are stored in desk drawers. Some were stored on a shelf for a period of two years . . .
There are only two shower heads for 75 workers per shift. There is no company rule for taking showers and no time is provided for taking showers . . .There is no one to repair instruments that become inoperable during non-day shift.
A government analyst releases sensitive Vietnam War documents to the New York Times (1971).
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States was embroiled in its second decade of war in Vietnam, and support for the war was flagging. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in 1967, requested a highly classified study about the U.S.’s political and military involvement there. The report was huge. Numbering over 7,000 pages, it drew on secret material from the Department of Defense, the State Department and the CIA.
Daniel Ellsberg worked on the report but was disturbed by the information he found, namely, that the U.S. was more involved in Vietnam than it told the public, which believed the U.S. was winning the war. He sent the report to the New York Times, which published portions of it in 1971. In the following 1964 memo included in what is now called the Pentagon Papers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advocate for expanding the war beyond Vietnam and into Southeast Asia in general.
For his role in leaking to documents, Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy, espionage and stealing government property, but the charges were dropped amid the activities of the Watergate scandal.
Memorandum from Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, Jan. 22, 1964, “Vietnam and Southeast Asia.”
National Security Action Memorandum № 273 makes clear the resolve of the President to ensure victory over the externally directed and supported communist insurgency in South Vietnam. In order to achieve that victory, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are of the opinion that the United States must be prepared to put aside many of the self-imposed restrictions which now limit our efforts, and to undertake bolder actions which may embody greater risks. . . .
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are convinced that, in keeping with the guidance in NSAM 273, the United States must make plain to the enemy our determination to see the Vietnam campaign through to a favorable conclusion. To do this, we must prepare for whatever level of activity may be required and, being prepared, must then proceed to take actions as necessary to achieve our purposes surely and promptly.
Our considerations, furthermore, cannot be confined entirely to South Vietnam. Our experience in the war thus far leads us to conclude that, in this respect, we are not to now giving sufficient attention to the broader area problems of Southeast Asia. The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that our position in Cambodia, our attitude toward Laos, our actions in Thailand, and our great effort in South Vietnam do not comprise a compatible and integrated US policy for Southeast Asia. US objectives in Southeast Asia cannot be achieved by either economic, political, or military measures alone. All three fields must be integrated into a single, broad US program for Southeast Asia. The measures recommended in this memorandum are a partial contribution to such a program. . . .
A reversal of attitude and the adoption of a more aggressive program would enhance greatly our ability to control the degree to which escalation will occur.
A reporter sneaks into an insane asylum, then reports what he found (1872).
For much of the 1800s, the Bloomingdale Asylum in New York City was a widely admired institution considered at the forefront of modern treatment for the insane. Its focus was on the re-socialization of patients through kindness, exercise, entertainment and a calm, peaceful environment. The experience, by design, was much like a retreat. By the 1850s, however, the luster was fading and troublesome stories began leaking to the public, many of which centered around insanity diagnoses and patients being held against their will.
In an effort to observe what was really happening, a New York Tribune reporter Julius Chambers had himself admitted to the asylum. He covertly took notes during his ten-day stay, then published a series of exposés about Bloomingdale’s conditions and practices. Amid the outcry, a special commission investigated the findings and eventually exonerated the hospital, though the ensuing negative press ultimately led the director of the asylum to resign.
The apartment was most uninviting. The cell was not more than eight feet in width by ten in length, and absolutely without furniture, save a cot of straw. It was only faintly illuminated by the dull light from the hall. The bleak walls and the grating on the windows gave the cheerless quarters the repulsiveness of the dreariest of prisons. . . . The odor of chloride of lime — which had been mingled with the water — was so strong in the cell as to make the quarters almost untenable, and to give the reporter a violent headache. The attendant, Townsend, stood by and listened with perfect indifference to the appeal for a room which did not smell so frightfully. . . .
An old man, gray, palsied, and said to be blind, confined in the wing of the building, and after all had finished [eating], brought into the room and fed, was most barbarously treated on August 17. The attendant, who was either Carr or Townsend, the reporter is not certain which, hurried the old man across the hall and into the door; but upon his stopping as if not certain what to do, he was rudely thrust backward into a chair, and, before he had recovered from the shock which a fall of that kind would give to a man of his infirmity, he was struck by the attendant with his open hand first on one side and then on the other of his face. The blows were inflicted with every evidence of passion being perhaps (although the reporter could not distinguish the words of the old man) that the patient had attempted to protest against the rudeness to an infirm old man. . . .
A poor idiot who lives in Hall XIII, but dines in the common room of the two halls and is known by the appellation of “Baby,” was repeatedly ill treated. He appears not to be possessed of sufficient mental power to know when to come to dinner or how to conduct himself. . . . He was generally urged forward by Loenecker, and on one occasion, when “Baby” hesitated more than usual, this attendant arose, and, seizing the utterly absent minded boy by the shoulder, literally threw him across the dining room, past the end of the table, and bumped him down on his bench. The poor fellow uttered not a word of remonstrance, and the attendant at the other end of the table laughed boisterously at his bewilderment. As the attendant in charge of this “Baby” evidently understood that his idiocy was ascribable to his vicious practices, he appeared determined to communicate the facts to everyone in the room, through his filthy and obscene jokes, oft repeated, and apparently always relished by his companions of the same hall.
Revolutionary soldiers report on their superior during wartime (1777).
The tradition of whistle-blowing in the United States is as old as the founding of the country. In 1777, less than a year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, ten colonial sailors and marines met to write a formal complaint against the commander of the Continental Navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins. Among their allegations was torture: that he “treated [British] prisoners in the most inhuman and barbarous manner,” and corruption: that “no Man yet ever existed who could not be bought with money.”
The Continental Congress suspended Hopkins, but Hopkins fought back, filing a libel lawsuit against the whistle-blowers. Two were jailed and pleaded for their freedom, claiming they had been “arrested for doing what they then believed and still believe was nothing but their duty.”
Soon after, Congress passed America’s first whistle-blower protection law. The whistle-blowers were eventually released from jail.
On board the Ship Warren
[Providence] Feby 11th 1777.Much Respected Sr
We the Subscribers, who belong to the Ship warren, voluntarily engaged in the marine Service; we are friends to constitutional liberty; we love America; we are willing to give up every thing that is dear, and, if necessary, Sacrifice life itself in our ravish’d, bleeding, injur’d country’s cause; but Sr we are very unwilling that our own lives, and that the continental Ships, which might be of Service to the independent States of America, Should be either ignorantly, or designedly Sufficient reason of complaint against our commanders: we are not influenced by prejudice, our own consciences and the regard which we have for our country oblige us to complain; and we have concluded, not having a more convenient opportunity, to take this method of presenting to your Superior Judgement Several accusations against them which can be easily and Sufficiently attested, Sincerely and humbly asking your advice in our present perplexed unhappy Situation.
Accusations against commodore Hopkins
First, he is a man that ridecules religion, and Seemes very apparently to despise every virtue: he does not hesitate to blaspheme and take the name of God in vain: in this respect he Sets his officers and men a most irreligious and impious example, and when on board, is oftener guilty of profane Swearing than any Jack Tar that belongs to the Ship.
Secondly, he allowes himself to Speak publickly in the most profane and disrespectful manner concerning the continental congress, the guardians of our rights and priviledges, calling them a pack of damn’d fools, ignorant fellows, lawyers clarks &c, a company of men wholly unacquainted with mankind, and perfectly unacquainted with their business, and that if their measures were complied with the country would be undone this he asserted not only among our own folks, but also in the presence of two captains, who were prisoners, on their passage to new port in order to be exchanged.
Thirdly, he is a man, if possessed of any principles at all, possessed of the most dangerous principles conceivable, especially when we consider his Station, for he positively declares that all mankind are exactly alike: that no Man yet ever existed who could not be bought with money; who could not be hired with money to do any action whatsoever: this he also asserted in the presence of the above mentioned prisoners, for what reason we can’t determine, unless he meant to inform Sr peter Parker that he wanted an opportunity in order to Sell himself.
Fourthly, he has treated prisoners in the most inhuman and barbarous manner.
Fifthly when a british frigate, a few days ago, was on ground, either for the want of wisdom, or designedly he conducted in a very blamable manner indeed —
Sixthly, he is an effectual obsticle to the fleets being properly maned, and perhaps, on that very account, in his present Station, does his country more damage than he possibly could do in any other capacity.
Many more very criminal things might be alledged and easily proved but the present opportunity will not Suffer us to be very particular.
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