If you haven't already, I highly recommend watching this
documentary and others like it. The film is about former government employees who blew the whistle on government malfeasance.
Taken from
this website, here are the excerpts of the individuals featured in the film:
Daniel Ellsberg -
Whistleblower, Former Official of the State and Defense Departments
Daniel Ellsberg worked as a United States military analyst and is most widely recognized for his role of releasing "The Pentagon Papers", a Top Secret study of decisions made and carried out during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg began work on the Pentagon papers in 1967, with Top Secret clearance from his earlier work at the RAND Corporation and as an official of the Defense and State Departments. The classified analysis and documents in the 7000-page study revealed that the Johnson Administration deceived the Congress and the general public by grossly overestimating its ability to win the Vietnam War, misrepresenting its reasons for escalating it, and underestimating the vast casualties that would result from it. In 1969 Ellsberg copied the entire study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1971, he gave most of it to the New York Times, and when its publication was enjoined (for the first time in U.S. history) he furnished it to eighteen other papers while being hunted by the FBI. The Supreme Court ruled against the injunctions, but Ellsberg faced twelve felony charges for a possible sentence of 115 years before his case was dismissed on grounds of criminal governmental misconduct against him by the White House. Ellsberg remains politically active and stands by the notion that the President, and more largely the government, lies to the public on a daily basis and that unauthorized disclosures are vital to democracy.. Today he is a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and appears regularly in the media public political forums.
Michael DeKort -
Whistleblower, Project Manager
Michael DeKort was a Lockheed Martin project manager who posted a whistleblowing video on Youtube.com after he objected to what he felt were failure to meet contractual requirements of C4I systems onboard United States Coast Guard’s 123 Coast Guard Cutter, manufactured for the Deepwater program. Before speaking publically through his YouTube video, DeKort brought these issues to the attention of immediate management and then to higher up executives, including the CEO of Lockheed Martin and the Board of Directors. After his pressing concerns were continually ignored for two years, he was discharged from Lockheed Martin and as a result, DeKort went public with his YouTube account in 2006. DeKort’s video gained a wide amount of exposure and it eventually led to a congressional hearing on the entire Deepwater project. As a result, the boats were taken out of service, engineer changes were made, and a settlement was reached regarding the electronic issues. The U.S. Coast Guard took over the program and the DOJ is aggressively pursuing the contractors responsible for the buckled hulls. In 2008, DeKort received the Carl Barus Award for Outstanding Service in the Public Interest.
Thomas Drake -
Whistleblower, Former Senior Executive of the National Security Agency
A former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake faced the gravest charges brought against an American citizen: prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917 which targeted him for exposing waste, fraud and abuse and illegality within the government as a whistleblower. He faced upwards of 35 years in prison. He was a key material witness for two 9/11 Congressional investigations and a Department of Defense Inspector General audit of NSA. Drake was one of several sources for articles written by Siobhan Gorman of the Baltimore Sun, which detailed a $1.2 billion boondoggle program called Trailblazer that the NSA wanted to create as a means of sifting through the vast electronic communications of the Digital Age for national security threats and an alternative program called Thinthread that not only provided superior intelligence, but also designed to fundamentally protect the 4th Amendment rights of US Persons under the Constitution. Drake said the Trailblazer program was inefficient, wasted billions in taxpayer dollars, was full of contractor pork and simply fraudulent compared to the highly innovative and ingenious Thinthread program that only cost $3 million to develop and was ready for use before 9/11. In addition, Drake also exposed the Stellar Wind program, a a super secret warrantless surveillance program approved by the White House that violated Americans’ privacy rights. Drake was never accused of spying but was accused of having allegedly classified documents in his basement for the purpose of disclosure. In a major embarrassment for the Department of Justice, the criminal case against him collapsed in June of 2011 on the eve of his public trial in a minor misdemeanor plea deal, where the government dropped all 10 felony counts against him. Drake was awarded the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize in 2011 and the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award with Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project.
Franz Gayl -
Whistleblower, Deputy Branch Head for the Space and Information Operations Integration Branch
While working at the Pentagon as a science adviser for the Marine Corps, Gayl - himself a Marine - volunteered to deploy to Iraq. Upon his return he alerted the office of the Secretary of Defense, and later the Congress and the media, to critical equipment shortages. These included Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), ground and air battlefield surveillance systems, and 'directed energy' non-lethal weapons. Gayl's public outcry exposed the fact that the Corps had failed to provide Marines in Iraq with live saving technologies. Most notable was the Corps' failure to fulfill a request for the mass fielding of MRAPs, that effectively protect troops against the improvised explosive devices that caused over 60% of causalities in Iraq. Gayl maintained that had MRAPs been available to troops when they were requested countless deaths and casualties could have prevented. In fact former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accredited MRAPs with saving "thousands of lives," and VP Biden has acknowledged Gayl's central role in raising the visibility of their need through his whistleblowing. Yet, Gayl has been the target of years of retaliatory investigations and workplace harassment, including the elimination of meaningful duties and the extended suspension of his security clearances.
Thomas Tamm -
Criminal Defense Litigation Attorney
During his first presidential campaign, Obama had promised to support whistleblowers and strengthen whistleblower protection. Shortly into his presidency, however, Obama began to indict whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.
In 26 months, Obama had prosecuted more military and civilian information leakers than every other president before him combined.
In 2014 Obama signed a bill into law that expanded protection for whistleblowers who
properly blow the whistle; in other words, only individuals who go through their agency's internal channels or to Congress are provided this protection.
I do not advocate leaking any and all intelligence, as I do believe some information, in the interest of our welfare and national security, is best left secret; however, when our constitutional rights are impinged and impeded through programs like PRISM (NSA surveillance program), then the public ought to know. We even see cases of whistleblowers being indicted for pointing out equipment failure (see Franz Gayl and Michael DeKort).
Whistleblowers who go to the media after first going through the proper channels should not be reprimanded but instead rewarded. Of course this should not be taken as a sweeping statement but instead as a case-by-case sentiment.
