Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
Civics 101 host Nick Capodice joins Julia this week to talk about whistleblowers, what they are and if they have any protection after revealing information.
Transcript
Let's start with the basics. What is a governmental whistleblower?
Well simply put, a whistleblower is someone who reveals information to the public that is in the public's interest. This information exposes bad things happening in the government, things that are not good for our nation, like fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and most importantly, the violation of laws.
I want to make a very important distinction here. A whistleblower is not the same thing as a leaker. The government itself is the biggest leaker that there is. Leaks are often strategically used by the government to get something to make it look better. Or quite often, the government purposefully leaks something to test out an idea to see the public or the press's reaction before they actually do it.
But whistleblowers are people doing this without the government's approval, usually expressly against the wishes of the government. And what tends to happen after somebody blows a whistle is that the whistleblower takes the fall. Personal information about them is revealed. Possible reasons are given for why they blew the whistle in the first place. And what is not at the center of questions is the abuses that led them to blow the whistle in the first place.
A lot of government information is secret. What about when a whistleblower reveals something that could harm the country or threaten national security?
That is a line we have walked for years. If you blow a whistle that reveals classified information, you can get into a lot of trouble. The most famous whistleblower in U.S. history is a good example of this. In 1971, The New York Times started publishing pieces on multiple administrations from Truman all the way to Nixon and their involvement in Vietnam. These pieces were based on a report that we now refer to as the Pentagon Papers, which was information given to The [New York] Times by Daniel Ellsberg, who was a researcher at MIT.
Now, Ellsberg faced multiple felonies for releasing this, including the Espionage Act. The government tried to stop The [New York] Times from printing these pieces. In a landmark Supreme Court opinion, New York Times v. United States, the court ruled 6-3 the newspaper could not be stopped from printing something before they printed it. They just have to face punishment after they print it. Now, Ellsberg never went to prison, despite President Nixon's repeated attempts to put him there.
Whistleblowing feels a little daunting. It's not easy to reveal abuses or lawbreaking committed by a person or an agency that's a lot more powerful than you. Do whistleblowers have any protections?
It is daunting. Guests that we have talked to say that someone should think very carefully if they're going to blow a whistle. Whistleblowers rarely come out unscathed. They often face retribution, both publicly and behind the scenes afterwards.
Now, that said, there are some protections in place, most notably the Whistleblower Act of 1989, which says certain federal employees can blow the whistle on violations of the law, mismanagement, waste of funds, abuse of authority and when behavior poses a significant danger to public health or safety. But you still have to follow some specific rules about who you can report this information to. And it is so often the case, Julia, the person you're blowing the whistle on is the person you're supposed to report to. So I will wrap up today by saying whistleblowing is brave, it is necessary, but it is not without risk.
