eoto #3 response blog

Whistleblowers

What’s a Whistleblower?

Defined by the National Whistleblower Center, a whistleblower is “someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, or dangers to public health and safety to someone who is in the position to rectify the wrongdoing.” A whistleblower is not always someone who is outside of the industry that is being caught for wrong-doing, though. Quite often, the whistleblower in a situation is someone who works for the same company as the person at fault. They are seeing within operations that something is not right and they take a stand to make sure it does not continue in their workplace. 

Examples of Whistleblowers

There are incredible amounts of cases of whistleblowers, but there are a few that are absolute standouts. One of those examples took place in 2002. Colleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent, found new details around the 9/11 tragedy. She was able to uncover information that showed FBI's D.C. Headquarters was given evidence and insight about the bombers’ real intentions that day. Actually, there was evidence given approximately 30 days before the tragedy occurred. This was plenty of time to change the course of action, but instead it was covered up. Rowley spoke in court on multiple occasions with her story and evidence to back it up, and in the end, change was made because of her. The FBI took the steps to change their protocol on the “intelligence agencies” of their group. 

Another example took place in 1996. Linda Tripp was the whistleblower in this case. She had previously worked with the government and while working would keep her phone recording each conversation she had with intern, Monica Lewinsky. In these phone conversations, it was revealed by Lewinsky that she was having relations with the president at the time, Bill Clinton. Lewinsky was a very young lady and there were many different layers of problems in this case. The evidence brought by this whistleblower led to the impeachment of president Clinton. 

Conclusion

Whistleblowers are very important for getting information that is undercover. The term, at first, comes across as if it would be a negative meaning, but the reality is there are so many cases that never would have been uncovered without them.