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Whistleblowers Hall of Fame / Infamy |
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Written by Administrator
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Sunday, 11 September 2005 02:42 |
Hall of Fame
•Americans:
Ralph Nader: Became one of America's earliest and most effective whistleblowers. In 1965, Nader published his book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. Unsafe at Any Speed contained charges against General Motors, and Nader followed up on his accusations by testifying before Ribicoff's Senate committee. [more]
Cynthia Cooper: discovered shady financial practices of WorldCom Inc. (now MCI) in 2002 [more]
Coleen Rowley: chief legal adviser of the FBI in Minneapolis, Rowley blew the whistle on pre-9/11 intelligence failures in a 13-page memo leaked to the media [more]
Sherron Watkins: considered by many to be the whistleblower who helped to uncover the Enron scandal in 2001/2002 [more] [counterpoint]
Jeffrey Wigand: a cigarette executive whose allegations that manufacturers were lying about the hazards of smoking have led to billion dollar lawsuits that continue to pummel the industry. (The Insider) [more]
Erin Brockovitch: a file clerk in a small law firm. When she discovers a cover-up involving contaminated water, she gets the intimidated townsfolk to stand up for themselves and their town. [more]
W. Mark Felt: (aka Deep Throat) the enigmatic former No.2 man in the FBI who helped end the presidency of Richard Nixon. [more]
•Canadians:
Gordon McAdams: 2005, a provincial parks employee was fired for taking actions to uphold the BB Parks Act that Bill Barisoff, Minister of Water, Land and Air, had violated. Bill Barisoff was in turn fired, becoming a Liberal political party backbencher. His Ministry was subsequently renamed the BC Ministry of the Environment. [more]
Allan Cutler: For 20 years, Allan Cutler, a veteran federal civil servant, played by the rules and believed in what he was doing. Then in 1994 he found himself with a new boss, a man named Chuck Guite. And in a matter of a year-and-a-half, he also found himself slapped with a new title – that of a whistleblower. Over a four-year period, $100 million in taxpayers' money had been squandered through the ill-conceived federal sponsorship program. The political fallout from this expose' continues to hamstring the ruling Liberal Party of Canada and Government functionality. [more]
Barry Armstrong: A former army major who blew the whistle in 1993 on Canadian troops' torture – murder of a Somali teenager, ignited a national enquiry whose ramifications are still rattling the military and the Liberal Government [more]
Pierre Blais: was fired by the federal government in 1989 for speaking out about the dangers of breast implants, sparked a worldwide movement that's now helping tens of thousands of disfigured women. [more]
A yet unknown Saskatchewan: who exposed fraudulent expense claims by Conservative cabinet ministers, resulted in party officials having been charged or convicted.
Sixteen cabinet ministers and party officials during Conservative premier Grant Devine's tenure (1982-91) were convicted of misusing government expense accounts for party or personal purposes. [more]
Hall of Infamy / Shame (Hapless whistleblowers):
Mordecai Vanunu: an Israeli nuclear technician gave information in October 05, 1986 to the London Sunday Times to alert the world about the dangers of Israeli's illicit nuclear arsenal, was tried in secret and sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason.
Christopher Boyce: Ex-CIA researcher Christopher Boyce was jailed for treason in the biggest American spy scandal for 40 years, is still confined to solitary confinement in Illinois. He was jailed for selling secrets to the Russians in the 1970s. As a malcontent, he claimed he did it because the US conspired to bring down the Australian Labor government of Gough Whitlam. [more]
Ariel Broas: In May 1996, one of the sailors on Maersk Dubai, who told Canadian authorities his ship's Taiwanese officers had murdered 3 Romanian stowaways by throwing them overboard, now fears for his own life. There is some concern that the story was concocted as a malicious plot against the ship's captain and as a ploy to gain refugee status within Canada. [more]
Christoph Meili: a night watchman who in 1997 exposed the shredding of Holocaust-era documents by a Swiss bank, received death threats. [more]
Preamble:
Countless cases of corruption and dangerous deceit are out there, waiting for someone to bring them to light. All it takes is courage, whether to blow the whistle or not. It's a tough choice. Real whistleblowers often put their careers in jeopardy when they uncover either illegal activity or unethical behavior. There is a strong onus on the individual; otherwise they become complicit in a crime.
Corporate deception, misrepresentation and failure to admit mistakes – particularly ones that endanger the public – need to be exposed in a timely manner.
Government officials using their office to line their own pockets, while pretending to serve the public is the most common and blatant form of deception that lends itself to a whistleblower expose.
Overview:
Americans have gone further than Canadians in backing whistleblowers. After their Civil War, an innovative US law called Qui Tam, has helped whistleblowers earn a total of $180 million, based on a formula that gives whistleblowers 15 % of the damages awarded to the Federal Government by companies who try to defraud it.
Since the 1968 My Lai massacre in which the US troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, the US army has had a whistleblowers hotline, unlike the Canadian military.
So what can Canada do keep whistleblowers from harm is straightforward: strengthen civil laws that already protect people against wrongful dismissal, so people aren't in fear of losing their jobs.
True whistleblowers, those willing to risk their careers for the public good, often unleash the biggest news stories of the year. (The foregoing differs wildly from "paid whistleblowers also known as investigative journalists"). The risks are high, however, for rising out of anonymity and blowing the whistle. They often get fired. Their reputations are usually attacked. Small wonder that "Deep Throat" required guile and a strategy to blow the whistle on Richard Nixon's Watergate break-in of the Democratic headquarters.
There are fewer terms that journalists and the public use more loosely than whistleblower. We often make no distinction between real whistle blowing heroes and those just bent on personal vendettas, or a political axe to grind. Journalists love a whistleblower. The opportunity to publish hard evidence that an institution is either breaking the law or recklessly deceiving the public can bring about significant good, not to mention journalistic awards.
Some of the more successful whistleblowers are found in the Whistle-Blower Hall of Fame above.
Also within the hall of Fame Galleries are examples of those who did not fare well. It's awful what can happen to whistleblowers.
Solutions:
What should you do if you are feeling the moral pressure to blow the whistle? Ethicists caution that potential whistleblowers need not only guts, they need a strategy. Freedom to Care, an international ethics-at-work organization has given protection and advice to hundreds of whistleblowers, offers 3 tips for those thinking of leaping into the limelight. 1) all whistleblowing must be based on strong evidence 2) it should focus on bringing about necessary changes 3) it's more effective if it emerges from a co-ordinated group.
Contact: B0X 125, West Molesey, Surrey, England KT8 1YE www.freedomtocare.org
Email:
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Voicemail: 011+44 (0)20 8224 1022
Do you know of a whistleblower you would like to see in our Hall of Fame? If you would like to nominate someone, please submit their name and provide news clips or links of said whistleblower personalities with date, time and location with our submissions form, titled "HOF Nomination". |
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Last Updated on Monday, 19 January 2009 01:33 |
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Hall of Fame
