‘Citizens, Not Just Members of an Organization’

It’s hard to tell what’s gotten more deafening in D.C.: all the whistleblowing, or yelling going on about the whistleblowing.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that two U.S. senators are looking into an IRS employee’s allegations that a White House appointee tried to derail an audit of either President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence. And a sparring match that broke out over the weekend when President Donald Trump declared the whistleblower at the center of the ongoing impeachment investigation should be widely identified, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to make sure Trump doesn’t intimidate the whistleblower.

For a University of Maryland scholar of what motivates whistleblowers and the laws designed to protect them, that dispute is an interesting new chapter in a story as old as our country. But it could also give a false impression of what normally happens when someone decides they can’t ignore their conscience any longer, and exposes a perceived wrongdoing, said C. Fred Alford, a professor emeritus of government and politics. He spoke to Maryland Today yesterday about the past and future of whistleblowing.

What is your experience with whistleblowers?
The most important part was sitting in for about a year on a whistleblower support group sponsored by the Government Accountability Project. I also attended a whistleblower’s retreat in West Virginia, run by one of the whistleblowers. It was really quite different, listening to them interact and talk among themselves, than if they’d just been answering my questions.

What did you learn about them in general?
The common denominator is that they didn’t want to be whistleblowers, but that they couldn’t live with themselves if they didn’t do something. One woman put it this way: I wake up every day and take care of my family, then I was supposed to go to work and not care about other people’s families. It might be a bit surprising, considering the role of whistleblowers the last two years, but I also found they tended to be rather conservative, and perhaps a little naïve in the sense that they expected that the way the United States is supposed to work would be the way it really works.

How important is it to protect whistleblowers?
Extremely important, and the shame of it is that the laws don’t work that well. The first legal protection was actually passed by the Continental Congress, and the first major piece of legislation was in 1863, the False Claims Act. Companies were delivering sand in boxes that were supposed to be full of weapons, and the act had a provision that a whistleblower could receive a portion of the fine that resulted from their reporting wrongdoing. And I’m very familiar with the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. in fact, there are hundreds of laws protecting whistleblowers. But the fact is that organizations still get rid of whistleblowers—they find a way to fire them in a way that disconnects the removal from the act of whistleblowing.

What happens to people who choose to blow the whistle on their employers?
For people I’ve talked to, the average time between the whistleblowing and the firing is two years. The organization may transfer the whistleblower during that time, and file a series of false efficiency reports. People have had their offices moved to a closet. Organizations have long memories, and two years is an instant, but for someone with an advanced degree in electrical engineering, two years is an eternity to be addressing packages.

Is the president calling the very concept of whistleblower protections into question with his call to out the whistleblower?
Of course he is, but it’s not unique. The head of General Motors a number of years ago at a talk said, “They're not whistleblowers, they’re traitors.” Some people don’t even accept the concept that if you work for an organization, you’re not loyal to it. So it’s not unique, but Trump is just making it very visible now, and putting it on the front pages of newspapers.

The current case seems to be playing out very differently than those of Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning or Reality Winner, all of whom either fled or were sent to prison after disclosing disturbing information. Why is the current whistleblower protected?
Well, because Snowden violated the national security legislation and would have been thrown in jail, and he knew it. Unlike most whistleblowers, Snowden knew exactly what would happen to him. He took elaborate steps to protect himself. If you watch (the documentary) “Citizen Four,” you see this man was well-prepared. A lot of people did regard Snowden as a traitor. I've argued that maybe he was a traitor and maybe not, but definitely he was a whistleblower. Regarding Chelsea Manning, I don't even know that she was a whistleblower. It was a document dump. It's not quite the same thing.

Even though conservative media and some others have named a man many believe to be the whistleblower, the mainstream press has held off. Do the media have an obligation to protect his identity?
At some point, it probably becomes pointless to shield him. But let me tell you an odd thing—for most whistleblowers, they want nothing so much as publicity, because publicity is protection. At the whistleblower retreat I attended, everyone talked about a news crew that was coming, and when it didn’t show up, they were very disappointed. When I was doing research for my book (“Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power“), I had people sign the typical confidentiality agreement, and some wouldn’t sign it, because they said they wanted their story out. Publicity is salvation—it helps shield whistleblowers from further retaliation. So I’m a little hesitant just focusing on the Trump whistleblower.

How should people view whistleblowers?
We need to encourage more of it, because the people on the inside are the ones who see all the failures and the gaps in the system. Whistleblowers protect us—they’re the people who remember they’re citizens, not just members of an organization.