This is a list of major whistleblowers from various countries, beginning in 1966 and continuing to the present. The individuals below brought attention to abuses of government and large corporations. Many of these whistleblowers were fired from their jobs in the process of shining light on their issue of concern. This list is not exhaustive.
| Year | Image | Name | Organization | Action | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1966 | Peter Buxtun | United States Public Health Service | Exposed the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. | |||
| 1971 | Daniel Ellsberg | US State Department | Along with Anthony Russo, leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret account of the Vietnam War and its pretexts to The New York Times, which revealed endemic practices of deception by previous administrations, and contributed to the erosion of public support for the war. | |||
| 1971-1981 | Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński | Polish Army (during the Warsaw pact) | He passed top secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA between 1971 and 1989. These documents included strategic plans regarding the use of nuclear weapons, technical data about the Warsaw Pact armies' tanks and missiles, the whereabouts of anti-aircraft bases in Poland and German Democratic Republic, the methods used to avoid spy satellite detection of Warsaw Pact armies' military hardware, plans for the imposition of martial law in Poland among others. On May 23, 1984 Kukliński was sentenced to death, in absentia, by a military court in Warsaw. After the fall of communism in Europe, the sentence was changed to 25 years. In 1995 the court cancelled the sentence. The conclusion followed that Kuklinski was "acting under special circumstances that warranted a higher need." | |||
| 1972 | W. Mark Felt | FBI | Known only as Deep Throat until 2005, he leaked information about United States President Richard Nixon's involvement in Watergate. The scandal would eventually lead to the resignation of the president, and prison terms for White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman and presidential adviser John Ehrlichman. | |||
| 1973 | Stanley Adams | Hoffmann-LaRoche | Discovered evidence of price fixing. He passed the evidence to the European Economic Community, who erroneously leaked Adams' name back to Hoffman-LaRoche. Adams was arrested for industrial espionage by the Swiss government and spent six months in jail. He fought for ten years to clear his name and receive compensation from the EEC. | |||
| 1973 | A. Ernest Fitzgerald | United States Department of Defense | U.S. Department of Defense auditor who was fired in 1973 by President Richard M. Nixon for exposing to Congress the tidal wave of cost overruns associated with Lockheed's C-5A cargo plane. After protracted litigation he was reinstated to the civil service and continued to report cost overruns and military contractor fraud, including discovery in the 1980s that the Air Force was being charged $400 for hammers and $600 for toilet seats. Fitzgerald retired from the Defense Department in 2006. | |||
| 1976 | Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh | General Electric | Nuclear power whistleblowers. On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh (known as the GE Three) "blew the whistle" on safety problems at nuclear power plants, and their action has been called "an exemplary instance of whistleblowing". The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant impact. They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from responsible positions in General Electric's nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal agencies, and overseas governments. The consulting firm they formed, MHB Technical Associates, was technical advisor for the movie, The China Syndrome. The three engineers participated in Congressional hearings which their disclosures precipitated. | |||
| 1984 | John Michael Gravitt | General Electric | Became the first individual in 40 years to file a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act after the statute had been weakened in 1943. Gravitt, a machinist foreman, sued GE for defrauding the United States Department of Defense when GE began falsely billing for work on the B1 Lancer bomber. Gravitt was laid off following his complaints to supervisors about the discrepancies. The case of Gravitt v. General Electric and Gravitt's deposition to Congress led to federal legislation bolstering the False Claims Act in 1986. The amended Act made it easier for whistle-blowers to collect damages. Gravitt's suit proceeded under the 1986 amendments and GE settled the case for a then record $3.5 million. | |||
| 1984 | Duncan Edmonds | Canadian Government | Canadian civil servant who reported to his chief, the top Canadian civil servant, that Minister of Defence Robert Coates had visited a West German strip club while on an official mission, with NATO documents in his possession, creating a security risk. Coates was asked to resign from Cabinet by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who also fired Edmonds and made him persona non grata in government circles. | |||
| 1986 | Mordechai Vanunu | Israeli nuclear weapons program | Revealed Israel's clandestine nuclear program to the British press. He spent seventeen and a half years in prison as a result, the first eleven of these in solitary confinement. After his release, sanctions were placed on him: among others, he was not allowed to leave Israel or speak to foreigners. The sanctions have been renewed every twelve months. At present, he is appealing a further six-month prison sentence imposed by an Israeli court for having spoken to foreigners and foreign press. | |||
| 1988 | Roland Gibeault | Genisco Technology | Gibeault filed a Qui Tam suit against defense subcontractor Genisco Technology Corp. after working undercover for 18 months with the FBI and DCIS to uncover the company's fraudulent test methods which were being used to pass key components off on the HARM missile. The FBI and DCIS case resulted in a plea-bargained $725,000.00 fine and three Genisco executives were sentenced to federal prison. Gibeault, who was fired from Genisco following revelation of whistleblowing, received $131,250 of the fine. In 1989, Gibeault and fellow employee Inge Maudal also filed qui tam actions against Genisco's parent company, Texas Instruments. | |||
| 1989 | Douglas D. Keeth | United Technologies Corporation | Filed a qui tam lawsuit against United Technologies Corporation where he held the title vice president, finance. Mr. Keeth and others had investigated billing practices at a corporate division named Sikorsky Aircraft. The group uncovered inflated progress billings, going back at least as far as 1982. The corporation offered Mr. Keeth a $1 million severance if he would keep quiet. Mr. Keeth did not accept that offer. In 1994, United Technologies paid $150 million to the government. Mr. Keeth was awarded a bounty of $22.5 million. | |||
| 1989 | William Schumer | Hughes Aircraft | Filed a lawsuit January, 1989 alleging fraud by Hughes Aircraft with respect to the B-2 bomber. In 1997 the Supreme Court held that the claim should have been dismissed as based on invalid retroactive legislation because the alleged fraud occurred in 1982-1984, before the 1986 amendments to the Fraudulent Claims Act which might have permitted it. The government did not support Schumer in his lawsuit as it had determined the alleged fraud had actually benefited the government by shifting costs from the cost-plus B-2 contract to the fixed-price F-15 contract. | |||
| 1989 | Myron Mehlman | Mobil | A toxicologist, he warned managers at Mobil that the company's gasoline that was being sold in Japan contained benzene in excess of 5 percent, and that levels needed to be reduced. Upon his return to the United States, he was fired. He later successfully sued the company. | |||
| 1992 | Mark Whitacre | Archer Daniels Midland | PhD scientist and former Divisional President with Archer Daniels Midland, who worked with the FBI as a secret informant, to blow the whistle on price-fixing cartel in his company. This story is featured in the film The Informant!. | |||
| Frederic Whitehurst | Federal Bureau of Investigation | A chemist at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation who was the FBI Laboratory's foremost expert on explosives residue in the 1990s, and became the first modern-day FBI whistleblower. He reported a lack of scientific standards and serious flaws in the FBI Lab, including in the first World Trade Center bombing cases and the Oklahoma City bombing case. Whitehurst's whistleblower disclosures triggered an overhaul of the FBI's crime lab following a report by the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General in 1997. Dr. Whitehust filed a federal lawsuit claiming whistleblower retaliation, and he reached a settlement with the FBI worth more than $1.16 million. Whitehurst now directs the FBI Oversight Project of the National Whistleblower Center. | ||||
| 1996 | Jeffrey Wigand | Brown & Williamson | Jeffrey Wigand had been recently fired from his position as vice president of research and development at tobacco company Brown & Williamson when, on February 4, 1996, he stated on the CBS news program 60 Minutes that the company intentionally manipulated the level of nicotine in cigarette smoke to addict smokers. Wigand claims that he was subsequently harassed and received anonymous death threats.
He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film The Insider directed by Michael Mann, which also stars Al Pacino and Christopher Plummer. |
|||
| 1996 | Allan Cutler | Canadian government | The first whistleblower on the Canadian "AdScam" or sponsorship scandal. Without legal protection, he was fired by the Canadian government. As the case developed, federal legislation was passed to protect future whistleblowers in the Canadian civil service. Several convictions have been recorded to date with the case, with proceedings still in progress. | |||
| 1996 | Gary Webb | CIA activities in Nicaragua | Webb's "Dark Alliance," a 20,000 word, three-part investigative series alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Webb never asserted that the CIA directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but he did document that the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of cocaine into the U.S. by the Contra personnel. In 2004, Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head, which the coroner's office judged a suicide. | |||
| 1998 | Alasdair Roberts | Canadian Department of Human Resources Development | Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage | |||
| 1998 | Norman Matloff | US immigration | Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage also worked at Area 51 | |||
| 1998 | Shiv Chopra | Canadian government | A microbiologist and activist who was involved in one of the first major whistleblowing incidents in the Canadian public service. | |||
| 1998 | Paul van Buitenen | European Commission | Accused European Commission members of corruption. (See Resignation of the Santer Commission). | |||
| 1998 | Rita Pal | UK Health System |
|
|||
| 1998 | Marc Hodler | International Olympic Committee | IOC member who blew the whistle on the Winter Olympic bid scandal for the 2002 Salt Lake City games. | |||
| 1999 | Harry Markopolos | Early whistleblower of suspected securities fraud by Bernard Madoff, tipping off the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) repeatedly. | ||||
| 2000 | Marsha Coleman-Adebayo | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | Marsha Coleman-Adebayo was a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of the Administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She blew the whistle on the EPA for racial and gender discrimination in violation of Civil Rights Act of 1964 which began after she was removed from her position in South Africa where her "job was to essentially help the South African government to work on issues that impact public health". In South Africa she brought to the attention of the EPA the dangerous conditions an American company was exposing African workers to who were mining vanadium, a dangerous substance. Her case eventually led to the passing of the No-FEAR Act in 2002. The No-FEAR Act "does several things to make federal agencies accountable for employee complaints. New hires must be informed of their rights against retaliation and discrimination for whistle-blowing within 90 days of joining a federal agency, and reminded again annually. Every two years, employees should have training about rights and remedies. All federal agencies must openly report on data including employee complaints, court cases, and the amount of money the agency was required to reimburse for violations, and Congress must review the reports biannually." |
|||
| 2001 | Pascal Diethelm (see French Wikipedia), Jean-Charles Rielle (see French Wikipedia) | Philip Morris USA and University of Geneva | Swiss tobacco control advocates and alumni from the University of Geneva who revealed the secret ties of Ragnar Rylander (see French Wikipedia), professor of environmental health, to the tobacco industry. In a public statement made in 2001, Pascal Diethelm and Jean-Charles Rielle accused Rylander of being "secretly employed by Philip Morris" and qualified of "scientific fraud without precedent" the concealment of his links with the tobacco industry for a period of 30 years, during which he publicly presented himself as an independent scientist, while obeying orders given by Philip Morris executives and lawyers, publishing articles and organizing symposia which denied or trivialized the toxicity of secondhand smoke. After a long trial, which went up to the supreme court of Switzerland, all accusations were found to be true. Following this judgment, the University of Geneva prohibited its members from soliciting research subsidies or direct or indirect consultancies with the tobacco industry. | |||
| 2001 | Jesselyn Radack | US Department of Justice | Radack, a DOJ lawyer, told Newsweek that the DOJ both lied about and destroyed documents regarding John Walker Lindh's interrogation and his parent's attempts to get him a lawyer. The DOJ retaliated by pushing her out of the Department, getting her fired from her next job, trying to get her law licence revoked, & other means. | |||
| 2002 | Kathryn Bolkovac | U.N. International Police Force monitor | Originally hired by the U.S. company DynCorp in the framework of a U.N.-related contract, she filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on 2 August 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor. DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking. Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. | |||
| 2002 | Cynthia Cooper | Worldcom | Exposed corporate financial scandal. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002. | |||
| 2002 | Sherron Watkins | Enron | Exposed corporate financial scandal. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002. | |||
| 2002 | Coleen Rowley | FBI | Outlined the FBI's slow action prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002. | |||
| 2002 | Marta Andreasen | European Commission | Argentine-born Spanish accountant, employed by the European Commission as Chief Accountant, and notable for raising concerns about fraud potential within EU, neglected by the Commission. | |||
| 2002 | Glenn Walp Steven L. Doran |
University of California Los Alamos National Laboratory |
Glenn Walp and Steven L. Doran were hired to investigate allegations of fraud at the University of California's Los Alamos National Laboratory. They were fired after they exposed breeches of security as well as fraud and mismanagement to the Department of Energy. Their investigation resulted in congressional hearings. Walpo received a $930,000 settlement from the University of California (UC) for wrongful termination. Doran accepted UC's offer of a position as security consultant. | |||
| 2003 | Diane Urquhart | Canadian Government | Major critic of the financial system in Canada | |||
| 2003 | Katharine Gun | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) | Leaked top-secret information to the press concerning alleged illegal activities by the United States and the United Kingdom in their push for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. | |||
| 2003 | Robert MacLean | Transportation Security Administration | U.S. Federal Air Marshal who exposed the TSA's agency-wide plan to remove Federal Air Marshals from nonstop, long distance flights for two months in order to avoid expenditures associated with air marshals lodging in hotels overnight. The plan was formulated in response to a budget shortfall due to overspending. The plan was formulated three days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an Advisory that warned the airline industry and law enforcement of a suicide hijacking plot in which terrorists would exploit U.S. immigration and airport security loopholes. After outrage from U.S. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, TSA's plan was rescinded before becoming operational. MacLean was fired after DHS discovered he disclosed the plan. | |||
| 2003 | Babak Pasdar | United States Government | Computer security consultant performing contract work for a major telecom carrier, revealed that a U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia had direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voicecalls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance. Pasdar executed a seven-page affidavit for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project in Washington. | |||
| 2003 | Vijay Bahadur Singh | Indian Ministry of Finance |
|
|||
| 2003 | Joseph Wilson | United States Government | Former U.S. ambassador, whose editorial in The New York Times, "What I Didn't Find In Africa", showed reasons for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. | |||
| 2003 | Richard Convertino | Department of Justice | Former federal prosecutor who obtained the first conviction of a defendant in a terrorism case post-9/11. After Convertino testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in September 2003 about the lack of Bush Administration support of anti-terrorism prosecutions post-9/11, Convertino alleges the Justice Department leaked information and violated a court order to publicly smear him in retaliation for his whistleblowing. Additionally, the Justice Department indicted Convertino for obstruction of justice and lying, which Convertino alleges is further whistleblower retaliation. | |||
| 2004 | Joe Darby | United States military police | First alerted the U.S. military command of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison, in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. | |||
| 2004 | Hans-Peter Martin | European Parliament | Accused Parliament members of invalid expense claims. | |||
| 2004 | Craig Murray | Foreign and Commonwealth Office | British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who opposed the Karimov regime's use of torture and its other violations of human rights, and British Government support for the use of torture. | |||
| 2005-2009 | Brad Birkenfeld | UBS | An American banker who formerly worked for UBS, Switzerland's largest bank. He is the first person exposed in what has become a multi-billion dollar international tax fraud scandal over Swiss private banking. His unprecedented, extensive and voluntary cooperation, and registering as an IRS whistleblower, Birkenfeld is the only U.S. citizen to be sentenced to jail
as a result of the scandal. |
|||
| 2005 | Shawn Carpenter | Sandia National Laboratories | Discovered that a sophisticated group of hackers were systematically penetrating hundreds of computer networks at major U.S. defense contractors, military installations and government agencies to access sensitive information. After informing his superiors at Sandia, he was directed not to share the information with anyone, because management cared only about Sandia's computers. He, however, went on to voluntarily work with the U.S. Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to address the problem. When Sandia discovered his actions, they terminated his employment and revoked his security clearance. His story was first reported in the September 5, 2005, issue of Time. On February 13, 2007, a New Mexico State Court awarded him $4.7 million in damages from Sandia Corporation for firing him. The jury found Sandia Corporation's handling of Mr. Carpenter's firing was "malicious, willful, reckless, wanton, fraudulent, or in bad faith." | |||
| 2006 | Gary J. Aguirre | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission | Exposed the SEC's failure to pursue investigation of John Mack in insider trading case involving Pequot Capital Management and Arthur J. Samberg. Aguirre was fired for complaining about special treatment for Mack, which prompted investigations by the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, culminating in a joint report vindicating Aguirre. Through his FOIA request filed to learn more about his wrongful termination, he uncovered the "smoking gun" that forced the SEC to re-open its case against Pequot, leading to a settlement of $28 million in 2009. A month later, the SEC settled Aguirre's lawsuit for wrongful termination, paying $755,000. Aguirre also won a lawsuit against the SEC filed in District Court. | |||
| 2007 | Justin Hopson | New Jersey State Police | During his first few days as a rookie New Jersey State Trooper, Justin Hopson witnessed an unlawful arrest and false report made by his training officer. When he refused to testify in support of the illegal arrest, his life veered into a dangerous journey of hazing and harassment. He uncovered evidence of a secret society within the State Police known as the Lords of Discipline, whose mission it was to keep fellow troopers in line. Trooper Hopson blew the whistle on the Lords of Discipline, which sparked the largest internal investigation in State Police history. Trooper Justin Hopson filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Camden. Hopson alleged in his complaint that he was hazed and harassed because he refused to falsify the facts underlying an illegal arrest of a citizen. The complaint alleges that after Hopson refused to support the arrest, he was physically assaulted, received threatening notes, and his car was vandalized while on duty. Over the years, several troopers have come forward about the Lords of Discipline. The secret group allegedly drove nails into colleagues' tires, damaged lockers, and wore Lords of Discipline incribed T-shirts. The NJ Attorney Generals Office conducted a two-year investigation into the group where seven troopers were suspended or reprimanded but the probe found "no organized group of troopers known as the Lords of Discipline." On October 1, 2007, the State of New Jersey agreed to a $400,000 settlement with Justin Hopson. A spokesman for the attorney general called the Hopson settlement "fair and reasonable." A book entitled, "Breaking the Blue Wall" was released in 2012 about Justin Hopson's high profile case. | |||
| 2008-2012 | Robert J. McCarthy | United States Government | Robert J. McCarthy served as Field Solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior and as General Counsel, U.S. Section, International Boundary and Water Commission. The Oklahoma Bar Association honored him in 2008 with its Fern Holland Courageous Lawyer Award for helping to expose the Interior Department’s mismanagement of $3.5 billion in Indian trust resources. In 2009, McCarthy disclosed massive fraud, waste and abuse by the IBWC, that imperiled the health and safety of millions of people on both sides of the U.S.- Mexico border and seriously damaged the border ecosystem. In both cases he was forced from government service, but continued to advocate for the victims of government abuse. In addition, his scholarly publications have revealed the fatal flaws in whistleblower protection laws, as well as the need for radical reform of specific government agencies. | |||
| 2009 | Wendell Potter | CIGNA | Former head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies. He testified against the HMO industry in the US Senate as a whistleblower. | |||
| 2009 | Michael Paul | California Administrative Office of the Courts |
|
|||
| Ingvar Bratt | Bofors | Engineer who revealed himself as the anonymous source in the Bofors Scandal about illegal weapon exports. An act that led to a new Swedish law concerning company secrets which commonly is referred to as Lex Bratt. | ||||
| Gerald W. Brown | Former firestop contractor and consultant who uncovered the Thermo-lag circuit integrity scandal and silicone foam scandals in US and Canadian nuclear power plants, which led to Congressional proceedings as well as Provincial proceedings in the Canadian Province of Ontario concerning deficiencies in passive fire protection. | |||||
| Walter DeNino | Student who questioned Eric Poehlman's integrity. | |||||
| Satyendra Dubey | National Highways Authority of India | Accused his employer NHAI of corruption in highway construction projects in India, in letter to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Assassinated on November 27, 2003. Enormous media coverage following his death may lead to Whistleblower Act in India. | ||||
| Sibel Edmonds | FBI | Former FBI translator naturalized American citizen of Turkish descent who was fired in 2002 by the FBI for attempting to report coverups of security issues, potential espionage, and incompetence. She has been gagged by the State Secrets Privilege in her efforts to go to court on these issues, including a rejection recently by the Supreme Court of the United States to hear her case without comment. She is now founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) that is looking to lobby congress and help other whistleblowers with legal and other forms of assistance. | ||||
| Marlene Garcia Esperat | Philippines Department of Agriculture | Former analytical chemist for the Philippines Department of Agriculture who became a journalist to expose departmental corruption, and was murdered in 2005. Her assailants later surrendered to police, and have testified that they were hired by officials in the Department of Agriculture. | ||||
| David Franklin | Parke-Davis | Exposed illegal promotion of the epilepsy drug Neurontin for un-approved uses while withholding evidence that the drug was not effective for these conditions. Parke-Davis's new owners Pfizer eventually pleaded guilty and paid criminal and civil fines of $430 million. The case had widespread effects including: establishing a new standards for pharmaceutical marketing practices; broadening the use of the False Claims Act to make fraudulent marketing claims criminal violations; exposing complicity and active participation in fraud by renowned physicians; and demonstrating how medical literature had been systematically adulterated by the pharmaceutical industry and its paid clinical consultants. Under the False Claims Act Dr Franklin receives $24.6m as part of the settlement agreement. | ||||
| David Graham | Discovered that the pain-reliever Vioxx increased the risk of cardiovascular problems, spoke out against the policies of the Food and Drug Administration, and succeeded in convincing the FDA to require large warning labels on Vioxx packaging. | |||||
| Bunnatine "Bunny" H. Greenhouse | Halliburton | Former chief civilian contracting officer for the United States Army Corps of Engineers who exposed illegality in the no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq by a Halliburton subsidiary. | ||||
| Joanna Gualtieri | Canadian Government | Canadian whistleblower who exposed lavish extravagance in the purchase of accommodation abroad for staff in Foreign Affairs. The Inspector General and Auditor General of Canada later supported her allegations. Gualtieri claimed the Bureau seemed not to care, that her bosses harassed her for raising the concerns and that she was a given dead-end job after coming forward. Ms. Gualtieri sued her former bosses for harassment. This lawsuit has been vigorously defended by government lawyers and has dragged in the courts for over 10 years. | ||||
| Cathy Harris | United States Customs Service | A former United States Customs Service employee who exposed rampant racial profiling against Black travellers while working at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Harris's book, Flying While Black: A Whistleblower's Story, she personally observed numerous incidents of Black travellers being stopped, frisked, body-cavity-searched, detained for hours at local hospitals, forced to take laxatives, bowel-monitored and subjected to public and private racist/colorist humiliation. The book also details her allegations of mismanagement, abuses of authority, prohibited personnel practices, waste, fraud, violation of laws, rules and regulations, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, workplace violence, racial and sexual harassment, sexism, intimidation, on and off the job stalking, etc., and other illegal acts that occurs daily to federal employees especially female federal employees at U.S. Customs and other federal agencies. | ||||
| Janet Howard, Tanya Ward Jordan and Joyce E. Megginson | Department of Commerce | Exposed widespread systemic racism and retaliation within the Department of Commerce against African-American employees. | ||||
| Anat Kamm | Israeli Defense Force | Leaked documents to the media that revealed the IDF had been engaging in extrajudicial killings. | ||||
| Jan Karski | Nazi Germany | Polish resistance fighter, who during World War II twice visited the Warsaw ghetto, and met with United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with the UK Foreign Secretary, and with the Polish shadow government in London, to report what he had witnessed concerning conditions for Jewish people, and the extermination camps. His report was not taken seriously by any authority. | ||||
| Mark Klein | National Security Agency | retired communications technician for AT&T, revealed the details of his personal knowledge of the secret 2003 construction of a monitoring facility in Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. The facility is alleged to be one of several operated by the National Security Agency as part of the warrantless surveillance undertaken by the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. | ||||
| Karen Kwiatkowski | U.S. Air Force | Retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who worked as a desk officer in The Pentagon and in a number of roles in the National Security Agency. She has written a number of essays on corrupting political influences of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has said that she was the anonymous source for Seymour Hersh and Warren Strobel on their exposés of pre-war intelligence. | ||||
| S. Manjunath | Indian Oil Corporation | Former manager at Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), and spoke against adulteration of petrol. He was shot dead on November 19, 2005, allegedly by a petrol pump owner from Uttar Pradesh. | ||||
| Christoph Meili | A night guard at a Swiss bank, he discovered that his employer was destroying records of savings by Holocaust victims, which the bank was required to return to heirs of the victims. After the Swiss authorities sought to arrest Meili, he was given political asylum in the United States. | |||||
| Stewart Menzies | British Army | A British intelligence officer who, while serving in France during World War I, reported that General Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief, was fudging intelligence estimates, leading to the needless death of thousands of British soldiers. | ||||
| Donald Merino | Stevens Institute of Technology | Exposed the institute for abuse of the endowment, keeping multiple sets of books, misleading of the board and illegal low interest loans to the president. | ||||
| Paul Moore | HBOS | Executive at the UK bank HBOS who in 2005 was fired, allegedly after warning his senior colleagues that the company's sales strategy was at odds with prudent management. In 2009 Moore spoke out about his warnings to the Treasury Select Committee of parliament during its investigation into the turmoil in the UK banking system. | ||||
| Edmund Dene Morel | Congo Free State | British accountant who reported on the uncommon trading practices between the Congo Free State and Europe which led to a strong campaign about Belgian King Leopold autocratic regime on his African territory. | ||||
| Michael J. Nappe | University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey |
|
||||
| Rick S. Piltz | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | Exposed Philip Cooney, a White House official who edited a climate change report to reflect the administration's views without having any scientific background. | ||||
| Clive Ponting | Ministry of Defence | Senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence who leaked classified documents to Labour Member of Parliament, Tam Dalyell confirming that the General Belgrano was sunk by United Kingdom forces during the Falklands War while outside the total exclusion zone, contradicting statements by the UK Government. | ||||
| Ramin Pourandarjani | Iranian Government | An Iranian physician who reported on the state use of torture on political prisoners. He died of poisoning shortly thereafter. | ||||
| Samuel Provance | Military Intelligence | System administrator for Military Intelligence at the Abu Ghraib prison who publicly revealed the role of interrogators in the abuses, as well the general effort to cover-up the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse itself. | ||||
| Peter Rost | Pfizer | Former vice president at the pharmaceutical company that reported about accounting irregularities and other irregularities to the US authorities. In response to his whistleblowing he was exiled internally by Pfizer and removed from all responsibilities and decision making. In 2004, he testified in Congress as a private individual in favour of drug reimportation, a position strongly at odds with the official policy of the pharmaceutical industry. In December 2005, Rost was fired from Pfizer. In September 2006 he published his experiences in the book “The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman.” | ||||
| William Sanjour | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency |
|
||||
| Frank Serpico | NYPD | Former New York City police officer who reported several of his fellow officers for bribery and related charges. He is the first officer to testify against police corruption. | ||||
| Karen Silkwood | Kerr-McGee nuclear plant | Labor union activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant near Crescent, Oklahoma. The 1983 film Silkwood is an account of this story. | ||||
| 2005 | Russ Tice | US Government | Former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Most recently he is one of the sources used by the New York Times in reporting on the NSA wiretapping controversy. He had earlier been known for reporting suspicions that a DIA colleague of his might be a Chinese spy. | |||
| 2005 | Maria do Rosàrio Veiga | World Meteorological Organization | Enquired about a fraud, wrote a final report in 2005. Chief IAIS 2002/nov2006, terminated by the WMO., | |||
| 2006 | Marco Pautasso | World Intellectual Property Organization | WIPO Senior Auditor and Acting Director of IAOD, reported on Kamil Idris in November 2006. Worked at WIPO from 2003 to 11/2006; now consultant. | |||
| Linda Tripp | Clinton Administration | Former White House staff member who disclosed to the Office of Independent Counsel that Monica Lewinsky committed perjury and attempted to suborn perjury, and President Bill Clinton committed misconduct, by denying the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship in the Paula Jones federal civil rights suit. A victim of retaliation by the Clinton Administration, Tripp won her lawsuit against the federal government for violating the Privacy Act of 1974 when it leaked personal information about her to the press. | ||||
| John Paul Vann | US Army | American colonel, who, during the Vietnam War, reported to his superiors that American policy and tactics were seriously flawed, and later went to the media with his concerns. Vann was asked to resign his commission, did so, but later returned to Vietnam. | ||||
| M. N. Vijayakumar | Indian Administrative Service | Exposed serious corrupt practices at high levels. | ||||
| 2009 | Virgil Grandfield | International Aid Worker, Canadian Red Cross |
Virgil Grandfield is a Canadian whistleblower and international aid worker. In 1999-2000, he worked with a project evaluation unit for the Disasters Emergency Committee (the UK funding agency for disasters) in Central America after Hurricane Mitch. He became an Overseas Delegate for the Canadian Red Cross in 2002, after serving as Red Cross team leader on floods on the Blood Reserve in Standoff, Alberta. In 2003-2004 he researched a cover story on migrant worker issues on the U.S.-Mexico border for Red Cross Red Crescent magazine. | |||
| 2009 | John Kopchinski | Pfizer | Former Pfizer sales representative and West Point graduate whose whistleblower (“qui tam”) lawsuit launched a massive government investigation into Pfizer’s illegal and dangerous marketing of Bextra, a prescription painkiller. Pfizer paid $1.8 billion to the government to settle the case, including a $1.3 billion criminal fine, which was the largest criminal fine ever imposed for any matter. The Bextra settlement was part of a $2.3 billion global settlement – the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history. | |||
| 2009 | Robert Rudolph, Joseph Faltaous, Steven Woodward, Jaydeen Vincente |
Eli Lilly | Four sales representatives for Eli Lilly filed separate qui tam lawsuits against the company for illegally marketing the drug Zyprexa for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Eli Lilly pled guilty to actively promoting Zyprexa for off-label uses, particularly for the treatment of dementia in the elderly. The $1.415 billion penalty included an $800 million civil settlement and a $515 million criminal fine—the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation in United States history. The four whistle blowers shared in 18%, or $78,870,877, of the federal share of the civil settlement. | |||
| 2006–Present | Julian Assange | Over 1.2 million individual leaks, to date. | Founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks and the Sunshine Press, leaks listed in Information published by WikiLeaks, Cablegate alone is believed to be the main cause of the Tunisian revolution, which led to other revolutions in the Middle East. | |||
| 2011 | Michael Woodford | Olympus Corporation | Corporate president, revealed past losses concealed and written off via excessive fee payments | |||
| 2012 | Ted Siska | Ward Diesel Filter Systems, Inc. of New York | Ward Diesel Filter Systems Inc. has agreed to pay the United States $628,000 to resolve allegations that it knowingly submitted false claims to federal agencies under a contract to provide diesel exhaust filtering systems for fire engines through the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Multiple Award Schedule program, the Justice Department announced on June 26, 2012. The government’s investigation was initiated by a lawsuit, U.S. ex rel. Siska v. Ward Diesel Filter Systems, Inc., filed under the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions, which permit private parties to sue for false claims on behalf of the United States and to share in any recovery. The whistleblower, Ted Siska, will receive $94,200 of the settlement. | |||
| 2009 | Alexander Barankov | Belarusian policeman | Claimed corruption among Belarusian police; charged with bribery and fraud in 2009; became a political refugee in Ecuador in 2010; as of August 2012, faces extradition back to Belarus. | |||
| 2012 | Vijay Pandhare | Chief Engineer, Irrigation Department, Government of Maharashtra | Pandhare, is a bureaucrat belonging to the Maharashtra a state in India. He is known as Whistleblower in Maharashtra Irrigation Scam 2012 which led to the resignation of the deputy chief minister of the state Ajit Pawar |
Famous quotes containing the words list of and/or list:
“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Love’s boat has been shattered against the life of everyday. You and I are quits, and it’s useless to draw up a list of mutual hurts, sorrows, and pains.”
—Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930)