Henry Kissinger paid me the honor once of telling people in private that I was
the most dangerous man in America and must be stopped at all costs I was put
on trial facing eventually twelve felony counts a possible sentence of 115 years
I'm Dan Ellsberg may have heard my name in connection with revealing the
Pentagon Papers most famous leak in history by the most famous whistle blow
a whistleblower is someone who exposes corruption waste fraud or abuse and has
insider knowledge but when you see something wrong could you tell and if
you speak up are you a patriot or a traitor the Pentagon Papers a top-secret
study of u.s. decision-making in Vietnam over two decades and four presidents it
showed that the public and Congress had been lied to Daniel Ellsberg was the
ultimate insider because he helped write the papers for the Defense Department he
couldn't believe the public didn't know what their leaders really thought he
took the papers to Congress that did nothing
he went to the press to Daniel Ellsberg changed things Daniel Ellsberg created
modern whistleblowing he pointed out that there were defects in the law that
made it impossible for honest civil servants to report fraud and corruption
lawfully he changed the way we do business for the better being a
whistleblower can come with a lot of personal risk and personal cost the
person you're blowing the whistle on or the institution won't like it and they
will retaliate your reputation will be smeared your career can be destroyed and
that happened to Ellsberg by no less than President Nixon and his
administration there was a death squad or or a hit squad at least from the
White House sent to incapacitate me in order to shut me up including going into
my former psychoanalyst office to get information to blackmail me later
brought a dozen CIA operatives up to Washington to quote incapacitate me
totally I definitely regret that I did not put out this information much
earlier when I could have if you asked me do I regret that that's a very heavy
burden to bear I felt that for a long time
Ellsberg's case may be extreme but fear of the consequences is what stops a lot
of people from coming forward against institutional corruption how do you
weigh that as you make a decision about whether to come forward well now you
have the whistleblower protection act that sets forth a way to blow the
whistle and rights against retaliation in a direct response to the Ellsberg
case you have the Privacy Act that prevents the federal government from
collecting information on your First Amendment activities and protects you
including federal employees from the government using information to destroy
Ellsberg exposed government secrets but whistleblowers can reveal what's
happening at banks or companies and they can shine light not just on things that
are illegal but things they believe are immoral it was that sense of right and
wrong that led Jo run is easy to talk to the Washington Post he's a retired DEA
agent and the source of an explosive story about the opioid crisis one of the
most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 minutes
with all these people dying I just I just felt the story needed to be told
the DEA is the top law enforcement agency that's waging the war on drugs
and run as easy wanted to be one of these agents fighting the drug war since
he was a teenager but when he started to make noise inside the agency about what
he thought was wrong everything changed in his career sermon is easy retired and
when the Washington Post called he was ready to talk now if I told you that
industry could manipulate agencies Congress because they wanted to make
money and they didn't want to lose money you would say well this guy's it's crazy
but that's exactly what was happening were you afraid of getting in trouble I
wasn't afraid of getting in trouble I was afraid of a news organization not
believing me if I was on the other end of the other
side of the table listening to me I wouldn't believe me either
The Washington Post doesn't call renas easy a whistleblower because he had
already left the DEA when he became a source but to a lawyer like Steve Kohn
he counts because he's still an insider with something to lose and should be
protected under the law how do you think about a whistleblower if you're a
journalist versus a lawyer well the lawyers job is to protect the
whistleblower the journalists job is to get a good story but the to meet a
journalist that protects their sources that is sensitive to the issues that a
whistleblower goes through can be the whistleblowers best friend there are
steps you can take to protect yourself don't use government equipment including
a work provided cellphone and the same thing goes for your company if you're in
the private sector use a secure computer that doesn't have enterprise software or
malware that could record what you're doing
there are operating systems that preserve your privacy like one called
tails and instead of sending regular texts use an app like signal to
communicate it's encrypted on both ends and it also lets you make secure phone
calls use secure drop this is a discreet way to share information with news
outlets and it's easy to use it IDs you with a secret code name rather than your
real name so you can check back in and follow up Steve Cohen says
whistleblowing is fundamentally American and you know where it starts with the
founding of our country you read the First Amendment look what
they do the three pillars of whistleblowing are all their freedom of
speech that's the whistleblower freedom of the press that's the way you get it
to the people and petitioning Congress that's going to Congress going to
oversight exposing lies or corruption comes with personal risk but to Dan
Ellsberg it was worth it there's no guarantee that you're paying this cost
or taking these risks will have any effect at all there's no guarantee it's
not even likely but there's a chance so you have to decide whether to go along
with something that you know is wrong or to pay a price on the chance that you
will save a Wars worth of lives
you