“I think we will not understand what is happening in our society until we listen to the tears, the screams, the pain, and horror of those who have crossed a boundary they did not even know exists. To be a whistleblower is to step outside the Great Chain of Being, to join not just another religion, but another world. Sometimes this other world is called the margins of society, but to the whistleblower it feels like outer space.” – C. Fred Alford, Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power (2001).
President Donald Trump’s thinly veiled attacks against the anonymous whistleblower who reported his shady dealings with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, have once again highlighted what a dangerous activity whistleblowing can be. The US president is reported to have stated: “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now.”
By equating whistleblowing with treason, Trump is doing exactly what many people in power do when confronted with a revelation that shows them in a bad light – they shoot the messenger by accusing him of being disloyal – a traitor – or of having damaged an organisation’s reputation. For this, the whistleblower is either fired, ridiculed or psychologically tortured. (In the case of Trump, he would prefer that the Ukraine scandal whistleblower be hanged.)
What most people don’t understand is that no one wakes up one day and decides to blow the whistle on their employer. I am sure that the Ukraine saga whistleblower, who is believed to be working for the US intelligence services, did not make the decision to report Trump’s “quid pro quo” request to the Ukrainian president because he sought notoriety. He probably believed that US national security was being compromised by the US president and that some law or code of ethics had been violated. So he reported it internally, which is how most whistleblowers report wrongdoing.
He probably also felt that he would not be able to live with himself if he had done nothing. Now, after being declared a whistleblower, he has to contend with the wrath of the most powerful president on the planet. Imagine the pressure of that.
The media and Democrats in the United States have hailed the Ukraine whistleblower as a hero. But I fear that this designation will not be enough to protect him from harm. I fear for this person, not so much for his life, but for the grim future that lies ahead of him, even within the intelligence community where he works. (I am assuming that the whistleblower is male, although there is a high likelihood that a woman made the official complaint against Trump.)
He may find that after this episode is over and President Trump is allowed to continue as president, he will be sacrificed – in what ways, I am not sure.
Alternatively, if Trump is impeached, a bright future might await him. His bosses within the intelligence services and Democrats in Congress might make a commitment to protect and reward him, as they did with Mark Felt, the “Deep Throat” whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s downfall. He could be among the lucky few.
Most whistleblowers are not so fortunate; they suffer severe retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. Most lose their jobs. They do not receive any medals or awards for their whistleblowing, nor do they get their jobs back after they have been exonerated of any wrongdoing. On the contrary, the financial and emotional toll of whistleblowing affects their physical and mental health. Many lose their families or sink into depression. Others pay the ultimate price for speaking truth to power. For example, not long after the human rights activists Oscar King’ara and Paul Oulu released a report on extrajudicial killings by Kenyan state security authorities, they were gunned down in March 2009 by unknown assassins on a street in Nairobi not far from the State House.
Some whistleblowers do become famous – not because they want to be famous but because someone thought it was important to tell their stories. Some of them have featured in Hollywood films like The Insider and The Whistleblower; the most recent film is the just released Official Secrets, which tells the story of Katherine Gun, a translator who blew the whistle on America’s illegal spying activities at the United Nations prior to the Iraq war in 2003. (Dictionary definition of a whistleblower: a person who reports or discloses information of a threat or harm to the public interest in the context of their work-based relationship.)
Most whistleblowers end up finding out that institutional whistleblower protection policies will do little to protect them, even in institutions that claim to be protecting human rights and enforcing labour laws. For instance, no one protected me when I reported to my supervisors at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) that some $350,000 of donor money was unaccounted for. Not suspecting that the people I reported this to might have been responsible for the theft or inappropriate use of this money, I found myself at the receiving end of various forms of psychological torture, which forced me to leave the organisation. I was publicly humiliated in office meetings; friends and colleagues stopped talking to me; I was threatened with non-renewal of contract and was denied a promotion. In retrospect, when I think of the things that I was forced to endure, I now believe that the amount stolen or “diverted” could have been as high as $1 million – the total amount of funds given by the donor country Bahrain to UN-Habitat the previous year.
The cost of whistleblowing
Many whistleblowers naively believe that their revelations will earn them kudos from their seniors, but usually the very opposite happens; the entire system conspires to make their life so miserable that they quit voluntarily, or comes up with trumped-up charges of impropriety that lead to their dismissal.
It is estimated that between half and two-thirds of all whistleblowers lose their jobs. In general, the more systematic the wrongdoing within an organisation, the greater the reprisal against those who expose it. Most find that their job prospects dwindle significantly after they report wrongdoing; career pathways are blocked, promotions are denied, rumours are spread about their state of mind, which deters others from hiring them.
Most whistleblowers are not so fortunate; they suffer severe retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. Most lose their jobs. They do not receive any medals or awards for their whistleblowing, nor do they get their jobs back after they have been exonerated of any wrongdoing.
Whistleblowers around the world have consistently reported feelings of isolation, betrayal and abandonment after they have denounced incidences of corruption, malpractice or abuse of office. One World Bank whistleblower said that the culture of conformity, silence and fear was so pervasive at the Bank that “as soon as you are seen blowing the whistle, your own colleagues won’t even sit next to you in the cafeteria”.
The case of the Kenyan whistleblower David Munyakei is illustrative of the fate that befalls whistleblowers. Munyakei is credited with bringing to public attention what is known as the Goldenberg Scandal that cost the Kenyan economy about one billion dollars in the early 1990s. Munyakei was arrested and charged with contravening the Official Secrets Act. He was denied bail and taken to remand prison.
While the case against Munyakei was later dismissed by the then Attorney General, the whistleblower found himself on the streets; the Central Bank had fired him on the grounds that they no longer had confidence in him.
Munyakei spent the next few years flitting from one casual job to another. While Transparency International and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights recognised him for blowing the whistle on the biggest scam in the country’s post-independence history, he was not financially compensated by the government, nor did the awards bring him any financial security. He was clearly a broken man. He died penniless in 2006 at the age of 38.
Whistleblowing is extremely risky business in any place where governments or corporations have something to hide. It can also cause deep anguish to the whistleblower. In his book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power, C. Fred Alford, a Professor of Government at the University of Maryland, College Park, provides a chilling and deeply pessimistic account of whistleblowers who have exposed corruption in high places. Most whistleblowers, he says, are unable to assimilate the experience of whistleblowing or to come to terms with what they have learned.
Whistleblowers see the truth, and that truth shakes their belief in the world they live in. “For many whistleblowers this knowledge is like a mortal illness. They live with it, and it with them, every day and night of their lives,” says Alford.
John Githongo, Kenya’s most famous whistleblower who is the subject of Michela Wrong’s book It’s Our Turn to Eat and who uncovered what came to be known as the Anglo Leasing Scandal in 2005, told me that for him the meaning of “normal” changed forever after he realised that the people he worked most closely with were involved in the theft of public funds, and when friends and colleagues disappeared from his life after he made the scandal public. “It is like post-traumatic disorder,” he explained. “The memories keep coming back and stay with you for the rest of your life.”
It is estimated that between half and two-thirds of all whistleblowers lose their jobs. In general, the more systematic the wrongdoing within an organisation, the greater the reprisal against those who expose it.
Ten years after I blew the whistle at UN-Habitat I still have nightmares about what was done to me, how easily I was sacrificed, and how the perpetrators and defenders of the wrongdoing suffered no consequences (though one of them was later removed from her cabinet position after she was implicated in a major corruption scandal in her country after she had left the UN).
My attempts to seek justice from the UN have so far come to naught. I have used every official internal channel available to me to seek justice, but I have been blocked every single time. Usually my complaint has ended up in the UN’s web-like bureaucracy, a labyrinth that ensures that there is no accountability. Meanwhile, my prospects of returning to a job that I loved – editor of UN-Habitat’s State of the World’s Cities report (which ceased to be published after my departure – because I was no longer at the helm, I would like to believe) – are getting dimmer by the day.
I have since spent a considerable amount of time learning and writing about whistleblowers, and have come to the conclusion that most whistleblowers report wrongdoing not because they hate their organisations, but because they love their work and are loyal to their organisations’ mission and mandate. I concur with the writers of a TIME magazine article on the three female whistleblowers – Worldcom’s internal auditor Cynthia Cooper, Enron’s vice president Sherron Watkins, and FBI agent Coleen Rowley – who the magazine named as “Persons of the Year” in 2002, when they wrote, “Sometimes it is the keepers of the flame who feel most compelled to set their imperfect temple to the torch.”
Alford says that whistleblowers are tortured and sacrificed “so that others might see what it costs to be an individual in this blighted world”. They are also political actors in a world that has been depoliticised by euphemisms such as “development” instead of social justice, “diversion of funds” instead of theft, “national security” instead of gross violation of privacy. Ask Edward Snowden.
Quite often the torture and retaliation will continue even after the whistleblower has left the organisation. Githongo faced libel cases after he left government and went into exile and, thirteen years after he first exposed the Anglo Leasing scandal, he is still fighting these cases – which have drained him both emotionally and financially – in Kenyan and UK courts. In May 2019, the High Court awarded Sh27 million ($270,000) to one of the people he had accused of being one of the masterminds of the Anglo Leasing scam – a ruling that many viewed as excessively punitive and a chilling message to those who might be tempted to expose corruption within the Kenyan government.
John Githongo, Kenya’s most famous whistleblower who is the subject of Michela Wrong’s book It’s Our Turn to Eat and who in 2005 uncovered what came to be known as the Anglo Leasing Scandal, told me that for him the meaning of “normal” changed forever after he realised that the people he worked most closely with were involved in the theft of public funds…
Whistleblowers threaten the very foundations upon which power rests. The very act of whistleblowing is, therefore, a deeply political act. This explains why whistleblower protection policies rarely work. Once a whistleblower is taken seriously, he becomes a threat to the entire power structure. He must, therefore, be sacrificed.
Collateral damage
Sometimes whistleblowing can lead to collateral damage; not only is the whistleblower harmed but the perpetrators of the crime go on to commit more crimes that harm other people, especially when they believe that they can get away with them. This further damages the organisation, and creates a toxic work environment where anything goes. These crimes can even lead to innocent people being killed.
I believe that President Trump is an irrational, narcissistic, and dangerous man. I think that he gave Turkey the green light to invade Syria because he wanted to “wag the dog” and divert attention from his impending impeachment. He doesn’t care how many innocent lives are lost as long as he comes out smelling like roses. His belated call to Turkey’s president for a ceasefire is nothing but a lame attempt to exonerate himself when the war gets really ugly and he is blamed for the mass killings. (I have yet to see the UN Security Council reprimand him or Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for waging this illegal and highly dangerous war.)
Whistleblowers threaten the very foundations upon which power rests. The very act of whistleblowing is, therefore, a deeply political act. This explains why whistleblower protection policies rarely work. Once a whistleblower is taken seriously, he becomes a threat to the entire power structure. He must, therefore, be sacrificed.
As a result of this totally senseless war in Syria, hundreds, if not thousands, of people will be killed or displaced, and the world will become a much more dangerous place, just as it did when George Bush and Tony Blair ordered an invasion of Iraq without UN Security Council approval in 2003. Not only has Trump betrayed America’s Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State (IS), he has made the region and the world at large much more unstable and unsafe. Just when the world believed that IS had been vanquished, Trump threw the terrorist organisation a lifeline.
As the New York Times commented:
“President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.”
Is there a link between the Ukraine whistleblower and Trump’s decision to support this war despite having claimed that as president he will end America’s military incursions in foreign lands? I believe so.
Will the whistleblower who exposed the Ukraine scandal be sacrificed? I hope not, but I do wish him all the strength he can muster to survive what will most likely be a very trying period ahead.
