2000s-Present

## Annotated Readings

### Kathryn Bolkovac

Kathryn Bolkovac left her job on the Lincoln Police Department to work on a contract with DynCorp, an agency that still provides police forces for the United Nations, mostly in post-conflict countries. She was sent to Bosnia and Herzogovina along with a substantial amount of other DynCorp employees, where she was tasked with keeping track of, reporting, and stopping crime in the area. Eventually, she discovered what appeared to be a brothel, containing several underage girls, and she noticed several people who appeared to be DynCorp contractors. She spent weeks trying to speak to the girls, but out of fear they were not able to give her much useful information. Meanwhile, she began to face retaliation by her coworkers and DynCorp supervisors who were either actively involved in or benefitting from the prostitution ring or were at the very least covering it up. Eventually, she fled the country after her supervisors terminated her contract, also fearing for her life. She alerted the family of one of the girls of her situation, and then settled in the United Kingdom, where she filed a lawsuit against DynCorp. Unfortunately, high-level U.N. officials failed to back her up, due to systematic corruption throughout the organization. As a result of her efforts, very little changed. DynCorp laid off some employees over worries about reputation, however most individuals were protected due to diplomatic immunity and to this day have not faced any consequences. The U.N. eventually did convene a panel on sexual exploitation and abuse in conflict and post-conflict situations, but only after the release of *The Whistleblower*, a film about her story. Her story illustrated a nearly hopeless situation, where the most powerful people tasked to protect individuals were abusing their power to destroy lives.

### Coleen Rowley

Coleen Rowley was responsible for blowing the whistle after 9/11 on poor conduct within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, resulting in mishandling of critical information regarding an individual who was tangentially involved in the September 11th attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui, who was already on the F.B.I.'s radar for an immigration violation. The F.B.I. was aware that he was taking flight courses as late as August 2001. However, despite connections that existed between him and the perpetrators of the attack, they never fully investigated the connections and may have missed clear signs of an imminent attack. She sent a letter directly to the then-director of the F.B.I., Robert Mueller, explaining the systematic issues mishandling information that she had seen that led to this oversight. In combination with a senate and 9/11 commission investigation in 2002, during which she testified, the F.B.I. faced a significant restructuring, resulting in the formation of a new office, the Office of Intelligence, to better process intelligence, as well as a nearly complete reorganization of the agency to prevent further mishaps. Despite the lack of repercussions and her loyal commitment to the F.B.I., in the years afterwards, she advocated for any whistleblowing, including illegal methods, even going as far to visit Edward Snowden soon after he fled the United States.

### Sibel Edmonds

Sibel Edmonds worked as a language specialist at the F.B.I. for six months before blowing the whistle on her colleagues for covering up or breaching security on various issues, including hiding evidence of criminal activity. Upon reporting, she was ultimately fired in March 2002 as retaliation, and failed to make significant change, being unable to sue the F.B.I. due to the State Secrets Privilege, which allows court cases to be postponed or dropped if they would require information regarding national security to be released. In addition, the United States Congress has been gagged to prevent from speaking on the issue. To this day, there is no indication that there was much change made to prevent issues in the future, beyond a request by then-directory of the F.B.I Robert Mueller to review the conduct of the translation unit. Upon being laid off, she formed the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition to provide resources for whistleblowers-to-be and to fight for the ability to force the government to pay attention to the issues rather than silencing the whistleblowers.

### Thomas Drake

Thomas Drake became known for attempting to blow the whistle legally and then going to the press when he didn't see enough happen. He escalated a complaint through the National Security Agency about their pursuance of a project to track individuals that both compromised the privacy of American citizens and also cost more than an alternative project he felt was better in the interest of national security. The N.S.A. failed to take action, then congress failed to force an investigation into the agency, resulting in Drake reporting on the issue to *The Baltimore Sun*, after which he faced retaliation when both he and the members of congress who had tried to help him were raided by the F.B.I., and he was eventually charged under the Espionage Act for releasing the information. After a lengthy legal battle and public pressure, he was convicted of a single misdemeanor and was released. He has since become an authority on the whistleblowing process, mostly working academically rather than as an advocate on identifying flaws in whistleblower protection. His case illustrated these flaws quite effectively, highlighting how difficult it is to get away with trying to make the government accountable.

### Mark Klein

Mark Klein is one case of a non-government employee who blew the whistle on abuse by the government. He worked as a technician at AT&T prior to his discovery of Room 614A, a secret room which held equipment to spy on all communications going through the facility. He became aware of agents from the National Security Agency being active in the area, and shortly after the passing of the Total Information Awareness act, he and his coworkers began to speculate that the N.S.A.'s involvement was part of a deal between the N.S.A. and AT&T to intercept traffic, given the timing of the passing of the act and when the N.S.A. started poking around. They also became aware of a room that they were not allowed to enter, that was restricted to only a few individuals. There was outrage over this fact, since as they were unionized workers AT&T was not permitted to have non-union workers setting up networking equipment for the company. Eventually, he was trained to replace another worker, at which point he was shown a rack of fiber-optic splitting equipment that clearly was being used to duplicate internet traffic and send it to Room 614A, and he was once briefly in the room, though he didn't identify anything suspicious. From that point, it was easy to figure out what was going on, especially after he discovered a request for a specialized piece of equipment to be set up that was specifically designed to capture traffic. Eventually, he realized that AT&T was cooperating with the agency not just in his office in the Bay Area but everywhere they had major facilities, and he began collecting evidence, eventually blowing the whistle in 2006 after the government made it clear that anyone with a security clearance would face retaliation for blowing the whistle. Since he did not have a clearance, he never faced government retaliation.

### John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou was involved in the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation of Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein abu Zubaida, hearing from his coworkers that Abu Zubaida cracked under 35 seconds of waterboarding, promising to tell them whatever they wanted. He reported the waterboarding after learning that the interrogation's recordings were to be destroyed, resulting in an investigation by the House intelligence committee into the C.I.A.'s interrogation methods. He was largely protected from retaliation, however the C.I.A. did hide all evidence of misconduct even after being told not to by congress. Despite successfully whistleblowing, he was eventually charged for an unrelated incident when he revealed the identity of a C.I.A. agent to the press, who did not publish the name and instead reported him. While he was praised for his whistleblowing, it's clear that his conduct wasn't entirely pure, being willing to put a coworker's life on the line when speaking to the public.

### Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning, born Bradley Manning, was stationed Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq as an intelligence analyst, where she discovered a trove of classified information, including countless videos of gruesome killings of civilians. Horrified, she contacted Julian Assange after attempting to reach out to other press agencies, and organized a drop point when she returned home briefly in 2010. She collected a large amount of classified information and turned it over to WikiLeaks, who began publishing the material, starting with a video of civilians being shot by a helicopter crew do to misidentifying a telescope as a piece of anti-aircraft machinery. Upon returning to duty, she attacked an officer, and was discharged. She bragged about her leaks online, upon which a hacker reported her to the Department of Defense, who then arrested her. Her story gained notoriety when it was discovered that she was being imprisoned in horrible conditions, including being naked and in a solitary confinement cell for 23 hours a day. In 2013, her sentence was reduced due to the cruel punishments that had already been administered, and she was eventually pardoned by President Obama. Her whistleblowing activities remain somewhat controversial, due to the breadth of information that was not necessarily beyond the normal scope of war but did harm national security, and the reputation of WikiLeaks.

### Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is a former Central Intelligence Agency employee who left to work for the National Security Agency, where he discovered overly broad surveillance programs that disproportionately monitored United States citizens. In May 2013, after collecting a trove of information on the programs, he requested medical leave and fled to Hong Kong, where he contacted members of the press to hand off the information. In June, the first reports were published, initially keeping him anonymous. However, soon after, he came forward, under the premise that he felt he had done nothing wrong and therefore should not need to hide his identity in reporting the issues. Within days, he was charged with espionage, and was almost immediately tracked to Hong Kong, where the Hong Kong police chose not to take action upon prompting by the United States government. This gave Snowden the chance to leave the country shortly before his passports were revoked, escaping to Moscow, Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to let Snowden stay and denied any efforts to extradite, under the condition that Snowden cease activities against the United States government to prevent escalation of international tensions. He remains in Russia, and while the U.S. government has established some measures of accountability, many of the programs Snowden reported remain in existence. When he published his memoir in late 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice sued him to recover the profits, as he was violating his non-disclosure agreement. The charges against him of being a traitor remain, and he refuses to return because he does not believe he would receive a fair trial.

## References

1. ↑ “The Whistleblower.” *IMDb*, IMDb.com, 23 June 2011, www.imdb.com/title/tt0896872/.
2. ↑ “Q & A With Coleen Rowley, F.B.I. Whistleblower: Part One.” *Tikkun Daily Blog*, www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/01/03/q-a-with-coleen-rowley-fbi-whistleblower-part-one/.
3. ↑ “Sibel Edmonds.” *National Whistleblower Center*, www.whistleblowers.org/members/sibel-edmonds/.
4. ↑ Gorman, Siobhan. “Little-Known Contractor Has Close Ties with Staff of NSA.” *Baltimoresun.com*, 27 Oct. 2018, www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2006-01-29-0601290158-story.html.
5. ↑ “Interviews - Mark Klein | Spying On The Home Front | FRONTLINE.” *PBS*, Public Broadcasting Service, 15 May 2007, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html.
6. ↑ “Waterboarding Recounted.” *The Washington Post*, WP Company, 11 Dec. 2007, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121002091.html.
7. ↑ “Chelsea Manning.” *Biography.com*, A&E Networks Television, 18 June 2019, www.biography.com/activist/chelsea-manning.
8. ↑ Ray, Michael. “Edward Snowden.” *Encyclopædia Britannica*, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2 Oct. 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Snowden.