List of whistleblowers

* Stanley Adams, a former Hoffmann-LaRoche executive, who discovered evidence of price fixing in 1973. 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.
* Philip Schneider, a former U.S. geologist who helped constructing various classified military underground bases, who gave public lectures around 1995. He was found dead in his apartment in January 1996.
* Stephen Bolsin, As a new consultant anaesthetist at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1989, Dr Bolsin identified that too many babies were dying during heart surgery. He spent the next six years confirming the high mortality rates and attempting to improve the service. By doing this Dr Bolsin developed a higher ethical standard in health care. This standard related to a higher quality of care and introduced the measurement of performance and performance monitoring in the NHS. This led to a fall in mortality rates for children’s heart surgery in Bristol from 30% to less than 5%. These dramatic improvements have been sustained and ongoing in Bristol as well as affecting all areas of healthcare in the UK.
* Ingvar Bratt, a former 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 ( [http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?nid=3911&bet=1990:409 SFS 1990:409] ) concerning company secrets which commonly is referred to as "Lex Bratt".
* Gerald W. Brown, a former firestop contractor and consultant 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.
* Peter Buxtun, a former employee of the United States Public Health Service who exposed the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
* Neil Carrick, a former member and staff member of Greater Grace World Outreach in Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. who uncovered financial and sexual abuse by church leaders. Eventually The Baltimore Sun would publish a front page story uncovering a $500,000 payoff regarding a cover up of an affair of a staff Pastor.
* Shawn Carpenter, a former member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories who 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."
* Shiv Chopra, a Canadian microbiologist activist who was involved in one of the first major whistleblowing incidents in the Canadian public service.
* Richard Convertino, a 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.
* Cynthia Cooper of Worldcom and Sherron Watkins of Enron, who exposed corporate financial scandals, and Coleen Rowley of the FBI, who later outlined the agency's slow action prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The three were selected as "Time"'s People of the Year in 2002.
* Allan Cutler, the first whistleblower on the Canadian "AdScam" or sponsorship scandal. Without WB protection, he was fired by the Canadian government.
* Joe Darby, a member of the United States military police who in 2004 first alerted the U.S. military command of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison, in Abu Ghraib, Iraq.
* Walter DeNino, a student who questioned Eric Poehlman's integrity.
* Pascal Diethelm and Jean-Charles Rielle, Swiss tobacco control advocates and alumni from the University of Geneva who revealed the secret ties of Ragnar Rylander, 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. [http://www.prevention.ch/ryjue151203.pdf] Following this judgment, the University of Geneva prohibited its members from soliciting research subsidies or direct or indirect consultancies with the tobacco industry. [http://www.prevention.ch/rye060904.pdf]
* Satyendra Dubey, who accused 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.
* Duncan Edmonds, a Canadian civil servant who in 1984 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. ["The Insiders: Government, Business, and the Lobbyists", by John Sawatsky, 1987)]
* Sibel Edmonds, a 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.
* Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, 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.
* Janet Howard, Tanya Ward Jordan and Joyce E. Megginson, who blew the whistle on widespread systemic racism and retaliation within the Department of Commerce against African-American employees. [ [http://www.feldf.com Federal Employees Legal Defense Fund] ]
* Marlene Garcia Esperat, a former analytical chemist for the Philippines Department of Agriculture who became a journalist to expose departmental corruption, and was murdered for it in 2005. Her assailants later surrendered to police, and have testified that they were hired by officials in the Department of Agriculture.
* W. Mark Felt, (aka Deep Throat), an informant (secret until 2005) who in 1972 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.
* A. Earnest Fitzgerald, a 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. Mr. Fitzgerald retired from the Defense Department in 2006. [ [http://www.dodig.mil/IGInformation/archives/ErnieFitzgerladRetirement022806.htm "What's New" Archives] ]
* David Franklin, a former Parke-Davis employee (a division of Pfizer) who exposed illegal marketing of Neurontin (gabapentin), an epilepsy drug, for relieving pain, headaches, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric illnesses. The case revealed that the company marketed the drug for these illnesses while withholding evidence that the drug was not effective for these illnesses. After initially denying wrongdoing, Pfizer plead guilty to criminal violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act and paid criminal and civil fines of $430 million dollars. This case has opened a unique window into pharmaceutical industry practices through the achieving [ [http://dida.library.ucsf.edu Drug Industry Document Archive] ] and study [ [http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/145/4/284 Narrative Review: The Promotion of Gabapentin: An Analysis of Internal Industry Documents -- Steinman et al. 145 (4): 284 -- Annals of Internal Medicine] ] of documents by UCSF obtained by Franklin’s attorney Thomas Greene. The Franklin v. Pfizer case was unique in a number of ways: it was the largest settlement obtained for U.S. taxpayers in a case not joined by the Department of Justice, it established a new standard of accountability for pharmaceutical industry marketing practices, it broadened the use of the False Claims Act to include fraudulent marketing claims (not just financial fraud) as criminal violations of federal and state law, it revealed the involvement, complicity and active participation in fraud by many renowned physicians, and it demonstrated that the medical literature which is the foundation for medical practice and particularly off-label prescribing by physicians has been deeply adulterated by the pharmaceutical industry and its paid clinical consultants. Franklin v. Pfizer showed that pharmaceutical control of the healthcare system, including doctors and pharmacists resulted in a large number of patients (not just Medicare/Medicaid) paying a great deal of money (Neurontin sales were $2.2 billion in 2004) for a drug that did nothing to help their illness.
* Bunnatine "Bunny" H. Greenhouse, a 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. [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801796_pf.html washingtonpost.com - A Web of Truth] ]
* Katharine Gun, a former employee of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency who in 2003 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.
* Cathy Harris, 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.
* Marc Hodler, International Olympic Committee, a IOC member who, in December 1998, blew the whistle on the Winter Olympic bid scandal for the 2002 Salt Lake City games.
* Douglas Keeth who, in 1989, 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.
* Mark Klein, a 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. [cite web
url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html
work=Public Broadcasting System
title="Spying on the Home Front" - Interview with Mark Klein
author=Frontline
date=2007-01-09
accessdate=2007-08-15]
* Karen Kwiatkowski, a 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, a formerly manager at Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), and crusader against adulteration of petrol. He was shot dead on November 19, 2005, allegedly by a petrol pump owner from Uttar Pradesh.
* Hans-Peter Martin, who accused European Parliament members of invalid expense claims in 2004.
* 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, 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.
* Clive Ponting, a 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.
* Samuel Provance, a 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 (doctor). Peter Rost was a former vice president at the pharmaceutical company Pfizer 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, a whistleblower at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for over 20 years who also wrote on whistleblower protection issues. [ [http://sanjour.us Collected Papers of William Sanjour] ] He won a landmark law suit against the federal government which established the First Amendment rights of federal employees to "blow the whistle" on their employer. [Sanjour v. EPA,56 F.3d 85 (D.C. Cir. 1995)(en banc)]
* Frank Serpico, a 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, a 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.
* Russ Tice, a 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.
* Linda Tripp, a 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.
* Paul van Buitenen, who accused European Commission members of corruption. (See Resignation of the Santer Commission).
* John Paul Vann, an 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.
* Mordechai Vanunu [http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/correspondent/transcripts/17_03_2003.txt] [ [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=%20417663&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y Capturing nuclear whistle-blower was `a lucky stroke,' agents recall - Haaretz - Israel News] ] who revealed Israel's clandestine nuclear program to the British press in 1986. 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.
* Frederic Whitehurst, 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. Dr. 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. [ [http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/27/fbi.whitehurst/ CNN - FBI whistle-blower leaves, gets $1.16 million - February 27, 1998] ] Whitehurst now directs the FBI Oversight Project of the National Whistleblower Center.
* Jeffrey Wigand, a former executive of Brown & Williamson who exposed his company's practice of intentionally manipulating the effect of nicotine in cigarettes on the CBS news program 60 Minutes. Famously known as the man who blew the whistle on Big Tobacco and almost single-handedly revealed the health dangers of smoking to the public.
* Andrew Wilkie, an Australian intelligence officer at the Office of National Assessments who resigned in March 2003 over concerns intelligence] reports were incorrectly claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
* Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador, whose July 6, 2003 editorial in the New York Times, "What I Didn't Find In Africa", exposed pretexts for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Lopsided|date=September 2008

* M.N. Vijayakumar, an IAS officer in Karnataka, India is a whistle blower who exposed serious corrupt practices at high levels. His wife, Jayashree J.N, [http://fightcorruption.wikidot.com/ fearing for his life setup a website] detailing her husband's efforts to fight corruption. See [http://www.transparency.org/index.php/news_room/in_focus/2007/whistleblowers here ] as to what Transparency International says about them and [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/technology/05whistle.htm the New York Times report here]

* Dr Rita Pal is a UK NHS Whistleblower. Raised issues of patient neglect on Ward 87 North Staffordshire NHS Trust Stoke on Trent in 1998. Professor Steve Bolsin's report is detailed here [http://www.nhsexposed.com/healthworkers/doctors/gmc/steve-bolsin-report.doc] and 2001 Internal Report into the ward is detailed [ [http://www.nhsexposed.com/patients/hospitals/nstaffs/city-general-hospital-report.shtml NHS Exposed - The Truth Behind The White Coat - A Killing Field - Ward 87, City General Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent] ] . Concerns raised with the General Medical Council UK but investigation reversed on the whistleblower. The GMC raised the spectre of mental illness to discredit the whistleblowing issues. Dr Pal subsequently sued in libel. [ [http://www.nhsexposed.com/healthworkers/doctors/gmc/pal_v_general_medical_council.stml|http://www.nhsexposed.com/healthworkers/doctors/gmc/pal_v_general_medical_council.shtml] ] R Pal v General Medical Council, Sarah Bedwell, Peter Lynn and Catherine Green is the first libel case in the history of the GMC and Dr Pal won on strike out and settled by a whistleblower. Dr Pal have also whistleblown in the London Sunday Times 2nd April 2000 [ [http://www.nhsexposed.com/patients/hospitals/nstaffs/elderly.shtml Elderly are helped to die to clear beds, claims doctor ] ] Currently Dr Pal edits and features matters exclusively related to the NHS on [http://www.nhsexposed.com and the blog] [ [http://www.nhsexposedblog.blogspot.com NHS ] ] She also writes http://www.ward87.blogspot.com, a website outlining her experiences on whistleblowing as well as other tales.
* [http://fairwhistleblower.ca/cases/gualtieri.html Joanna Gualtieri] , a Canadian whistleblower, 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. Ms. Gualtieri has continued to battle for other whistleblowers by founding the Canadian whistleblower organization Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform (FAIR) and by serving as a director for almost 10 years.

References