Blog Post #8

    The topic that I presented was whistleblowers. To keep it simple, a whistleblower is someone who reports evidence of wrongdoing to the authorities. In most cases, whistleblowers are usually government officials of some sort who are reporting other government officials. Whistleblowers put themselves at risk as government officials have money and power. It is not uncommon for whistleblowers to face some sort of retaliation for speaking out against people of power.

    Watergate is a very famous example of a whistleblower who made a big impact. Mark Felt informed on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who worked for the Washington Post. Felt worked for the FBI when he leaked information about Nixon’s involvement in Watergate. On the morning of June 17th, 1972 five men broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee attempting to bug their offices to gain information that would help Nixon win the election. They were ultimately arrested and Nixon was linked to the attempt to Bug the building, which forced him to resign as President. This is one of the more famous whistleblower stories in American history as the rule-breaking went all the way up to the President of the United States. I think a lot of people lost trust in our government officials after this situation, due to the nature of it.

    Chelsea Manning is another famous whistleblower in U.S. history. She worked as a data analyst during the Afghanistan war and was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for leaking classified documents to the WikiLeaks website. She spent a total of 7 years in prison from 2010 to 2017 until Barack Obama had her sentence commuted. The information she leaked discussed U.S. military operations in Baghdad and Iraq which she saw as human rights violations due to the fact that innocent civilians were killed. Some sources think that the U.S. military was trying to make an example out of her by sentencing her to 35 years in prison to make sure that no other soldiers spoke out against them.

    Frank Serpico is a famous whistleblower who openly testified about corruption in the NYPD. During the 1970s there was a lot of corruption within the NYPD that included cops taking bribes. Frank tried to report these crimes to the FBI, however nothing came of that. He eventually went to the New York Times which published a story about the corruption. Frank ended up getting shot in the face for whistleblowing and retired from the NYPD because of it. Frank is a good example of a whistleblower who faced retaliation for his actions.

    All of these whistleblowers share the fact that they put themselves at risk in order to bring people who had committed wrongdoing to justice. Personally, if I were to be put in their shoes, I'm not sure that I would make the same choice as them. They were all put at serious risk and the only one of the three who didn't face serious retaliation was Mark Felt. This is interesting to me because Mark Felt arguably whistleblowing on the biggest story out of all three. Overall, whistleblowers should be seen as very courageous people who speak out for the greater good.