Daniel Ellsberg, Jesselyn Radack, & Thomas Drake at the American Whistleblower Tour Mt. Holyoke stopLast night, a packed auditorium of nearly 300 people listened to the stories of three courageous human beings whose heartfelt belief in speaking the truth led each to become something they never expected: whistleblowers.

And not just any whistleblowers, but whistleblowers who exposed problems in one of the government's most sensitive areas – national security. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, NSA whistleblower/GAP client Thomas Drake, and DOJ whistleblower/GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack were the featured speakers at GAP's American Whistleblower Tour stop at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Their panel highlighted the importance of exposing national secrets about abuse and corruption in government. These high-profile whistleblowers garnered extensive media coverage, with angles ranging from event coverage to personalized profiles and interviews of the whistleblowers themselves.

All three of these whistleblowers have important stories to tell. Ellsberg, commonly referred to as the patriarch of modern day whistleblowing, saw one of the articles focus primarily on his experience changing the course of American history. It has been about 40 years since Ellsberg disclosed the Pentagon Papers – the secret documents on the Vietnam War that are largely credited with turning public opinion against it. Drake acknowledged Ellsberg's role as "the patriarch" for those who have since stepped forward to confront wrongdoing.

Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Drake, Jesselyn Radack to Attend Latest Stop

(Washington, DC) – Tomorrow, March 28, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) brings its program, the American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability, to Mount Holyoke College. The stop will feature prominent whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Thomas Drake (National Security Agency), and Jesselyn Radack (Department of Justice).

GAP's Tour is a dynamic campaign aimed at educating university students and the general public about the phenomenon and practice of whistleblowing. This Tour stop is highlighted by a panel presentation, free to all, featuring high-profile whistleblowers discussing their experiences. The whistleblowers include:

• Daniel Ellsberg is a former United States military analyst and government contractor who provided a voluminous classified government study about the Vietnam War (the Pentagon Papers) to the media. Ellsberg's whistleblowing led to protests, contributed to movement to force the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and emboldened the news media when the Supreme Court decided against prior restraint in the case New York Times Co. v. United States. The Pentagon Papers demonstrated, among other things, that several presidential administrations had directly lied to Congress and the public about their intentions and actions in the Vietnam War. Ellsberg is the subject of the widely acclaimed documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

Tour Stop features Citigroup, Hanford, Beef Whistleblowers

(Washington, DC) – On March 23, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) brings its program, the American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability, to the Seattle University School of Law. The stop will feature prominent whistleblowers Richard Bowen (Citigroup), Walt Tamosaitis (Hanford Nuclear Site) and John Munsell (contaminated meat/ConAgra/USDA). 

GAP's Tour is a dynamic campaign aimed at educating university students, and the general public, about the phenomenon and practice of whistleblowing. This Tour stop is highlighted by a panel presentation featuring high-profile whistleblowers discussing their experiences, and is being sponsored by the Seattle University School of Law and the Seattle University Albers School of Business & Economics. 

The Seattle stop features prominent and nationally recognized whistleblowers participating in the key panel presentation (free to all). The whistleblowers include: 

• Richard Bowen: Bowen is a former vice president at Citigroup who tried to warn the Bank's high-level brass about the rise in numbers of defective mortgages. Specifically, he was responsible for evaluating the quality of $90 billion of mortgages that Citigroup was buying annually from Countrywide and other lenders. Late last year, on a special 60 Minutes episode, Bowen detailed how he began to raise concerns internally in June 2006 upon discovering that some 60% of prime mortgages (making up some $50 billion) were defective. Furthermore, Bowen witnessed how Citigroup intentionally lowered its standards for accepting subprime mortgage pools. He testified in 2010 before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission about his whistleblowing, and continues to face repercussions from his efforts to blow the whistle. 

Last week saw the fifth stop of GAP's American Whistleblower Tour take place. And the moving, two-day event – hosted by Florida International University (FIU) – packed auditoriums and classrooms, to the point that there is now talk of an academic course on whistleblowing being launched there.

Altogether, including the three major panel discussions and multiple classroom visits, this stop was able to communicate our message of whistleblower importance to an estimated 900 students, faculty staff, and members of the public.

This particular Tour stop focused on the vital relationship between journalists and whistleblowers in protecting the public interest. The star-studded event featured noted journalists Lowell Bergman, Mark Feldstein, and Carol Marbin Miller, and prominent whistleblowers Frank Casey (Madoff Ponzi scheme) and Dr. Jon Oberg (Education Department), along with GAP President Louis Clark and FIU law professor Howard Wasserman.

Happenings

The two-day event kicked off at FIU's main campus with a screening of "Smoke in the Eye," the PBS Frontline documentary examining how CBS executives blocked the airing of a "60 Minutes" investigation on the tobacco industry. The film features former "60 Minutes" producer Bergman and former Brown & Williamson executive Jeffrey Wigand, who blew the whistle on the tobacco company's calculated efforts to increase the addictive properties of their products. Bergman and Wigand's story, of course, was the basis for the highly praised movie, The Insider. After the documentary, Bergman, Wasserman and Feldstein joined GAP's Clark in a riveting panel discussion on whistleblowing, investigative journalism, and corporate influence on media.

Tour Stop features Dr. Susan Wood, Cathy Harris, Ken Kendrick

(Washington, DC) – On February 22, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) brings its program, the American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability, to Rutgers-Newark. The stop will feature prominent whistleblowers Dr. Susan Wood (FDA/"Plan B" Whistleblower), Cathy Harris (US Customs whistleblower) and Kenneth Kendrick (peanut butter/Salmonella scandal).

GAP's Tour is a dynamic campaign aimed at educating university students and the general public about the phenomenon and practice of whistleblowing. This Rutgers-Newark stop is highlighted by a panel presentation featuring high profile whistleblowers discussing their experiences. This stop is being sponsored by the Rutgers School of Law-Newark, and the Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration.

The Rutgers stop features an all-star panel of whistleblowers for the key presentation, including:

• Dr. Susan Wood served as US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Assistant Commissioner for Women's Health for five years. When she concluded in 2005 that Bush administration politics – not medical concerns – was tying up the approval of the "Plan-B" contraceptive, she resigned her position and spoke out forcefully on the principle that the FDA should exclusively exist to serve public health, not the agenda of the "pro-life movement." This very topic was back in the news last December, when the US Department of Health & Human Services disagreed with the FDA recommendation to allow the selling of the "Plan B" contraceptive over-the-counter to women aged 16 and younger.

The GAP program, the American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability, comes to Tulane University on Tuesday, February 28. This Tour stop will feature a panel presentation by prominent national and New Orleans-based speakers discussing how whistleblowers promote transparency and accountability in key issues facing local residents, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, police accountability, and the BP oil spill disaster. This event is sponsored by GAP, Tulane University, and the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance (NOCOG).

GAP's Tour is a dynamic campaign aimed at educating the public – particularly America's university students – about the phenomenon and practice of whistleblowing. Many stops, including Tulane, feature an in-depth presentation that explains how whistleblowers have furthered public interest causes around the local area.

A full description of the Tour can be found at www.WhistleblowerTour.org.

GAP Legal Director and panelist Tom Devine, who has been protecting whistleblowers at GAP for nearly 35 years, stated: "From Katrina to the Gulf oil spill, there are many courageous whistleblowers around New Orleans who need to be heard and protected. Truth-tellers are the best resource for Louisianans to regain control of their future."

GAP's fourth stop on its 2011-2012 American Whistleblower Tour took place last Monday (January 30) at Auburn University (AU) in Auburn, Alabama. Hosted by the School of Accountancy and the College of Business, I was joined by two incredible whistleblowers who disclosed serious wrongdoing in the corporate sector: Sherron Watkins, famous for blowing the whistle on accounting fraud that brought down the Enron Corporation in 2001, and Kenneth Kendrick, who in 2008 exposed unsanitary conditions and corrupt testing practices at the Plainview, Texas plant of Peanut Corporation of America that contributed to the deaths of at least eight people and sickened hundreds more from salmonella poisoning, resulting in the largest food recall in history.

The panel presentation (the centerpiece of most Tour stops) was sensational, gathering an enthusiastic crowd of more than 350 students, faculty and friends. Warmly welcomed by Dean Hardgrave of the College of Business and by our host, Dr. Sarah Stanwick (who invited us to campus and coordinated our visit), I opened the event asking for a show of hands of how many people had ever seen or been asked to do something they thought was wrong, unethical, illegal or dangerous. Nearly everyone in the room raised their hands. When asked how many chose to speak up about the problem, very few hands stayed up.

And that's a primary thrust of our Tour – to introduce collegiate students, who are America's incoming workforce, to the concept of whistleblowing. After defining the term, I offered numerous examples of how whistleblower disclosures protected the public interest (removing unsafe pharmaceuticals from the market; halting nuclear reactors because of serious design flaws; stopping the practice of repackaging spoiled meat for resale, etc).