Review of “The Most Notable Whistleblowers of the 20th and 21st Centuries” by Guy Boulianne.
I have a strong appreciation for whistleblowers, especially since such a situation is at the core of “The Curse of Dead Horse Canyon.” In the story, my whistleblower hero, Bryan Reynolds, dies in the prologue, leaving his wife and best friend to reveal what he found. This book tells the tale of real-life whistleblowers, what they exposed, and the price they paid for their integrity.
This well-researched tome provides fascinating background and context for thirty-four whistleblowers, some of which I’d heard of, many of most I had not. These stories should be part of any modern history class as they show courage, integrity, and commitment to do what’s right when something in today’s society is very wrong. The personal consequences they endured, that sometimes even turned deadly, is recounted, as well as any changes that resulted.
I’d heard of Frank Serpico, Karen Silkwood, Erin Brockovich, Edward Snowden, and of course, Julian Assange, in some cases courtesy of the movies that told their stories. Nonetheless, every single person recognized in this book made a significant contribution to society and paid a high price.
Some of the topics covered include the racist Tuskegee experiment, corruption and fraud in places like the Pentagon and New York City Police Department. Others included the Watergate scandal, nuclear safety and secrets, tobacco company deceit and overt lies, and dangers of asbestos and glycol ethers. Military atrocities such as the My Lie massacre in Vietnam as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; corporate corruption such as Enron and Olympus in Japan; pharmaceutical company lies; insights into NSA surveillance practices, harvesting personal data from Facebook to manipulate public opinion; safety and quality issues at Boeing; Canadian border security corruption; and Swiss and Luxembourg banks assisting the wealthy to evade taxes, to name a few.
The author provided a brief biographical sketch of each whistleblower, their connection to the issue they exposed, the price they paid personally for going up against the government, corporation or other entity, which often included jail time, and any positive results of exposing the data.
In my mind, every one of these individuals is a folk hero along with the numerous journalists who helped get the word out. Maybe the world is at least a little better or at least more honest as a result of what they had the courage to reveal. It’s frightening to think of what this world might be like without such people. Whether exposing government waste, fraud, and abuse, toxic chemicals passed off as safe, using people as guinea pigs in horrid experiments, or the plethora of other evils that some people and corporations indulge in, usually for profit, need to be exposed.
I know of at least one other whistleblower that I was surprised was not included. The man was Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at Morton-Thiokol, who spoke out prior to when NASA launched the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle mission in January 1986. He knew the risks, that the solid rocket boosters were likely to fail, but they ignored him with devastating results. He suffered greatly, including a nervous breakdown due to the tragic loss of life that could have been prevented had they listened.
I worked at NASA for 21 years on the Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance contract. I studied that accident extensively, even though I was in college in 1986 when the Challenger accident occurred. In 2002 when the Columbia crashed I was working there and will never forget the day. I worked on the investigation and saw the many flaws in the system that caused it. In a nutshell, management failed to give engineers enough respect much less the power to stop a launch or intervene in policies that were not properly vetted.
The Columbia crashed because a suitcase-sized piece of insulating foam broke off the external tank and collided with the leading edge of a wing, breaking off a piece of structure. When the shuttle deorbited to land, plasma entered the wing, causing the vehicle to break apart. I was part of the crew who walked grid patterns in East Texas picking up the debris.
The cause was a known catastrophic hazard that had previous “near misses.” The situation got worse when EPA restrictions addressed one of the components of the foam. While NASA could have gotten a waiver, they decided to comply. Formulating the foam with alternative chemicals never resulted in the same durability, ultimately causing the accident.
Both the Challenger and Columbia tragedies were caused by bureaucratic decisions that ignored safety, a total of 14 astronauts losing their lives as a result.
We are better off on this planet thanks to such individuals as the whistleblowers in this book who deserve to be remembered. See the pdf file below for the 34 recognized in the book and basic information on their work.
