Whistleblowers: Honesty in America From Washington to Trump by Allison Stanger
Author:Allison Stanger [Stanger, Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Law, Government, Federal, Political Science, Security (National & International), American Government, General
ISBN: 9780300186888
Google: 7BGsDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0300186886
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019-09-24T00:00:00+00:00
How Snowden Became a Whistleblower
Conducting research for this book, I was routinely struck by the polarization of views created by partisan definitions of whistleblowing. Our nonpartisan definition provides a better lens for viewing the critical issues: a whistleblower is an insider who has evidence of illegal or improper conduct and exposes it, either to the authorities or to the press. In government, misconduct is illegality or a violation of constitutional norms.
The national security community’s zero tolerance for disclosure of classified information left no room for legitimate national security whistleblowing. In the broader public, suspicions lingered regarding excessive secrecy. Shared ground for a common dialogue about what is and is not whistleblowing, about which behaviors the law should reward and which it should punish, was hard to find in the Snowden case. Not surprisingly, his revelations inspired both sides of this divide to rise to defend or attack him immediately—rather than reserve judgment until more evidence was in hand.
To be a bona fide national security whistleblower, it is not enough to believe that one is exposing wrongdoing; one must actually do so. And here the matter of what Snowden actually exposed becomes contentious. According to Obama administration officials, the NSA’s activities had been vetted by all three branches of government and were perfectly legal. A panel of presidential advisors had tacitly agreed that NSA activities were legal but that serious reforms were in order. The executive summary of the panel’s final report made no fewer than forty-six recommendations and urged President Obama to rein in NSA data mining.26 The president responded to that advice in a speech on January 17, 2014 (the day after my NSA briefing), agreeing that reforms were necessary but taking minimal action. Days later, an independent executive branch board, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, reported that it could not identify “a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”27
But on New Year’s Day, 2014, the New York Times and Guardian editorial boards had already proclaimed Snowden a whistleblower. That description backed up Snowden’s perspective, although at the time it was premature. The evidence in hand that the NSA had operated illegally was not persuasive. But perhaps the Times and Guardian had access to information that had not yet been made public.
Whether the laws permitting those NSA actions were constitutional is another matter entirely. Moreover, that something can be done legally does not necessarily mean that it should be done. Although the New York Times and Guardian may have been too quick to reach their verdict, the passage of time proved them right.
Snowden’s status was ambiguous for some time. As we have seen, leaks do not by themselves constitute whistleblowing. Actions sanctioned by law and approved by responsible authorities cannot be considered government misconduct. In leaking classified material to the world, Snowden broke multiple oaths of loyalty: to his country, to his government, and to his employer. In
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