Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tom Mueller Crisis Of Conscience 20240713

Incessantly for the last two weeks, this whole issue of whistleblowers. My name is patrick edington, im your moderator today. Just a few housekeeping notes before i introour guest. I want to make sure everybody have your phones at least on silent or off. Any other devices you may have whether they are smart watch, etc. , please make sure they are also silenced. When we get to the q a at the end of this event, i will ask you all to, please, wait to be called upon, wait for the microphone so that everyone in the room and our audience watching online can hear the question, and ill ask you to identify yourself to include affiliation where applicable. I think its fair to say that the anonymous whistle blower and ill continue to use that term of art throughout is just the latest in a long line of individuals who have come forward in the course of the last several decades to make various and sundry allegations about government and its conduct and, in some cases, corporate, nonprofit conduct. We can look back to Daniel Ellsberg and the pentagon papers, captain chris pyle, u. S. Army. In 1975, the nsa five, from the mid to the late 1990s and early 2000s, thomas damn, the Justice Department official who revealed the [inaudible] New York Times, among others. Of course, Chelsea Manning and edward snowden. And there have also been, as i indicated previously, almost a countless number of corporate whistleblowers essentially over the same period, jeffrey why began, of course, the Tobacco Industry and movie the whistleblower starring ruth el crowe, a takeoff of that have, karen who worked for dyncorp in Bosnia Herzegovina and covered the sex trafficking movie. I and, of course, just this summer we had the u. K. Equivalent in our theaters with Keira Knightley in the lead role talking about the gchq scandal and the United Nations to basically get dirt on the other Security Council members that they could use. The title of the movie, of course, is official secrets after the official scents act. So i think for a lot of people it just raises questions when we hear about these folks. What makes whistleblowers different. Why do they elect to act when others do not . Do the pathologies in Large Organizations whether in the government or the private sector or the Nonprofit Sector inevitably produce whistleblowers . Is Congress Serious about protecting whistleblowers . Try not to laugh, okay . [laughter] try not to laugh. How do protections differ from agency to agency and from the private and Nonprofit Sector. And our new federal Insider Threat programs which were started in the wake of Edward Snowdens revelations, just a bureaucratic smoke screen for cracking down on internal dissent. Well, this afternoon our panel is going to help us answer these and other important questions. On the very far wing over here is the person in the hot seat, tom mueller, journalist and author of crisis of conscience whistle blowing in an age of fraud. And, yes, he will be signing copies out here in the hallway when the event is over. So pose those of you who are here, avail yourself of that opportunity. He lives in the countryside outside of general what, italy. Yes, i am gellingous. No question about it. To my meet left is professor Marian Jennings of Arizona State university and the author of ethical collapse, a seminal work on business ethics. To her left is irvin mccullough, National Security analyst for the Government Accountability project specializing in Intelligence Community and military whistle blowing. He supports legislation and litigation within the National Security program. Now, youre probably wondering, okay, thats all greating but when are you going to talk about the whistleblower and President Trump . Were going to get to that. But this whole issue of whistleblowers and the scope of it, the number of them that we have seen over the decades in our society is very much a societal phenomenon. It encompasses government, the private sector and the nonprofit community. So before i will put tom in the hot sweet, id like to ask hot seat. Id like to ask our panel, i want to start with marianne. You have written and lectured on corporate ethics or the lack thereof depend upon the circumstances for decades now. And your book, the seven signs of ethical collapse, you cant google or use duck duck go or anything else without that book coming out. So its obviously had an enormous impact. Walk us through, essentially, if you will, kind of what you have learned in the course of your study the of this phenomenon. And essentially kind of the basic lessons that youve drawn from it and kind of crystallizing your book and the rest of your work. Well, i think probably the most important thing you learn is that the question people ask, why e do they do such bizarre things, why would someone in a company or a Government Agency do this, and what you quickly learn is theres a whole psychology to in this. And so when people do these things, they honestly believe that they are doing the right thing for a number of reasons. Theres diagnosis, itll be okay. And if i can, ill give you a simple example i try to use with students to show that sometimes good intentions get in the way. Im from phoenix. By the way, its cooler there than it is here today. [laughter] i, and what we had freezing temperatures two christmases ago, and we cant handle it. We dont know how to deal with it, and our tires dont know how to deal with it either. [laughter] and i was leaving on a trip, and i served on a nonprofit at that time, and we had forgotten to sign something for the irs where we all had to have a quorum present and sign it in person. And they called and said could you come and do this. And i said, sure, but i have a flight at 5 30. Great. So when i left my house that morning, freezing temperatures as i was leaving the neighborhood, the right rear tire light came on. And it said inflation low, check the tire. And im thinking its just the weather. This was my diagnosis. And i kept driving. But it started flashing, and it continued flashing, it was getting a annoying. If id had some duct tape, i would have covered it up. But i kept going because my respondent, it was a good responsibility, it was a good cause. It was to that nonprofit and those people. And the risk i was taking, i was doing on behalf of them. And i got to the meeting, and i called my husband and i explained what happened. He said, well, its probably just the weather. That was his diagnosis as well. And he said ill swing by on my way to office. When i finished the meeting, i walked out and the Administrative Assistant handed me the keys to my husbands car and said your husband says somethings wrong with yours. It was a commercial razor on the side of the tire. Kind of thing you cant even fix. I often say to people how dumb was that for me to continue driving that car . Go ahead, you can think it, i can take it. [laughter] it was really dumb. But in the pressure of that moment, you dont see the issues. Human beings respond to the pressure that is in front of them, not the pressures that will come somewhere down the line. And so if you are beholden to cause, you do make these kinds of decisions. And another thing that i think happens that you have to really take a hard look at is nobody wakes up one day and says, you know what . I think ill destroy this data. Nobody wakes up one day and says, fraud, thats the way to get the accounting straight thenned out. Nobody straightened out. Nobody does that. What you have are a series of seemingly inconsequential decisions, and particularly this kind of thing that happens. I have white collar criminals who have done time come and speak to my students for two reasons. One is i want them to see that theyre normal human beings. Not the kind of thing that youd pick out of the crowd and say, well, thats a white collar criminal right there. And the second reason is they all have a story of their initial trap. And by that i mean theyll be sitting in a meeting, and the ceo will Say Something like, okay, well, thats not really an issue, or ive looked at that already, and they havent. And they know its an issue, and theyve talked about it. But every Single Person in that room who knows that says nothing. From that point on, they become prisoners of each other. And it seems like the smallest of things. Its not the kind of thing thats going to be splashed on the newspaper, but it is the start. It is the adjustment of the depreciation. When they know theyre going down a path. And nobody says anything. From that moment on, they are prisoners. They know something about the ceo. Likewise, the ceo knows of their unwillingness to stop them. And so you have that combination and all of them will say it just keeps growing because they pushed the envelope to see how far they can get you to go along with it. And theres still another thing that i think is really important. I call it the iconic ceo in my book, and ive since come to label it after a 1993 piece in the Journal Business ethics called the bath seen baa syndrome, as in david and bathsheba. My students have no idea who that is. They dont know who Paul Mccartney is either, so theres a thin line of [laughter] we cant call it the david syndrome, no one would recognize it. Its not sexist, i just want to clarify that. In that we had the charismatic leader who probably deserved his position; humble beginnings. They rise to the top and something happens to them. I dont know what that is because im not a psychologist or a sociologist, but the things that happen to them is they begin to take on this air of almost royalty. Up approachability. Unapproachability. Nobodys calling them on something as simple as their travel expenses. You look at Jeffrey Immelt who had not just one private jet, but two. Doesnt ge make engines . I dont understand why that was happening. So, and then they dont stop it, and then you have the Compliance Officer having to go to the board. So that we get this iconic ceo up there, and they have no [inaudible] and not only that, their lines become blurred on that climb up to top. And i leave you with one last example and then ill stop because theres so many other things i could say, but i dont want to steal the rest of the time. I have a friend who is pretty high up in a company, and i have Great Respect for him. And he solicited some 360degree feedback from his employees. It was a survey but also open end. And the messaging that came through very clearly to him was this you are a liar. And he was stunned. And when he told me this, i was stunned because i dont know him to be a liar. And he was just shocked by this and disappointed. And so he went home that night and explained to his wife the feedback that my employees think im a liar, and he asked her why would they say that . And she said, well, that would be because you a you are a liar. So much for marital comfort. [laughter] and he said, what do you mean . She said why do you think the end company asks you to give so many presentations . And he said i thought it was because i was a good presenter. And she said, no, its because if the buildings on fire, you will call it a controlled burn. If the boat is sinking, you will say were taking on water. And she explained to him that the ever so slightly his standards on that bright line had shifted, and he didnt even recognize it. And i find that in so many executives. The best place for information, solid information about whats really happening in the company is the front lines. They have not been affected by that climb. No one is beholden to them. And they really do have valuable information about you cant put those goods down as sold because they were not shipped. They know that. They know when there is accounting fraud. And thats why we had the sort of long climb up there, and then there are barriers. And so we have this almost impossible situation to deal with, and i wont get into the fixes and other issues. But does that give you a good enough summary or do you want more . No, thats great. And we will actually come back and talk about what can and should be fixed, if you will okay. So thats a wonderful overview of the corporate and kind of nonprofit angle here. A review organization has been around for over four decades, unless im badly mistaken. Gap was started really in the wake of a lot of these standals that came up in the scandals that came up in the 1970s. Give us a sense of what gap is all about, who you deal with, your mode of operation, etc. Absolutely. And, pat, youre absolutely right, weve been around for a little over four decades, 41 years, in fact, so just a little over four decades now. And we are the Government Accountability project. Im a National Security analyst. That means most of my work involves Intelligence Community and military whistleblowers, but we have a number of programs inside of our organization that represent whistleblowers from the private sector as well as from the federal government. Essentially, when a whistleblower comes to us, theyll either come to us with a disclosure that they want to make they have seen some type of wrongdoing, and they want to report it to someone who can correct it or theyll come to us with a retaliation complaint. Theyve made the disclosure, and they have been hurt because of it. At that stage we will gather the facts, we will talk to supportive witnesses, we will talk to anyone that today know, they put us in touch with that has also seen that kind of wrong doing. We will educate them and guide them through the very treacherous waters, the minefield that is the federal whistleblower protection statutes and help them make their protected disclosure in any way that we see best meets their interest and best helps them ace chief their goals. On the retaliation cases, well do the exact same thing, and that will go through exactly how they made their disclosure, see whether or not they qualify for certain types of Legal Protections under the federal Whistleblower Statutes and regulations, and then well try to challenge the retaliation. Well work with congress, well work with the media, well even work with pat over here every once in a while to make sure that whistleblowers can be protected from retaliation at all costs. And so we come now to our author, tom mueller. I mean, i have do can you this off the top to ask you this off the top, right . This is your second book. Your first book was called extra virginity which is about the entire world of olive oil, the whole industrial aspect of it, how it goes from olives to your cabinet. How do you go by the way, its a great book. How did you go from olive oil to whistleblowers . I guess the common denominator is fraud. I really was focused on how tanker loads of seed oil crossing the mediterranean could magically become extra Virgin Olive Oil by the time it reached italy. And its a widespread fraud in the food system, not just in oldly oil, that i began olive oil, that i began to see. People buying low and selling high and obfuscating the passages and middlemen, creating products that were not what they said on the label. But i think that more than anything else, more than any other single thing why i tackled whistle blowing is because of the characters of the whistleblowers, the characters of their advocates and a number of other people, everyone on this dais included, who one point or another had been a guide to me. The olive oil story was a story the about people. Good guys, bad guys, mafia people and truly saintly individuals. Whistle blowing is like that too, and i really followed my instincts, my nose, my good luck and found a remarkable cast of characters, a remarkable cast of characters in a wide range of Different Industries and walks of life. Whose stories, i think, capture something important about the place where we are right now in our society. And again and again whistleblowers said to me, i hate this word whistleblower. I was just doing my job. And i think that almost orwellian shift that were going to call a truth teller and a person of conscience a special thing as if all of us cant aspire to that, that grabbed me in a way that held me hong enough to write a long enough to write a book over seven years. And what about the entomology of this term, whistleblower . I mean, because you go into that in some detail here, talking about the origins of that. Walk us through that. Well, you know, its one of those chicken or egg questions because quite often its not clear exactly how this, how this term came together. In elizabethan times, both whistle and blow could be used in a slang way for revealing information on the sly quite often to do harm to someone. Then theres the british bobby, you know, blowing the whistle when they see a thief running away. Then there is the alternate theory of the umpire on the field that blows the whistle when theres a a foul. No one actually knows for sure. Its probably all of the above, right . Its sort of a constellation of meanings. There are other countries where the term is bell ringer or lighthouse keeper or and i think there too the whistleblower may not be the ideal way to capture the act of conscience, the telling of truth, but were stuck with it because its so deeply embedded in the law now that in order to survive, you really need to choose and consciously say i am a whistleblower, and this statute protects me. So lets get down to some cases. Alan jones. Tell us about alan jones and big pharma. Alan jones. When we were talking about people whom its a pleasure to know and an inspiration to spend time with, i spent the better part of ten days with him in his hunting cabin out in the pennsylvania woods learning about the story. The first three days were fairly quiet, and then i think he saw that he could trust me. And i think gaining trust is one of the critical things in getting people to tell their stories fully. They have the cant for the nightly news story the, but actually explain aring why they did what they did. Alan jones was an investor in the pennsylvania investigator in the Pennsylvania State office of the Inspector General. He happened to find that the state, Pennsylvania States pharmacist received a 2,000 check in an account that was not rem registered, not officially remsterred, no official owner of that account. Thats a felony event in pennsylvania. And this check was signed by the subsidiary of johnson and johnson. And he started looking at what it was that Johnson Johnson and others, pfizer, novartis and others, were doing paying money to this man. Gradually. He was a great investigator. Truly impressive investigator. And he gradually started putting the pieces together and seeing in the Bigger Picture what was going on here. And what was going on was that these Pharma Companies were systematically corrupting the state Health Officials to make sure or that their highly toxic, extremely powerful and sec generation antipsychotic medicine was the medicine of choice for a wide range this drug is infamous at this point a wide range of conditions over which it was never cleared by the fda. They started in texas with the medication protocol for texas, and they had cloned that in 20 other states. And pennsylvania was the last of these states. Billions of dollars of overspending for drugs that, ultimately, turned out to be either ineffective or extremely harmful. Some of the side effects dont bear thinking about. And have caused immense harm. Ultimately, there was a settlement, a series of settlements thanks to alan jones putting together a couple boxes of information. And then trying to convince people that he had a story. Now, the plot thickens when he finds out not only do the pharmaceutical companies resist his attempts to out this information, his own Inspector General clamps down on him. So we have private and public forces attempting to muzzle this story. And so, to be clear, within in this Inspector General office in the state of pennsylvania, this office that is supposed to be part of the regulatory scheme , was this something that the office, you know, their own initiative . Or was there outside political pressure that was being brought to bear to influence this outcome . It seemed very clear that above tom ridge, who was the above at the time, had the governor at the time, had made clear that he was very probusiness, very antifraud investigation. He started, under his watch active files were being destroyed, anything that was closed was being covered up. So was there an actual link, direct link to ridge that was ever proven in any of this . And i ask that because in the kind of work that i do and when i did my whistle blowing thing, i was obsessed with documents. Always obsessed with documents. Because with documents its a lot harder for people to say, well, its hearsay, etc. , etc. , etc. , which is one of the issues that the anonymous whistleblower, to a certain degree, is having to try the overcome here. So was there any smoking gun, so to speak, with respect to ridge or was this handled in the ways where there was not a a paper trail, apparently . There was not a paper trail per se. The circumstantial evidence was very strong. He arrived, lawyers start controlling every meeting and files start getting shredded. So it was fairly clear set of circumstances, but there was no direct, no direct link to tom rigell. And tom ridge may not even have known about this particular case. He was a policy as the fcc has had problems destroying old case files, which is a terrible waste of investigative work but good if you dont want people connecting the dots, right . So alan jones had to fight off his own office which retaliated against him, threatened him, fired him eventually, and then he had to find someone to take this case that he knew was extremely important. He is someone, one of the characters of the whistleblowers, i see it again and again and again, has an ability to emphasize with the ultimate victims of the scheme. They look through the spread sheets, they look through the pep talks and the bonus payments, and they say this drug that were making or that im allowing to be sold, this is hurting people. This is causing harm. And the next statement that i often hear is what if that was your mother that was taking that drug . What if that was your mother . Somehow the whistleblowers pierce the veil of corporate or government, you know, boilerplate and said, oh, no. Actually, someones getting badly hurt here. So he on his own ring so any sans, living in this cabin which i stayed in and with no money shop around to the different attorneys general in the states where this scheme was being perpetrated. He finally found someone to listen in texas. And this wonderful, wonderful woman was part of an attorney in the attorney generals office. Who finally heard him x. He remembers that moment. This is a moment of bliss where and she remembers it with a certain amount of amusement. She said, you know, and she has this wonderful texas accept. Cynthia accent. Cynthia is her name. This guy comes down from pennsylvania, and he looks like walker, texas ranger, which is the popular chuck norris. Very hand many guy, you know . Handsome guy. And hes sitting here telling me whats going on in texas. I thought it was impossible. The level of wrongdoing that he was talking about seemed impossible. She, however, felt it was her duty to start investigating. She started investigating. They gathered 200 bankers boxes of data from the company 200 . 200 bankers boxes. Millions of pagings. Wow. Millions of pages. Teams from the doj and from her office spent an entire year and a half going over this stuff. And sure enough, alan jones was right. And she said its a tribute to his ability as an investigator that the fraud scheme that he identified with a handful of documents proved in every detail that he had described to them to be correct. For recalling during the pre tamperproof days it drives me crazy when i see that story again and again when they say that it was true corporate responsibility. And i know before there were other instances they did more harm and its the same thing we talked about. You have people that are aware of it. Its the big one in washington, d. C. That the sandbox like we cant have you tossing and these people operate under this and when someone comes in they say wait a minute im updating. They looked at him and said we are not the problem, you are because they progress in this world and theyve been recognized. Nobody is saying to them we should take a look at this and that the people that do they say to the companies how do you treat the people, and there wasnt a whistleblower but they say im a little bit worried about this because how do you respond to them, and then my next question was when is the last time you promoted someone did throw down the flag does you hire, fire, discipline how many examples have you found where the person putting a flag is actually reworded and upheld and validated . I found one and they were just idiots. They decided to merge with the company that was nothing but a gigantic fraud and one of their people in accounting found out about it and went to their ceo and said this is what theyve done. He had to go out there publicly and say that it was a huge merger at the time and he had to go out and say this is whats going on and we are going to fix it and he got a better position because they had to get out of there so and they promoted the man who had done that to a very high level position. When he first went to afford there were two things that bothered him. The next thing he thought as nobody is telling me negative stuff and one of his first meetings he said okay i need to know what bothers you and what keeps you up at night. Come your problem and she said no one gets out of here until i hear something. Finally, one dated and after the meeting he promoted him to send him through the culture that we still he wasnt really a whistleblower but its close enough. It reminds me of asking how do you deal with whistleblowers, how do you think that they should be dealt with some people say in the various organizations they are very important source of information you need to Pay Attention and capture their information and work on that and how do you deal with whistleblowers in the organization. No one sitting next to me in my organization is a whistleblower. They are just disgruntled, they cant see that its a universal problem that if they are very close to home all of a sudden they are threatening and may not be the ideal whistleblower in your mind. That kind of brings us back to Alan Jones Herriot i mean, so we paused a story wher the store gets the moment of validation when officials in texas say hes right. Where does it go from there. It goes to trial, very intense, plus very good expert witnesses to whom i am eternally grateful because there is a great deal of data on the case because of that trial. And after three days they threw in the towel and settled for 350 million in change should. A large payment to the state of texas to alan and his legal team. How many dollars went to the actual sufferers here that the people in the reform schools, hospitals, various other structures in the state that were given these horribly dangerous drugs. And so that was a real eye opener for me and also alan jones about the nature of justice in a corporate environment with the accepted outcome being a legal settlement with an exchange of money, signing of documents that allow both sides to say we are innocent or we are right and a feeling of certain documents which is extremely problematic. But it was a very good outcome for him in terms of setting the precedent and allowing them to National Settlement to go ahead and at the end of the day thanks to several other whistleblowers athatat the cost of 2. 2 billior the National Settlement. How much money do they make during the course of this wrongdoing, 25 billion roughly speaking. It sounds like the cost of doing business, so we have a major problem and that is a Success Story, that is a win. We have a major problem in terms of what we are allowing to be signed away. I dont want to health care side of this to dominate, but you have another example in the book that essentially involves a nonprofit hospital in Daytona Beach if i recall and the person in question who found an issue if an individual by the name of ellen we can ask her for the proper pronunciation sitting right there. [laughter] maybe we should get you a chair. Shall i let him tell your story . Okay. This is someone who came to america and did the american dream, worked incredibly hard, worked three jobs to earn her way. She joined with great delight. She was super proud of that hospital end of the work she was doing. She made her way up the ladder, promotion after promotion, and she ended up she did finance for a while and then ended up in compliance and it requires you to look obviously have concerns being raised throughout our organization in any kind and evaluate them to what extent are these credible and at that point, she began to realize that there was a major problem, major disconnect between hospital rhetoric and the Hospital System for daytona that were really good actors and the wrongdoing she was noticing. Which at a certain point in her lawsuit amounted to something on the order of a billion dollars. It was toned down to smaller amounts as the case was bifurcated, but at the end of the day she didnt want to blow the whistle. She did everything she could to not blow the whistle and believed wholeheartedly in her organization and she was convinced that if she could just find a way of expressing the problems that she was seeing a to the right people in the right way, they would say you are right we need to fix it. At that moment never came unfortunately. At that moment never came and at a certain point she realized i may be liable for this misconduct myself. I am a Compliance Officer signing things that say you may go to jail if you dont at a certain point her hand was forced. And accurate statement, was she on the line if she had gone along with it . This is what you find in these circumstances and i think you have to really ask for the psychology of whistleblowers. In my field they are three types of whistleblowers, there are the ones like ellen where there is i think they fancy themselves and they are accountable to something more than just keeping this job. They think they are accountable with her. I read in the book i think that it was her upbringing and the sense of loyalty she falls to their values, so there are other people that just look at it and say this isnt right and i cant live with that so those are the true whistleblowers. You also have whistleblowers who did it for a living. That doesnt come out in the book but in the nuclear industry, there are people that are known around the country they trave traveled to france ad raise the issues and they are of okay millionaires. As a utility regulator. We had protests every day because of the whistleblowers. We went with it anyway and i told the company i dont care how much you argue and about the cost, lets just do the date and we will see otherwise it is never going away and you cant build this plant so they paid 300 grand. They never found a single tool. They dug in the wrong places so it was just an exasperation. They are professional whistleblowers. And its real. I feel like saying where are these angels that everyone talks about, they are not all angels and then there is a third category and they call them the crying and i think they see things and they are like cowboys that right into the town shooting off their guns in the air and they are pretty harmless but once in a while they had something so youve got to listen to them no matter what. But they havthey have this reale of responsibility. So i think that the cross the credibility. Those two groups across the credibility. But i think that the experience is exactly the same and she hits the sandbox. I mean this organization talked about it and talked about it. They had the ceo and the associate general counsel doing altars to him as a dance. That would have been it for me. Never mind the ethics of this. But at the same time she knew what was happening to the pace and so she stayed and did what they told our students to do when you were in this organization, asp if you can be an agent of change because your first duty is to help them understand. So allen did that. She worked her way trying through every which way these are the risks and these are the costs. There is a time when you have to say that you cannot change it this organization that can only be changed from the outside and then im not even sure about that because they didnt learn lessons that went on and did other things and that is true of many other companies, so for your own sanity and for your dedication to personal values you dont care anymore but i ask them to at least honor this organization. You feel some loyalty to them and they have done good work and so she went through that process but was in a small limited group that are willing to say if this is the hill i die on the soviet even with everything on the line but it has to be almost a dedication to a higher order. I think there are some people like Richard Bolin and citigroup it was his face where he said i dont care and he never got anything out of it except a new life and shes very happy. His dedication was i cant be this dishonest. The phrase i heard, i have to look myself in the mirror every morning and that is a very powerful thing. Clearly they spent a lot of time getting to the point where they say i dont have a choice. The choice has already been made. She reaches that point and fortunately connects with a very good lawyer who also happens to be a marvelous deep south from Atlanta Georgia and extremely good lawyer and also extremely good listener and one of the things that he says early on and i think that alan would validate this also, she spent so much time talking to a brick wall, having people say i cant hear you, what did you say and shes trying to convince them there are major problems. She knows that you and the value on sanity almost. Am i imagining all this because everyone else seems to think that its okay. Finally, she found marvin who listened and listened and listened and said it was a river. I cant do his accent was a river of words. And you know, he was extremely experienced in the situation and advised her to resign and get another job. She thought the best of her coworkers and assured them they are going to be fine, they will understand ive done this for the right reason. That didnt quite work out either. But yes, they made a Wonderful Team and i think the support also from her husband and her kids, its fine to have good facts and good walls but if you dont have the stamina or the support group to keep you on your feet, they will wear you away and the willful before you get to the position line. That is part of the playbook. Speaking of wearing away, i want to turn quickly to what ive termed the wartime whistleblow whistleblower. What scandal did he uncover. He was another inspiration. He was the civilian adviser to the marine corps and have been in the marine corps active duty and a civilian advisor and was called to iraq to fix problems that the leadership are finding in the field that were not being dealt with at the conoco Logistics Base better known as the marine corps combat development. One of the problems they discovered, one of the big problems that wasnt being delivered was a vehicle Strong Enough to withstand these explosive devices that were causing havoc with the lightly armored humvees, and this is a known problem. When he arrived there was a junkyard with hundreds and it was widely known and have been for quite some time people have been filing urgent requests for a better product and it was already out there. It was a highly armored and carefully designed against landmines and other explosive devices. The problem was its already on the shelf and you undercut these big defense contractors projects for building new Armored Vehicles and those are good money, a lot of money so you are threatening this money flow into other products and this is the wall jim with an enormous amount of guns and imagination and a little bit that they were able to break and able to get the word out that people are dying and we have a solution. The solution is being willfully ignored and now we fix it. And this is the moment he made enemies. Yes. And at the same Time Needless to say, his wife became rather more complicated, rather more competitive. The reason he cant join us today is actually his story after long travail and a very painful moments is a great happy ending thanks to the Government Accountability project that has been able to negotiate and slain to the intermediaries between the marine corps and various other offices to say this was for the good of the core it saved many lives and he is now employed again and perhaps doesnt have quite the clearance that he once had. Hes now gainfully employed again and he is a happy man. This is a real exception to the rule and a real Success Story for his other allies. Its a wonderful story that he cant be here today because it would be problematic for him. We didnt even want to put him in that situation. So, you know, that is a Success Story. The killing and unnecessary dining spot and a pair of gainfully employed again. Said this is an example of the gap casework. We helped represent them and it is one of our biggest success stories. Thereve been a number of whistleblowers without the ied situations and this is still a problem that has not been fully protected by the dod. When it comes to whistleblower reprisal in the military services, that itself is a problem that has been existing since the military protection act in the 1980s. Essential the servicemembers have secondclass rights to protect themselves and other federal entities and private sector employees and that is mind boggling to me because these are the folks with the most important disclosures, they are the people that we want blowing the whistle whenever possible, wherever possible and about whatever kind of wrongdoing they see, but when they blew the whistle they are retaliated against the Human Rights Watch has a report that says something about 70 of servicemembers who bleservice me whistle on some type of a retaliation and they try to fight that retaliation and fight determination promotions and being passed over for promotion, they go through the department of defense Inspector General or one of the service Inspector Generals and theres a lot of problems within the system dot one of the biggest problems or causes of the problems is that they have almost insurmountable burdens placed upon when they are trying to prove they were retaliated against and that they need corrective action and justice. The rest of the federal government including the Intelligence Community to whistleblower doesnt have the proof that they would retaliate for certain reasons instead the burden is on the government to prove that they would take whatever personnel action they thought for some other reason. When in the military it is completely around. The whistleblower doesnt have many resources especially if they get fired. They have to prove to get the entire United States Defense Department that they were fired in retaliation for their protected disclosure, not even mentioning how little evidence they can already acquired if they are outside of the dod. But thats one thing we have been trying to fix for the past few decades and we are finally getting a bit closer. We now have some language in the house version that can help reverse and equalize the burden. We are hopeful. A lot has happened since the First Edition of your book came out in 2006 of course including the Financial Sector meltdown and other corporate scandals including this ongoing super max. What if anything has changed in the way that the corporate ethics implies since the First Edition came out . Im actually working on a different book because im looking at this and thinking okay i outlined the seven steps and each case followe followed n steps what are you not getting its like michigan state, ohio state, the same story. So one day i was cleaning my bookshelf and i decided to get rid of some books. A james bond of the plant, you know, a lot of books and then the 1980s and 90s management books were all lined up, built to last, last forever, from here to eternity, whatever they were called, and i started looking at them and as i went down the companies i realized these are the ones that are all in trouble and then when i took a deeper look, i realized these folks when they wrote these books, and im calling on the management gurus, they provided a path that was guaranteed to have the same kind of results. In other words one of the questions if you want to corrupt the people in an organization, what would you do because they studied all these failures and they know that without any backdrop on ethics they were offering formulas that were almost the titles [inaudible] everyone bought these books and was doing this stuff about the backdrop of ethics and so if you see in the book youve got to have big goals, what do you think people are going to do in response to that so they set up this system where you are almost guaranteed to have these kind of behaviors. I was reading an article the other day but the british history, and dont ask me why, but i was. They had cobras everywhere so they said weve got to fix this problem so they put a bounty on the cobras and if you bring in a dead cobra, we will pay you. It works like a charm. Next they were bringing them in detail so you set up these goals and people will get there. They might not be real and it doesnt matter on this particular plane the pressure was to get a plane out there thaplain out therethat was wided compete without a redesign and i remember an article where someone said what they are going to get is the result of what happens when you build a plain by the Financial Guidance to the engineering and it wasnt mine, but im sure there were women involved so i have to be careful about that. But i think what ive discovered is they might have seen the seven signs that these were multimillion dollar bestsellers and a warship then and you can still hear it today. I was listening on a corporate call the other day and i heard every single cliche and buzzwords that you could imagine from the 1890s books that infiltrated it without regards to ethics and i think that comes through in the book that fundamentally we have shifted as a society and the data certainly indicate that in terms of right and wrong. We dont have those lines any more that say this is flawed and you cant do that to patients and this is dangerous and you have to tell them that and we have shifted away that weve shifted in this intellectual way and they talk a lot about value, but maybe the word integrity shows up once in a while but not ethics. You have to have a mission and values statement. They want to coopt that. Do any of the three of you think theres any connection between organizational size for example and the likelihood of pathologies of the kind that we have been discussing, is there any data to support the idea that it gets more corrupt or look at what he deals with. It absolutely is a one to one if you go on a certain side the direct sense of responsibility and involvement of what i am doing produces this result. You have a change of command, chain of responsibility, a series of activities that are more and more disassociated in our ultimate goal and you have a mission and you can talk about your stock price instead of what you are actually doing. Theres all these wayas all thea numbers game instead of a thing but are we doing on the planet, so i think there is no question. There are some big organizations are not corrupt and there are some small organizations that are highly productiv corrupt bua general principle the better it gets because the frontline is more detached than those making the decision and its harder for them to get the information out there with barriers along the way and the information gets filtered along the way. The frontline sees this issue but then it is re characterized until okay i dont see that as a big deal. The nuremberg principle that you cannot disassociate yourself from and then at any rate the two military principles that someone cannot plead higher orders to excuse themselves from committing an atrocity it seems the Commanding Officer shouldnt be able to say thats a bummer but i didnt know anything about it. Those two things are clear in the law however those are the two arguments have always win the day. I was out of the loop and i had no idea and the frontline people say they were following orders. So, again, the association between the frontline and the managerial class becomes a perfect kind of schlock absorber for all these responsibilities. Thats also why its so important in many cases for the whistleblowers to name names when they are making disclosures in filing complaints especially in the government and Intelligence Community where its so large and there are so many people that could be involved in the decisionmaking process that its important for a whistleblower that has access to as much information as they may have to actually be a given more information to government investigators to go in and interview different people in a sense of the big picture. That brings me back to one of the things i really want to touch on a little bit. Walk us through this circumstance and the difference between the level of protection that is afforded to folks outside of the National Security establishment and afforded to people inside of the National Security establishment. It is night and day and a baby g your average federal government and 30 working at the health and Human Services at the social service, working anywhere in the government that is outside of the Intelligence Community or the defense apparatus essentially they can make disclosures wherever they want. They can go to the congress, they can go through the chain of command, the Inspector General, they can go wherever they can to be protected in making the disclosure of wrongdoing and the Intelligence Community the process is much more convoluted as we are all seeing in the past few weeks. Intelligence community and for usintheuse of contractors can oo to their Inspector General or the intelligence Inspector General. They can try to go to the congressional committees through their Inspector General but once again they have to go through the system that they are reporting against and to pause on that for just a moment with respect to most of the inspectors general offices around the governmen government particularly within the nationat particularly within the National Security establishment, most of the folks that serve in those offices often times and this is true at the cia are on rotation from different points within their own organization and so i was always of the view that if you are working in the ig office and i will use the cia as an example, if something comes up and the director of technology and you know you have to go back to the director of science and technology and you get past to do an audit or investigation on your own entity so there isnt some kind of absolute ironclad conflict of interest provision then you are put in the position of going and auditing your home office or participating knowing very well at the back of your mind if i come down with something really bad here thats going to cause problems for me when i go back so this is a concern i have, is this something that they are concerned about or something that you have seen come is a phenomenon and certainly i fear that concern. There are two concerns here with the joint duty assigned in square you will have people investigating their home agencies have conflict of interest rules regulations that make it more apparent and enforced. But thats part of a much larger problem i see which is the fact many of these inspectors general inside oinsight of the intellige Community Update their offices around different personalities. Usually th the cases have very little to do with the process. Ironically they are so obsessed with the process that we are supposed to follow as we just saw as recently as a month ago now the department of Homeland Security Inspector General gave a very rare investigation into the Central Intelligence agency Inspector Generals and they found that there were a number of whistleblowers within the cia Inspector Generals office that had made reports of the chain of command up to congress or the intelligence Inspector Generals and word repriced against by the very people trusted with protecting the whistleblowers of the cia. Reports like that are not uncommon whatsoever. I saw the same thing at the Defense Intelligence agency. In fact i believe in 2017 there were two senior official whistleblowers who were assistanassistedinspector generh ranking position and they made multiple types of disclosures against the intelligence agencies and it was probably reported that they won the sum of their cases but still suffered a lot so we cant really always trust the watchdogs. There are some great ones out there like the Inspector General that had a great case of point of the Inspector General watchdog that cares about whistleblowers and try his best to make life easier for them but no matter what, its going to be hard. What starts to care about the nsa management misusing the National Security act of 1959 which is the operating legislation for the nsa, he is interested as an institution using that to conceal waste, fraud, abuse and i certainly cant speak for him but i know he was the whistleblower on what has been upbeat person of justice Inspector General and he is. That kind of experience working with whistleblowers so i think they were concerned with some of the nsa going outside of the charter and they would trust them to conduct independent investigations. What if they didnt work for nsa but they were suing the nsa. We will talk about this later. We are going to run short on time unfortunately very soon so i feel an obligation. Ive got one more observation i want to pose and then we will take a few questions. So far weve talked about individual human beings. Are we aware of circumstances in which we have had more than one person in an organization try to move things forward whether they succeed or fail and in other words have we seen growth whistleblowing is not a thing. Certainly h. Henry action i could see that. And the way in which it caused such outrage among certain people within the Inspector General including john crane that he became a whistleblower and there is a cascade in the current ukraine whistleblower case we have someone speaking for a lot of people now. To what extent they wouldnt want to be questioned on this and to what extent they were equally shocked by what they heard and they were just afraid to come forward isnt clear that he might well be a Clearing House for a number of people who have a wide range of concerns, so i think that yes, thats why organizations clamped down so viciously on the whistleblowers because they want to make that stuff in the body. They do not want anyone else going around saying that something. You want to be someone struck by lightning, thats not me. Thats exactly right and i think that one of the human reactions to being told that you are wrong ibusiness conduct and is very barbaric. Thats what three tally years were doing every single day and especially with this anonymous whistleblower who made the disclosure regarding the trump administration, so far what we have seen is the president trying to find the identity of the people working with this whistleblower that were giving him information. When this whistleblower made of the disclosure of a print debate co conducted a review of the disclosure and that means the interview witnesses in every single witness that they interviewed is also a whistleblower protected because they cooperated with the investigation. When it comes to whether one could agree less or more i think when one goes to a government investigator and they Start Talking to others, a lot of people become whistleblowers and it does drive the Group Mentality towards justice. Finding other people in similar situations willing to speak with government investigators. In the corporate arena in the last several years particularly we have seen de facto uprisings of places like google. How would you characterize that in terms of the reaction to the management policy and contracting decisions . A lot of tantrums at Silicon Valley. We have a great deal of that. Something that i see as a trend in the corporate world is the retaliation has decreased because they are watching. What im saying is a much more effective strategy which is the slow walking of investigations and certainly that happens in the government im sure, but what they do is a very sincere Compliance Officers and many of them are, but they are powerless to move things along and what happens is that its a message so that nobody is getting fired up about the same time, it goes on for so long into ever raised the issue either anonymously or otherwise sees that nothing is done and they have that choice. In terms of the group i did make an afterthefact and thats important for employees to organize. They may think they dont have the trouble in Silicon Valley but in a different way thats very much a political kind of thing. I ha had this to conduct came bk one time after being hired by a defense contractor he was upset and said they make things they use in the war. I said that is their line of work. I think you may have to find a different one. Theres a lot of disagreement and you look at the Companies Selling mattresses so kids have a bed and they are protesting that. That does work from those in these type of positions what we are looking for here is those people that are saying it has to be stopped. On those issues we are never going to all agree on those who. Those in the philosophical life to throw someone under the train to save ten lines, i dont know that its palpable that i see that a little bit differently and there are more thoughtful ways to manage that. This is the former Washington Post reporter and also subject of the documentary 1971. An Extraordinary Group of literally average americans in philadelphia was really upset many of them are antiwar activists in the 1970s and were very upset about what was happening to the country and especially in vietnam and they became convinced that they were under fbi surveillance and they were right and what they decide to do was actually break into an fbi office in this case not the mainland but philadelphia and what was known as a Resident Agency back in the day in a little town called media pennsylvania. So on march 8, 1971 during the famous fight in Madison Square garden they executed a plan to break into the office and they took every single document in the office and this is how we found out about what became known as the Program Designed to go after africanamerican students, womens groups, just famoufamous theres an entire tt essentially. It was actually carl stern then reporter with nbc news who picked up a document used the phrase and he filed a freedom of information act initially they told him they didnt take no for an answer and ultimately they got the first 50,000 pages and this is what ultimately leads to the creation of the committee and so many things that flow from it after that so this was a form of whistleblowing. Its a commission to investigate the fbi i want to make sure we leave time for questions but i would be amiss if i didnt spend a few minutes dealing with the whistleblower. For the sake of time i will give a quick ear and a little bit of background. At this point in time we do not have a confirmed where exactly in the government this person works. It was the Intelligence Community Inspector General who got the complaint and the times ran a story last week or early this week basically claiming that anonymous sources. There is no independent confirmation at this point in time that i would say it is certainly plausible. The individual has alleged the person of the United States has engaged in what amounts to a de facto conspiracy to work with foreign governments to get information on some of his domestic opponents in this case into the series of allegations. You are hearing folks that are supporters of the president basically saying this is hearsay which is true insofar as what ththatthe individual has reportr the most part but my question is what does the law say about this . Do you have to have this firstperson direct evidence for any federal Intelligence Community context backs debate the know you do not and that is a huge misconception. I checked with seven different Fact Checkers saying the same thing. They do not have to have first, second or third hand information. They just have to have a reasonable belief that they are witnessing some type of wrongdoing. What that means is any of us are a reasonable person that would hear or see the things this whistleblower saul wer or heard would also conclude that it does indeed reference some type of wrongdoing. It is a low standard and the fact is the Inspector General took that disclosure and they didnt just give it a once over. They talked t talk to witnessesd reviewed documents. They have to give a good job because all that matters is the credibility. Once you lose your credibility as an Inspector General, you virtually have nothing and that is why this is so important and a huge misconception. If it were only firsthand information to protect their sources, we would have roughly 95 of all federal lawenforcement investigations righlawenforcement investigatiot now. We couldnt have an fbi or any of the tips. In the corporate world 99. 9 of them are firsthand if its ao that. I think that an pertinent orchid distinction and its also important to understand that before it was changed it was filed with the Inspector General for the first and it was eliminated. The reason i make that point is a critical one because there is nothing worse than a whistleblower thats wrong. For them, for the company, and ive seen it. In the corporate world that is standard for the people coming forward that actually have documents. The people that are coming forward are not just saying somebody told me this and if you talk to those people having gone into companies after you have this kind of issue you will get every story from this side to side when you rely on that kind of thing. Those that breakthrough its not just reporting when someone sat on a phone call or in a meeting, they have the documentation and that may be because the government had more protection from a whistleblowers and whatnot. There are some statutes but they are not as protected. In this case it is very problematic when they are classified. I understand that, but there is a risk i may be the only supported on mac. You talk about the presidency of the United States and i am not sure that we are not compromising something far greater. If you are going to bring down a company, lets make sure that its fair. Thats why its standard for trials and those type of things. [inaudible] let me jump in here because i personally have written some pieces scalding lake critical of the committee and you would agree that it is scolding and i stand by that because november, 2018, senator Chuck Grassley all of what im about to tell you literally just was not picked up. November 1 to last year you could go to the website and find he put out a press release and the documents he managed to get out of the intelligence inspect or general after a fouryear battle for the Central Intelligence agency had been deliberately and consciously monitoring whistleblower communication with members of congress and their staff. I will tell you that is exactly the kind of scandal that led to the creation of the house and the Senate Committee 40 years ago where i see the democrats going with this, adam schiff until this particular episode if you go to the website, go to the Committee Website with respect to what senator grassley has revealed, and we are talking about actual documents you can download, he has said not one word publicly, not one press release, nothing. Now, it would be fair to say on most issues i dont agree to this, but i also believe that the end of the day like anybody else, he is entitled to get a fair hearing. Now this is not a typical trial. That is what makes this different when we talk about the standard of evidence and all the rest of that with the impeachment circumstance, the standard is socalled high crimes and misdemeanors and that could be construed rather broadly. We do share your concern about the process and whether or not the process will be as it should be. Given the highprofile attacks positions Speaker Pelosi would be well advised to bring the resolution to the floor to the committee. And thats the process. And i worry about whats being lost. This one, i dont know the outcomes and i dont know the evidence. And im willing to say that. I worry that we have set up a standard for impeachment because i understand historically what it required and that its largely political and when there is a trial we dont even read to be set on the evidence. I understand all of that. But this is something that will in effect reversed the vote of 2016. That is the reason why the it well in my judgment at least require a high standard. To go to the flipside of this, this nine page memo was written by someone who in my estimation is an extremely careful and meticulous individual. The level of detail in this memo itself even without classified attachment is rather remarkable so from an investigative standpoint, this should be pretty much a nobrainer for anybody to go talk to this person and ask them to provide the names of other individuals that allegedly shared this information into them from a purely procedural standpoint, shouldnt they be focused on trying to get all the documents they can get their hands on at this point before they ever actually depose anybody. It seems like any deposition scheduled i see you nodding your head yes before any taken place i go talk to you about how they work. [laughter] thats absolutely right they would look at this disclosure and see that it warrants further review and that is what they do. When he got this disclosure he conducted his preliminary review and that is where they talk to the other witnesses and they found that this disclosure was credible. Let me Say Something that is a pretty high bar. I have seen so many whistleblowers lose in spite of the committee at that level. To find this and was credible is exactly what happened here. Can i ask this question do you think there is any diagnosis by as i mentioned earlier in our evaluation of the situation and in other words, what we talked about at the beginning which is the business psychology that you can look at the situation and say this is horrifying and im not really seeing it. They have a number of the im not talking about the evidence. Im talking about is it possible that in this situation emotions run high during this time in our political history. Is it possible that those involved might have a diagnosis thats why i wouldnt be conducting the investigation. I certainly have a love of bias. To save regardless how i feel, how fired as the fbi director is he teaching ethics at law school . Im not understanding that. I want to ask some questions here. We are going to go a little bit over. I know that you have a plane to catch. I ma am a walkout that it wil not be out of anger. [laughter] as i said at the outset, wait for the microphone to get to you and then please give your name and affiliation if you can. The gentleman that here, please stand. Thank you. There must be whistleblowers and unions for some reason you decide not to talk about. Not in the book. [laughter] the unions seem to be allowem not a lawyer to be accepted of normal behavior without retaliation and being aggressive towards members of breaking a leg or what have you. You did mention it, is that because of the other unions . No in fact one of the things that was interesting, i think theres a little bias there. And i understand the roles of the play. In all whistleblowers and i know if you look what was going on there, it was ridiculous and it went on for decades. That is something that can never disturb us, and if you look at the unions a look of what is happening with the autoworkers some in strike with distractions of all the criminal charges coming against the Union Leaders and corruption, that is where we should go because a lot of the reforms have come because whistleblowers have come out and said i cannot stand it or be a part of us. So there are no angels and there are no humans running in the 50 human run organization there will be problems with correcti correction, issues because were solvable as human beings. It is the study. My book is originally 1000 pages, you can thank my editor for reducing the rat reading of0 pages, i had a whole chapter on field whistleblowers in dubious was a lawyers, whistleblowers with mixed motives and questionable motives and perhaps bad facts, i think all of these things are very important and not to try to do to elevate the whistleblower to the hero or the demon just as marianne said, organizations of every kind have potential for drifting for the darkside and individuals within them, individuals do whistleblowing for all kinds of reason and there may well be somebody who has excellent facts but real animus against the organization and against their boss because they hate that person and they are going to get them, the report, do they have the facts or not. Drifting towards the men enter mentality and thats a distraction from the misconduct that their reporting if they are wrong, they will hear about it. If they are right we only care about the facts. I will tell you i will tell you i appreciate your question you have given me an idea for another event. Thank you for much for that. I live in virginia and we are the deep state, if you look at james comey and how he got away with it in 2014 the fbi, the special phone number and a special email address for any corruption in virginia. Did you have a question for the panel, we are already over. The whistleblowers were not Government Employees working whistleblower was Government Employee find someone to help him. They are the most corrupt you will ever find in systematic from the top down. Fundamentally if someone is not part of an organization. If youre dealing with a corporation you can approach it as a false claims act or the judges themselves. You have to go to congress. No one called go potty on the particular organizations. I know we have one in the arizona because we have to put those in the office and we have an organization that have accept complaints and those of made public. Theres other organizations that discipline judges but i dont know how corrupt virginia is and i dont want to make an assumption because reporting to them at the last resort will go public and once you have tried every single avenue, there are commissions that are available i dont know about virginia. We have other questions over here. Hi i am bridget, michiko Public Affairs for voice of america and with the d d Inspector General, one quick thing about rotation. The only folks who ever went back to the department were in uniform. I want to clarify that, when you come to ig youre pretty much there for your career and if you go to other ids or pie for other positions that is probable but the dig is one of the rotations. I per state that. The examples ive seen thus we have the rotational and the doe ig and libby investigating someone with the interview. These are monsters organizations. All right, thank you chart panel, the book signing coming up next. [applause] every year book tv covers festivals around the country. Heres a look at some of the events on the calendar. Next saturday live from the wisconsin book festival in madison which anticipates over 15000 people in attendance. Also next week and look for us at the boston festival hosting over 300 speakers. Later in the month to know for the live coverage of the texas book festival in austin. And in november, the boston festival will take place around the citys inner harbor. For more information about upcoming book first and festivals and to watch the previous festival coverage click the book first tab on our website, booktv. Org. Here are some of the current bestselling nonfiction books. Topping the list is late migrations, New York Times opinion writer memoir of her life in alabama into tennessee. Then in the nickel boys, Pulitzer Prize winning author provides a fictional history of the jim crow era and the civil rights movement. In Alfred Lansing recalls the 1914 voyage into america. The three women the female sexuality. In wrapping up our look at some of the bestselling nonfiction books according to nashvilles books is slouching towards bethlehem. The essays on america in the 1960s. Some of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch them online at booktv. Org. We had a unique