An unusually deep dive into whistleblowing.
“This is the age of the whistleblower,” writes Mueller (Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, 2011). Beginning in the late 1960s, informants like Ralph Nader and Daniel Ellsberg “galvanized” America over wrongdoing, “from cybercrime to credit card scams to identity theft, from criminal college admissions conspiracies to systemic wrongdoing by automobile companies to wholesale money laundering and looting of national treasuries by banks.” Drawing on interviews with more than 200 whistleblowers and many lawyers and experts, the author offers revealing human stories about numerous insiders and outsiders, both well- and little-known, who have engaged in this “vital crime-fighting paradigm” under federal laws that provide job protection and financial incentives (a percentage of money recovered by the government). “Since 1986,” writes Mueller, “the False Claims Act has been used to recover some sixty billion stolen tax dollars, and has deterred an estimated $1 trillion more in fraud.” Whether writing about drug companies that conceal unfavorable evidence, hospitals that engage in needless admissions, or nuclear facilities that waste public funds, the author engrossingly examines the ethics, mechanics, and reverberations of whistleblowing of all kinds, emphasizing how bitterly controversial the practice remains, posing a clash between group loyalty and individual conscience. “Even if we admire…the whistleblowers’ devotion to justice, we may still mistrust them for their betrayal of coworkers, superiors, and the organization itself,” he writes. Animus against whistleblowers—who generally undergo scrutiny and retribution and face considerable challenges finding new jobs—stems from “the instinctive aversion” that employees who choose to work for large, hierarchical organizations have for “people who question authority.” Mueller also looks at conflicts of interest, societal changes, and the neuroscience of blowing the whistle. He harshly criticizes “national security mandarins” who abuse public trust for private gain. Begun before the rise of Donald Trump, the book deems the president the “incarnation” of the present era of corruption.
Superb reporting on brave people who decided, “It would have been criminal for me not to act.”