Crisis of Conscience by Tom Mueller review what drives a whistleblower? – The Guardian

The whistleblower occupies an ambiguous and somewhat ghostly position in the pantheon of behavioural role models. Despised by the authority he or she betrays, the revealer of hidden corporate or governmental truths is seldom embraced as a hero by society at large.

Its true that film-makers are drawn to whistleblowers because their struggle the little guy up against the establishment can make for compelling drama: two fine examples being Michael Manns The Insider (starring Russell Crowe) and Gavin Hoods recent Official Secrets (starring fictionalised versions of several of this newspapers journalists).

But the chances are, most people who have seen those films wont remember the names of the whistleblowers they depict: respectively Jeffrey Wigand and Katharine Gun. Even after theyve gone public, whistleblowers tend to remain shadowy figures, cut off from the industries or positions that brought them to prominence, but with no new role to match the notoriety/celebrity briefly visited upon them.

Another reason for their marginal presence is suggested in Tom Muellers expansive study of the subject, Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud. Many people who blow the whistle are able to do so precisely because they are not like most of us, or how were told to be, writes Mueller. Theyre not team players, not go along to get along personalities. They can be prickly and doctrinaire. They can seem obsessive, even unstable.

Reading this book, you get the strong sense that if the characters involved didnt start out that way, then they had every reason to develop in that direction. To go against the crowd and the prevailing ethos requires a certain independence of spirit, but to withstand the opprobrium, threats, financial ruin and sometimes imprisonment likely to come your way demands a psychological resilience that is bestowed on very few people who, as it were, look normal on television.

One obvious exception is Daniel Ellsberg, arguably the most famous America whistleblower of the 20th century (and Muellers focus is resolutely on the US), who also turns up in these pages. Photogenic and with a PhD from Harvard, Ellsberg exposed the US governments lies and deception over the Vietnam war when he handed classified documents to the New York Times. For disclosing the so-called Pentagon Papers he faced a 115-year jail sentence, but was found not guilty after a bizarre trial in which it was revealed that Watergate conspirators had broken into Ellsbergs psychiatrists office to steal Ellsbergs file.

Ellsberg remains the go-to guy for the media whenever a major act of whistleblowing hits the headlines, like Edward Snowdens revelations about the practices of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US. Predictably, Snowden and Chelsea Manning are both referenced here in a wide-ranging analysis of intelligence whistleblowers.

Mueller points a critical finger at President Obama, who, he notes, had promised to protect whistleblowers when running for office but once in the White House condemned national security whistleblowers more harshly than any other president in history.

Obama drew, or at least attempted to draw, a distinction between whistleblowers and traitors, but if thats a clear line, its one that different people place in different positions, usually depending on their own relationship to power.

Mueller is a little surprised to find that corporate and governmental whistleblowers have more in common than he first assumed. At their core all are concerned with an ethical crisis of some kind and the binding group mentality against which they turn. Perhaps the most troubling stories in the book are those that operate between the two gravitational fields of big business and government.

Take the case of Allen Jones, an investigator at the Office of the Inspector General in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One day he discovered that a cheque for $2,000 had been placed in an unregistered bank account of the states chief pharmacist. In the grand scheme of things, it was a tiny figure, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a loose pebble that started an avalanche.

Through diligently following the money, Jones discovered that a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson had persuaded the states of Pennsylvania and Texas to require all doctors at state facilities to use atypical antipsychotics for a variety of conditions, which cost up to 45 times more than the drugs they replaced, though they produced no better results and had more disturbing side-effects.

For his trouble, Jones was ordered by the office of the Republican governor of Pennsylvania to stop his investigations and, when he didnt, he was moved away and, after going public, drummed out of his job. He sued his employers and those responsible but the defendants were granted immunity, he lost his house and had to settle for such a negligible amount that, after paying his creditors, he was left with just $1,200.

No one likes a snitch, they say in criminal circles. If theres one thing beyond all others that Mueller conveys to the reader, its that those circles are a lot bigger than you might think.

Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud by Tom Mueller is published by Atlantic (14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over 15

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Crisis of Conscience by Tom Mueller review what drives a whistleblower? - The Guardian