This is Democracy – Episode 67: Campaign Finance: How Does it Work? How Can We Make it More Open and Democratic?

Multiple Speakers:        This is Democracy a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.

Jeremi:                         Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today, we’re going to discuss a topic that is ubiquitous in today’s news, but a topic that also has a very long history, a history that’s deeply relevant for us today. That is the history of whistleblowers, and how we understand what a whistleblower is, and what role whistleblowers have played, should play, and hopefully will play in our democracy.

Jeremi:                         We are deeply privileged to have with us the author of one of the best books that I’ve read in the last few weeks and I’ve read a lot of books in the last few weeks. One of the best books that I’ve read in the last few weeks. The author is Tom Mueller, and he’s written a book called the “Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud.” Tom is the author of this book, as well as the author of numerous other articles, another New York Times best-selling book on the history of olive oil. He is a highly regarded writer, journalist, and a former Rhodes Scholar, as well as a very well educated individual. Tom, it’s very nice to have you on with us.

Tom:                            Great to be here, Jeremy. Thank you.

Jeremi:                         Before we turn to our discussion with Tom, we have Zachary’s scene setting poem. Zachary, what’s the title of your poem today?

Zachary:                       A Voice Calling in the Desert.

Jeremi:                         Let’s hear it.

Zachary:                       A voice calling in the desert, vox clamantis in deserto. I have this image of a man in a suit and tie falling to his knees in one of those mirage shots of the Nufud in Lawrence of Arabia’s imagined Jordan, and screaming out among the hot sand of aloneness with unique sanity. And sometimes it can feel that way for all of us, strolling among the sandy trails along the river bank in the Texas sun. And to me, it is a stop sign on one of those endless 95 mile an hour highways in West Texas that shines red in the sun, printed in white letters.

Zachary:                       Nevertheless, to blow the whistle next to a crime scene and hideaway in the crowds of people doesn’t really seem heroic in our time. But at one point or another, we all have to be a voice in a desert, whether it’s humanity in a war zone or wacky remembrances of pre-war New England in a wheelchair in a nursing home. We all call attention to something higher than ourselves. And we all may be here just to pass along some memory, some decision not to stay silent anymore.

Zachary:                       And it is hard to lead a life of memory when everything is so distressing. It’s as if you would just explode. But sanity is a gift in a desert. And Vietnam was greed, and Ellsberg was on an airplane with all the facts in a file box, and Watergate was paranoia, and Felt was truth in the suburban parking garage, and the Patriot Act was espionage, and Snowden was complicated freedom with his flash drive. And they are unnamed, our anonymous screamers, still come commuting to work, filling their mugs with coffee and creamer in office kitchen somewhere near the Capitol. But they are history with all its blunt force of reality, crushing it all like a car crash-tested into concrete.

Jeremi:                         Wow, Zachary. I love the range you have there from Ellsberg, to Felt, to Snowden. What’s your poem about, Zachary?

Zachary:                       Well, my poem is really about the power of one voice, and how that can bring out so many other powerful voices that have been silent … particularly the power of one sane voice in a desert of insane voices, and how it can really lead us closer to the truth.

Jeremi:                         Wow.

Tom:                            And “aloneness with unique sanity” really struck me, because so often they’re, the whistleblower him or herself, is accused of insanity, of narcissism, and so on. And yet, they know or try to hold onto the conviction that they are the one sane person in this crazy group.

Jeremi:                         That’s so well said, Tom. It actually was my first question for you after reading this 500 page deeply moving history of whistleblowers. How do we differentiate a whistleblower from a celebrity seeking narcissist?

Tom:                            Yeah. I guess the facts are critical, what facts they bring forward and the impact that they have, or they attempt to have. I think ultimately motivations, although it makes a good story, we want to hear the heroic whistleblower prevailing against the evil organization, can be a big distraction. What we need to focus on is what detailed information, evidence of wrongdoing, or of potential human harm is being brought forward by this person. And this person can be a thoroughgoing bastard. I mean, they aren’t unnecessarily nice folks at all. We shouldn’t be concerned by that, and we shouldn’t be deflected by those who try to quelch their message by attacking the message.

Speaker 2:                    Right. It’s almost as if when the whistleblower is focusing on the evidence, that makes the whistleblower more credible. If it’s about the personality, sometimes the whistleblower might focus on his or her own personality, then they’re less credible. Correct?

Tom:                            Certainly, because it, once again, the point of the whistleblowing exercise presumably is to bring forward problems. Not to talk about themselves and stand up on a soapbox. Mistrust those who go on, and on, and on about their background, and how much they’ve suffered. And those people exist, of course. In the trade, among whistleblower advocates, they’re called the tin hatters, those who have a major conspiracy theory, or maybe in good faith but they’ve just got it wrong. Their facts aren’t good. That doesn’t make them evil, but they can be a huge distraction and waste of time. And sometimes they are. Sometimes would-be whistleblowers actually do cripple their small agency and cause enormous and unnecessary harm to their organization.

Jeremi:                         Right. Right. Now, one of the most extraordinary things about your book, Tom, is you talk about how far back the history of whistleblowers goes. Where do we really start the story?

Tom:                            Well, I started looking at this fascinating Lincoln era, Civil War era law called the False Claims Act. 1863 once again … once again, as in history, as in today. Defense contractors were robbing the Union Army blind, and Lincoln and several others said, “Right, that’s enough. We need a law that will stop that.” They passed the False Claims Act, which has this magnificent mechanism in it, the qui tam mechanism, which is short for “he who brings suit on his own behalf and on behalf of the king.” Now, that got my attention, because the verse is Latin and I’m a medievalist. And second, it goes back to medieval common law, and beyond that to Roman law.

Tom:                            It’s a mechanism that allows an individual to become a private attorney general and pursue a case on his own behalf, and on behalf of the American people, even if the Department of Justice or the U.S. government is not interested in pursuing it. That’s a critical forcing mechanism, because sometimes the U.S. government is too cozy with the perps.

Tom:                            That’s one very nice historical Civil War [crosstalk 00:07:27] with Abe Lincoln. Another one is 1778, the Continental Congress. The Congress heard from a marine who had gone AWOL from his ship to report the, no less than the Commodore of the Navy, Esek Hopkins, who had abused, according to them, British prisoners had been guilty of dereliction of duty. And this marine was a voice of 10 servicemen who accused the Commodore. And needless to say, huge risk to themselves.

Tom:                            The Congress did not punish them. In fact, the Congress praised them, celebrated them, by saying that… By passing a law, saying it is the right and the duty of all people of this nation to call out public officials for wrongdoing. This is very much deeply ingrained in American history. I would argue that the founders themselves had a lot of whistleblowing in them. They forsook their … or decided to go against their loyalty to their nation to create a new nation. Their authority to the divine monarch, to higher authorities, like justice, truth, all those wonderful things.

Jeremi:                         Right. Right. Right. It’s extraordinary, Tom, because generally when we talk about American governance, we emphasize checks and balances in a very Madisonian way. We see checks and balances, institutions not individuals, serving as the vital protections of democracy. That’s of course how Madison writes about this. You’re making an argument that there’s a tradition about individual wrong calling, and individuals coming forward to identify institutional corruption that’s as important. Correct?

Tom:                            Yes. The individual conscience is, I think, a central part of our founding documents. That voice that Zachary so eloquently mentioned will not be drowned out, must not be lost. 70 years of social science has told us, post World War II, has told us how dangerous it is to conscience, to allow a transcendent mission to create a huge emotive force, and an enormous forward momentum. That can be lethal. The individual conscience really is what we need to fall back on. So when I… All men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights. I can’t help but hear someone who wants to support an individual voice and an individual [inaudible 00:09:07].

Jeremi:                         Interesting. You make the point about halfway through the book, pages 199 to 200, that this is a characteristically … these are your words, “characteristically American phenomenon.” But in the next paragraph you also point out that it brings up deep contradictions. That there’s a deep contradiction in the American soul between the individualism you just so eloquently described, but also a sense of patriotism, loyalty to institutions, following the rules. How have Americans reconciled this contradiction?

Tom:                            Well, I think it is quintessentially American in the sense that it’s pragmatic. You offer a bounty in some cases to get people to come forward, and it’s a public-private partnership of the kind that Reagan celebrated and many have celebrated since.

Tom:                            However, in the course of my research for this book, I was quite surprised to learn that as compared with many nations, Sweden, France, and others, the likelihood that an average American will go along with the authoritative statement, whatever that statement may be, about law breaking, about war fighting, and about much else is far greater than the other– citizens in the other nations I mentioned. Once an American joins an institution, they are more likely to go with the program, to follow the rules of the institution. We fancy ourselves these sort of frontier, go it alone, very individualistic people. But in reality, Americans, we need to watch out. We need to question authority. We need to question our group, and make sure it’s pointed in the right direction.

Jeremi:                         This is the old warning that the great historian Richard Hofsteder had given, right? Which is that within the American tradition is a tradition of, quite frankly, partisanship, as much as there is a tradition of individualism. And we’re certainly seeing that today, I think. Correct?

Tom:                            We certainly are. I mean, our in-groups have shrunk down to a tribe, and everyone else is a potential enemy if not subhuman.

Jeremi:                         Why, Tom? This is one of the second big arguments, maybe the most radical argument you make. Why have we seen more whistleblowing, as you document so well in this book? Why have we seen more of it in the last 10 to 20 years than in the past?

Tom:                            Well, I think we see more whistle blowing because whistleblowers are more and more the last line of defense. We’ve systematically underfunded and outsourced a number of regulatory authorities who would ordinarily call out wrongdoing. Investigative journalism is gradually fading, or rapidly fading in our rear view mirror.

Tom:                            There are a lot of people, once upon a time, a lot of jobs that were detailed with calling out wrongdoing. At the same time, there’s an enormous amount of normalization of what would, in the past, have been considered illegal or immoral behavior as clever business practice. We accept conflicts of interests like revolving door as an excellent career move rather than distorting, which is really what it is.

Tom:                            We have an increasing cult of legalization and secrecy. If I want to ask a question of anyone at a University, at an NGO, they refer me to legal. Legal says we have no comment, and the conversation is over. All of these things, I think, have driven a kind of a hermetically sealed environment among the institutions and organizations that people one the outside are just at more and more pains to understand what’s going on the inside. Insiders know this, and a few insiders with a conscience feel it’s their duty to speak out. I think that’s why whistleblowing has risen in the last couple of decades.

Jeremi:                         Zachary, you had a question?

Zachary:                       Yeah. Historically and currently, how has and how does the media display whistleblowers?

Tom:                            Yeah. It’s the saint or sinner principle here, unfortunately. I think this does a great disservice to whistleblowers. So often, they are portrayed as these noble, courageous, which often they are, truth tellers, and people of conscience. Or they’re portrayed as narcissistic spies and disgruntled employees, and the usual dichotomy.

Tom:                            I think that really, again, takes us away from the facts. What facts do these people bring forward and how good are those facts? Can they be proven in a court of law? Those are the key questions we need to ask and creating this saint or sinner dichotomy does a great disservice, I think, to many whistleblowers. Because if you’re supposed to be Mother Teresa and someone finds a mole on the back of your neck, all of a sudden your entire narrative goes out the window.

Jeremi:                         Right. I like your point before, Tom, that you could be a far from perfect person, but still bring out really important information. This is how you talk about Edward Snowden, for example, in the book, it seems to me.

Tom:                            Right. I don’t know Ed personally. I read a great deal about him. I think a great deal of him. I’m not sure he’s the perfect example. But in order to speak out, you quite often must not be a go along to get along person. You must not be the life of the party. You might be a little prickly, you might be a little rules-based, might be a little eagle scout, which means that you’re more free from the ties of friendship and loyalty, and you can actually speak the truth. A number of people that I interviewed for my book, in nuclear safety, and in food safety, and in healthcare, and so on, they’ve found themselves very rapidly at odds with their group but always questioned the tendency of people just to swallow, hook, line and sinker the organization’s mission statement and not push back at it.

Jeremi:                         What do you say to those who — and many are making this argument now — who say, “Well, whistleblowers are really just a sign of the deep state of individuals who are trying to stand in the way of change, because they don’t like change.”

Tom:                            Well, again, it’s deflecting from the fact. We’re taking the messenger rather than the message. What are their motivations? What’s in their mind? Who are the puppet masters who are pulling their strings? I think the current Ukraine whistleblowers, at this point, is a great example of that. Now, it may well be that this is sort of a palace coup, the revenge of the Clappers, and the Haydens, and so on.

Tom:                            But until otherwise proven, what we’re interested in is the data they can bring forward, and the documents that they can supply, and the individuals who will be called forward under subpoena to testify before Congress. We want to know what they know. I don’t care what they had for breakfast or what kind of lapel pin they wear. I want to know their facts. That’s, again, just like Trump and company call them spies, I think the deep state narrative, while it may be true, it is a deflection from what we need to know from these people. And if it turns out that this is a conspiracy without facts, they need to be punished. My suspicion is that they’re very much telling us what we already partially know from the White House itself.

Jeremi:                         Right. And what about the claim the president has made that he should have a right to confront the whistleblowers? Should they be protected in their anonymity?

Tom:                            Absolutely. It’s guaranteed by law. I mean, his statement is complete poppycock. That’s high plains drifter conversation. “I need to meet them in the OK Corral.”

Jeremi:                         Yeah.

Tom:                            That’s complete rubbish. Their anonymity is guaranteed by law. They made those disclosures — well, both of them so far — made their disclosures under that guarantee. Now they may decide to give that up, and it may be given up for them when they’ve testified before Congress but that is a guarantee of the law. Anonymity in their case, and in many cases of whistleblowing, is the ideal world scenario. Because once you are known, the smear machine goes into full speed and the damage to you personally and professionally can be immense. Then your career is largely over in many cases.

Jeremi:                         I think, by the way, that’s another real strength of your book. You show how powerful retaliation often is, whether it’s a military, or intelligence whistleblower, or a university whistleblower, or someone in a state government. It really brought home to me in your book how important anonymity is to protect someone, and to provide them with the sense that they could do this and still have a life. Right?

Tom:                            Right. Yeah. The visceral, personal nature of retaliation is something that is really shocking to see, and it happens again, and again, and again in all of the arenas I look at. It tells me that that’s deeply rooted in human nature and in the loyalty authority drives that have helped us to survive through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. But at the same time, create enemies or potential enemies of everyone outside of our tribal group in certain environments. Those become so charged. I think whistleblowing is one of the most eye-opening examples, like road rage and various others, where this over-the-top reaction occurs.

Jeremi:                         Tom, we like to close every one of our episodes with a positive historical set of lessons, and even a positive agenda for our many young listeners. This is, as you said before we turned on the recording, this is in some ways a very depressing book. It’s a book about a society that isn’t able to protect itself unless people come forward. It’s a book about those who come forward often paying a very high price. What are the lessons that we can take from this for the renewal of our democracy?

Tom:                            I think more than any other lesson I got out of this book and having the privilege to spend a lot of time with a lot of whistleblowers, although their difficulties are extreme, and their ability to actually fix problems is sometimes limited, the fact that an individual, one person, armed with facts can step forward, take on a multibillion dollar multinational corporation, or an entire government agency and prevail is a really uplifting thing. I mean, the voice, the power of the truth is remarkably strong. I think that’s, empowering that voice further is something that that will undoubtedly bring us closer to a more just society. It’s uplifting to see these people say, “Look, I had to do it, because that’s just the way I am. That’s the way Americans are.” I think as one of my whistleblowers said, we’ve kind of forgotten how to be Americans. They may help us remember how.

Jeremi:                         Tom, you’re still optimistic that this powerful history will continue even in a world where people attack the facts as they often do.

Tom:                            This is another key question in a– when whistleblowing and the currency of whistleblowing is post-fact, debase that currency. But we all have a conscience. We all have common sense. I think we realize, a lot of us hopefully, realize that we’ve really gone way beyond the pale. I mean, my book traces the steps by which, over 50 years, the ground was prepared for Trump, that he didn’t come from Mars, he came from a series of historical evolutions that are quite clear to trace.

Tom:                            We definitely need to come back to honesty, facts, ethics, professional ethics, and all of those who have helped to undercut facts, on the Left and the Right, need to take a step back and say, “What is it that we have that has brought us so near to the brink here?” But I think that things have gotten so badly that a lot of people will get up off the couch, put down their remote, and vote and make their politics physical.

Jeremi:                         Zachary, what do you think? Is this inspiring for young people like you?

Zachary:                       Yes. I think this is a really powerful tool. Because I think something that really resonated with what you said was the power of the anonymity. It takes the personal away, and I think that this idea of the whistleblower makes all of us stand back and really think about what moment we’re in and how we’ve come to this moment.

Jeremi:                         I agree, Zachary. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. I want to encourage all of our listeners at this moment when we’re reading about whistleblowers to read Tom’s book, “Crisis of Conscience” published by Tom Muller. Really a terrific elaboration of many of the points that Tom made here. Zachary, thank you for your poem. Thank you for joining us on This is Democracy.

Speaker 3:                    This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development studio, and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

Speaker 4:                    The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at harrisonlemke.com.

Speaker 5:                    Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday, featuring new perspectives on democracy.