And i wound up with whiplash and a concussion, not because i want you to cry a river for me bu bui just want you to understand that im a tenured professor. That means that my job is to speak the truth. My job is not to spin. My job is to listen to perspectives and tried to say what are my best judgment the truth is. I hope you can listen to what i have to say about whistleblowers with that in mind, and if there are people in the community who saying is biased or unfair, lets what is or what. Theres spin. Its really anxiety going on s not part of an issue. Thats before the constitution of the trait was ratified. We to Continental Congress decision, they were right. It thats right. A citizen, as you see , that thy believed in things associated s were unequal and so theres ans day issue of Public Officials are supposed to serve the country, not themselves and if you get confused about that you are not going anyplace good. Congress want a passing allopathy also got the two Rhode Islanders who were thrown in jail out of jail. They pay their legal fees and also passed laws that said all the records had to be made available to the public, which is why we can tell the story today. So its a really illuminating case. Its fascinating, fascinating that comes out early in our history. Despite this long history and this sort of close weaving into our own fabric of what is right and just, whistleblowers today our best source considered telltales. Was there considered traitors. Why are we so conflicted about this . There are a number of layers to that question and i think its important to realize that america is distinctive in that they soviet whistleblowers. Its a concept of make sense in a democracy. We think certain ideals you want to see upheld. So whistleblowers or innocence look at the status quo that many people say is acceptable and they say wait a minute, you are supposed to believe in this or theres this rule. Its not acceptable. People typically dont agree with them. Its a really challenging thing even in the United States when we celebrate whistleblowing. In other countries though, in other countries that are not democracies, take post, this europe for example, you look at the word whistleblowers like in countries like the Czech Republic you find the word has totally negative connotations, it means an informer, you are a snitch. They had to invent new words because if the regime is oppressive, theres no ideals to be upheld by whistleblowing. So presupposes you got something youre trying to protect and thats what in america with trouble with our whistleblowers. We do. But despite a lot of the protections that whistleblowers have gained over the years, the price the end of paint is terribly high. Nobody i think sets out to be a whistleblower. They are unique people driven by i think a certain naivete, they have no idea was going to line up against them. Your absolutely right. Thats the story that recurs again again in my book, that whistleblowers start out deleting that if they just report this wrongdoing to their superior, that person will say oh, my god, i cant believe thats going on, let me do something about it. In an ideal organization, if the leader heres something that is against the rules or company dorms or principle, they will want to do with it internally. You will never hear about it externally. But what they find is the powerful dont want to hear this for a variety of reasons and so they start out idealistic and why did quite jaded because they wind up losing everything, time and time again. I call this the paradox of whistleblowing in america indie book in that we really do celebrate whistleblowers in theory. Thats why both democrats and republicans unanimously agreed to turn the whistleblower complaint over to congress. But in practice its another matter when our attention goes elsewhere. Thats when they wind up losing everything. They lose their careers, they lose their job, their families are often retaliate against and its a story that recurs again and again so we need to do better by whistleblowers, in my view. He basically finished manuscript of this book you said and you get into the post9 11, post snowden era. Its back to the drawing board. Its almost as if it was this earlier, simple world of whistleblowing that changes as it becomes more complicated post snowden in particular. Whats changing . Whats different. Theres a couple things that are changing. As john points out i had a whole draft of this book completed and the stone case happened, and i started looking and i thought, oh, my god, i have to start over. Because what is this guy . Ive go got to figure out so ths went through five manuscript iterations, hundreds of pages of carefully polished and sourced pros on the cutting room floor. Im a terrible examples how to write a book but i do like the finished project. Finished product i should say. But back to question i think two things have changed. The first and the reason why to buy the book into two parts before the internet and after the internet because thats at all kinds of effects which we can talk but if youre interested. But the other thing is that the National Security state develops after world war ii, which makes us different from many other countries. We got this enormous Intelligence Community unlike almost any other free nation. So thats when you have the whole idea of a National Security whistleblower which is problematic for all sorts of reasons. Because to be one you have to break the rules in order to uphold the rule of law, and thats very complicated. As i was reading that i was thinking of the old wind out of the vietnam war that chapter yoo destroy the village in order to save it. These whistleblowers basically have to criminalize themselves in order to protect our rights to privacy and the constitution. The other thing that changes is the whole issue of support of the National Security system through contractors, which further cloud the issue and close off to scrutiny. Thats actually right, because this book came out of my previous book which was called one nation under contract and it was a book on the privatization of american National Security. That is, contractors increasingly be used instead of Government Employees in all realms of National Security, and this really and he cannot of course an issue, both democrats republicans alike did this. There was a real belief if you can outsource it to the private sector, its going to be better on every front. It will be more efficient. It will get the job done more effectively at lower cost, all of these things which in a book i scrutinize and it turned out not necessary to be true. But from the book i realized we in the United States had really blurred the lines between business and government in an unusual way with this outsourcing. That i think led to the influence economy that we see today, also this revolving door between the government and the private sector that did not used to exist. If you left government for the private sector 30 years ago, it used to be called selling out. Now its called cashing in. Right . Its completely acceptable. This is a problematic thing because if you bore that line too much, you blur that line too much, government doesnt have purpose because Milton Friedman would say that to have a free market economy you need government to provide for the common good. You need police forces. You need schools. You need all these things, but we have really lost that sense. And for me that was a really interesting thing to reflect on after writing the book because you cant turn the clock back. You cant Nationalize Industries in the United States. That takes place in other countries. So what do you do . I thought we are trusting our elites behind closed doors to do the right thing for the American People and not serve themselves. Thats kind of the founders were not addenda. Thats why they created the separation of powers. Ambition could counter ambition. How do we keep our elites honest in the four privatize world, and thats i came up with the topic of whistleblowers because thats what they do. They keep elites honest when the system is functioning well. The issue it raises is the whistleblowers from these private sectors are not protected, and so that in itself discourages further whistleblowing and sets up the chain where scrutiny simply isnt there, doesnt it . That is something that really creates additional problems because i do want to bore you with a survey of all the laws surrounding whistleblowing. Not going to do that to you but i will tell you we have a real Patchwork Quilt thats developed over time because its such an old concept. You need a lawyer if your whistleblower to navigate that labyrinth. Its a real problem but then with contractors, remember Edward Snowden is a contractor at the time. The contractors dont have protection. You have this weird situation where theyre doing the work of government that they are not government, so trade secrets, but then also National Security creates a really potential problematic mix. Because i trust, i want to believe that Intelligence Community is serving us to keep us safe, at the same time from what ive learned, we need oversight to ensure that happen. I think people were startled by the pervasiveness of the scrutiny that was being carried out against american citizens, sort of irrespective of whether they were involved in anything untoward or not. Thats what Edward Snowden revealed if you follow that story. In writing whistleblowers i interviewed the entire, all the innocent whistleblowers including Edward Snowden because i wanted their perspective, but also the entire Senior Leadership of the nsa. There are always two sides to every story and i wanted to examine both and understand that. In the book what i try to do you will see i try to let the nsa official speak for themselves. So general alexander, a character in a book, i try to let the whistleblower speak for themselves and that i try to tease out of those competing narratives what the truth is. I also want you to have enough information to judge for yourself, but snowden really is an interesting case because if you look at what he revealed with those leaks and it violated the law to reveal that information, he really showed that the nsa after 9 11 had adopted emergency procedures because weve been attacked on american soil, right, the world trade center, the pentagon, a plane that went down in pennsylvania. Those are justified in my view. We want to prevent another attack, right . But what happened is those emergency procedures became business as usual, without any public discussion of whether the something we as the American People wanted. Snowden forced that discussion and as a result you got change. The patriot act was changed. In this sense i think he may one day, i write in the book, he may one day be considered americas first trader patriot. Because he provided a Public Service but he also broke the law to do it. To mention the internet low bit earlier and one of the issues seems to be that technology is moving so quickly that normal democratic processes simply dont have the ability to keep up and legislate reasonable, sound legislation to deal with it. Thats a really good observation, because part of what you are seeing with textiles today, you have this big lag. Technology has outstripped our laws. People are just doing. Whats permitted because its not illegal in this great berry and some of it might not be in her interest as a country. Thats what the nsa was doing, too. They were not necessarily breaking the law. They were exploiting loopholes in the law that since been addressed. Much of what you write about seems to almost be predictive in terms of the way that as you jettison norms and jettison traditional ways of dealing with things, some of what we see today that sorry if this sounds parson, but it seems as if this was almost predetermined given the way things were flowing. Yeah. Thats the interesting thing about this book because this book went into production a year ago, and i really wrote it as an exercise in trying to understand our history to place what was going on in that trump years in some kind of context so you could better understand it. It was very clear to me from trumps election given my experience with the inteligence community and the innocent whistleblowers that they were behaving in a really unusual way with this president. And they were doing it, i could see, because they saw the the president as a National Security threat. They dont normally behave this way. If you know anybody in the Intelligence Community they wont even tell you what they do. I dont know any of you have friends or family or in the Intelligence Community or National Security jobs, they really believe that even the most and oculus piece of information could be that missing jigsaw puzzle piece in the enemies puzzle and oculus that can undermine the National Security of the United States so it is totally unlike them to be leaking as they are doing but theyre doing it because they swear an oath like the president to protect and preserve and defend the constitution of the United States. I think they see his behavior as somehow violating everything that given their life for. Because if you are incumbent youre not doing it for the money. You can make a lot more money somewhere else. They really believe they are serving their country and the job is to provide the unvarnished truth to politicians, and the politicians decide what to do with it and thats what they see being turned on its head. I mean, Red Flag Alert when Campaign Officials are having repeated interactions with russian operatives. Thats never happened before in the United States, and they have a lot to see you can understand it better, its called that to hop rule. You know about the to hop rule . What that basically means is if youre interacting with any of the United States, and you are two steps removed, you are a legitimate candidate for surveillance so, for example, i passed the one hop rule. Im a candidate for surveillance here why . Because i am interacting with Edward Snowden who is charged under the espionage act. So they have a legitimate right to spy on me, to go ahead. I mean im not that interesting, but for that reason when they see Campaign Officials meeting with russian operatives, his red alert goes off and they want to investigate it. So it sounds parson, but it actually isnt. They are trying to uphold the system itself which serves both republicans and democrats. If we had some republicans in the audience who think that sounds biased or parson, im happy to elaborate further on what i believe it isnt, but thats the way i see it. In a democracy we think of secrets and being antithetical. And yet secrets are necessary. How do you balance the need of whistleblowers and full transparency against the need for secrecy . Yeah, its really important. We also want people to be loyal, team players. Thats an issue. Whistleblowers have been seen as not being team players. What you have to look at, not their motives, not the personality because they can be quirky, unusual people. I think some of the most interesting people but they are not ordinary people, right . And you have to look at the content of the complaint. In other words, what is it they are revealing . When they file a complaint its just a beginning. In the book you will see the past overwhelming majority of complaints dont see the light of day and also dont get settled in the whistleblowers favor. Most of them are thrown out. Its not something thats easy to do and when it rises to the level where somebody says this is urgent and credible, congress is obligated to investigate. Are you optimistic or pessimistic that men and women will continue to come forward as whistleblowers . Were at a watershed moment and how we will deal with this moment will become that. Im optimistic because you can see them about and part of, why its great understand our history is when you place things in a Historical Context or comparative context comparing us to other countries, you feel very helpful about where we are and where we can go because you see time and time again and i can go through examples of people that weve been very confused circumstances before. About what corruption is, the abuse of power is. We have righted the ship. If a look at the first gilded age, thats fasten, bost week. Thats a democrat, totally corrupt democrat in new york city who is basically skimming money and handing out to his cronies and finally gets the whistle blown on it for the he also incidentally build new york city for most of it. Neck. Interesting, things were getting done but he was completely corrupt. When that corruption was exposed, the public, it was an outcry. He was thrown in jail. He died in jail. He did not try to defend what he did. So thats whats distinctive about the situation is in my view we are confused about what is shameful and what is not shameful, what is correct and what is not. Its partially because this conversation which is gutless confused about how you serve your country. You can serve your country by making a lot of money and creating jobs. Dont get me wrong, but its not serving your country if youre a Public Servant and you are serving yourself rather than thinking about the country and the American People, the common good at large. Its something we can get back, i really firmly believ