Whole list of other things i could go into a very talented woman and writer which has the support of an ambivalence to whistleblowers. [applause] before we get started i want you to be aware there has been some controversy of members of our community feel very strongly this should not go on. We are an independent bookstore we believe very strongly its our responsibility to make sure both authors and books are represented regardless of the ideas of the values that they have. And we hope if there is disagreement we can have those discussions in a respectful and civilized manner. [inaudible] [laughter] we will get to that. That you are no stranger to protest you got involved in one sometime ago. Thats correct. [laughter] i am a fierce defender of freedom of expression and i believe the problem with this country is we are not having called factbased discussions so actually i was injured for agreeing to engage through an influential figure in republican circles. I thought that my students here have alternative points of view i ended up with whiplash and a concussion. But i want you to understand as a professor my job is to speak the truth. Not to spin. To listen to perspectives and try to say my version of the truth. So i hope you can listen to what i have to say about whistleblowers and keep that in mind. People think that is biased or unfair than we will have a discussion about that. You have been talking about whistleblowing for some time. What is or what isnt . You have to find that very narrowly. There is some confusion about the public today given we have a 24 7 new cycle. And their is on it is anxiety provoking. But whistleblowing is not a partisan issue it is an american issue. In america has the first whistleblower protection law in the world passing in 1778 before the constitution of the United States is w ratified. But to understand it is not partisan to think it is an attempt to be honest to review what needs to come to life. And with the Continental Congress decision they were very clear that this wasnt a. Right it was a duty. They say its your duty as a Public Servant to report misconduct the matter how you see it. And thats because we felt strongly that britain was a corrupt democracy those that believed associated to rule of law did not apply to them to the colonies they were on equal. There is a very strong sense to corrupt britain and that would be founded in a way to let corruption flourish. Thats why they had this law that basically stands against using your Public Office. Would you like a story . Because the first commodore of u. S. Navy named mister hopkins he was an unsavory character all around. From rhode island. Involved in the slave trade. Most of Rhode Islands economy at the time so he tortured british prisoners of war which is extraordinary when you think about it is unacceptable even during wartime human torture the enemy. So i did research to dig around in the real thing going on is that hopkins was abusing his Public Office for private gain. George washington was sending him to Chesapeake Bay and hopkins to take the navy somewhere else. He took them to the bahamas. Because this was lucrative for him personally. So i think its fascinating in the first law Congress Passed there is this issue of Public Officials are supposed to serve their country and not themselves if you getry confused about that you dont go anyplace good. So congress wound up passing the law and got those founders that were in jail they paid their legal fees and said all the records which is why we tell the story today. Its fascinating. And that it come so early in history but despite this law and weaving into ourat own fabric whistleblowers are perceived as tattle tales at the best and at worst traders. Why are we so conflicted about this . There are number of layers to that question and its important to realizer america is distinctive that make sense of the democracy. So whistleblowers are looking at the status quo to say no. This is not acceptable and people dont agree with them. So its a challenging thing even in the United States but in other countries that are not democracies for like the Czech Republic to find out it has negative connotations that you are a snitch because the regime is oppressive and to be upheld by whistleblowing. But even in america we have problems with whistleblowers. Despite what they have gained over the years its terribly high nobody sets out to be a whistleblower to be driven by conscience but they dont know what will line up against them. If it for one occurs again and again but if they just report this wrongdoing that the person will say oh my god i cant believe thats going on this do something about it but if the leader hears that goes against the principle or Company Norms you will never hear about that externally but whistleblowers find the powerful dont want to hear this. So for a variety of reasons they start off idealistic and then wind up quite jaded because they lose everything time and time again. Is the paradox of whistleblowing we do celebrate them in theory thats why democrats and republicans unanimously agreed to turn the whistleblower complaint over to congress. Practice is another matter entirely when the attention sgoes elsewhere thats when they lose everything theirar careers, jobs, families that are retaliated against it has occurred again and against we need to do better by whistleblowers in my view to make you finish the manuscript then you get into post 9 11 and Edward Snowden and then went back to the drawing board. Its almost as if there was an earlier simple or world of whistleblowing that changesin as it becomes more complicated. What is changing . A couple of things. As john points out i had a whole draft of this book completed than the snowden case happened i started to look and i thought oh my god ive got to start over. [laughter] ive got to figure it out. So this went through five manuscript iterations and hundreds of pages of carefully polished on the cutting room floor im the terrible example of how to write a book but i do like the finished product. But two things have changed. The first and the reason i divided into two parts before thee internet and after the internet because that has all kinds of effects we can talk about. But the other is the National Security state develops after world war ii. Which makes us different from any other country we have enormous National Security state and Intelligence Community more than any other free nation. So thats where we have the whole idea of the National Security whistleblower which is problematich for all sorts of reasons so then to break the rules to uphold the rule of law. Thats very complicated. I was thinking of that line out of the vietnam war you have to destroy it to save it. Basically they have to criminalize themselves to protect our rights to privacy. The other thing that changes is the whole issue of support of a National Security system which further cloudsd the issue to be closed off to scrutiny. Actually that is right from my previous book was called one nation unders contract and looking at the privatization of americas National Security that contractors are increasingly used instead of government employeesea is a problem with National Security and there is a belief that it will be better to be more efficient and get the job done and all of these things not necessarily our true but then i realize to blur the line between businessss and government. And that led to the influence economy and also this revolving door and for the private sector 30 years ago it used to be called selling out. Now its called cashing in. To do the right thing for the American People and not to serve d themselves. Even the founders wouldnt have done that. Thats why they created the separation of powers. Thats what they do is they keep honest when the system is functioning. The issue of course that raises is whistleblowers from these private sectors are not protected so that in itself discourages whistleblowing and sets up the chamber. The scrutiny is there. It creates additional problems. I dont want to bore you with a survey of the walls around whistleblowing. But i will tell you we have a patchwork thats developed over time as an old concept and you need a lawyer ifur you are a whistleblower to navigate so itst a real problem and then with contractors remember edward is a contractor at the time, so they dont have protection. There is a weird situation where they are doing the work of government, so then also National Security creates a potentially problematic mix because i trust, i want to believe the Intelligence Committee is serving to keep us safe at the same time from what ive learned to ensure that that happens. I think people were startled by the pervasiveness of the scrutiny. That is what hed revealed if you followed that story. I interviewed the entire group because i wanted their perspective. Theres always two sides toaid every story. What i try to do, i try to let the officials speak for themselves, so general alexander is a character in the book and i try to let the whistleblowers speak for themselves and get what the truth is but enough information to judge for yourselves. But snowden is an interesting case. He showed that after 9 11, they adopted procedures because we had been attacked on american soil, world trade centers, the pentagon, the plane that went down in pennsylvania. We want to prevent w another t attack. What happened is those emergency procedures became business as usual without any public discussion or whether or not it was something the American People wanted. He forced the discussion and as a result coming and got change. He may one day be considered americas first traitor patriot because he provided a Public Service but also broke the law to do it. You mentioned the internet earlier and one of the issues it seems to me Technology Specific is moving so quickly that the normal democratic processes dont have the ability to keep up and legislate. Part of what you are seeing with Technology Today and maybe some of you are in the field and know this, the technology has outstripped the law. Some of it may not be in our best interest as a country but that is what the nsa was doing. They were not breaking the law. They were exploring loopholes in the wall law but have since been addressed. What you write about seems to be predictive in the ways of dealing with things some of what we see today, and it sounds partisan but as if this was almost predetermined given the way things were flowing. That is the interesting thing about the book because it went into production a year ago, and i wrote it as an exercise to understand the history of what was going on as a context to better understand it andb it was clear to me given my experience in the Intelligence Community and the nsa whistleblowers that they were behaving in a really dnusual way with this president. And if they were doing it i could see because they saw the president as a National Security threat. They dont normally behave this way. If you know anybody in the committee, they are obsessed and wont even tell you what they do. I dont know if any of you have friends or family in the community for National Security jobs. They really believe that even the most innocuous piece of information could be that missing jigsaw puzzle piece thats going to allow them to put something together that could allow them to undermine ite National Security of the United States. So its totally unlike them to be leaking as they are doing but they are doing it because they swear an oath like the president to protect, preserve and defend the constitution of the united t states and i think they see his behavior as somehow violating everything theyve given their life for because if you are in government, you are not doing it for thee money. You can make a lot more money somewhere else. So, they really believe they are serving the country and their job is to provide the unvarnished truth to politicia politicians. And then the politicians decide what to do with it and that is what they see being turned on its head. Its, i mean, Red Flag Alert when Campaign Officials are having repeated interactions with russian operatives. Thats never happened before in dhe United States, and they have a loss that you can understand it better. Its called the two half rule. For that reason when they see Campaign Officials meeting with russian operatives this red alert goes off and they want to investigate it. Im happy to elaborate further on why it isnt. So thats the way that i see it. How do you balance the need of the full transparency. What youve got to look up with the whistleblowers not the motives. L i think some of the interestig people, but they are not ordinary people what is it that they are revealing and then youve got to investigate and see whether they are saying makes sense. Then you will see the vast overwhelming majority dont see the light of day especially in the Intelligence Community and they dont get settled in their favor. Mostre of them are thrown out. So its not something that is easy to do and when it rises to the level somebody says it is urgent and credible when you place things in Historical Context or comparative context comparing this to other countries, you feel very hopeful about where we are and where we can go. I can go through some of the examples if people are interested that there have been the circumstances before befort what corruption is and the abuse of power is. If you look at the first gilded age for example that is a totally corrupt democrat who basically is handing the money out to his cronies and finally get the whistleblowing on him for that and he built most of new york city during that peri period. The public it was an outcry. That is what is distinctive of the situation. In my view we are kind ofat confused about what is shameful and what is not. Its partially just because of the privatization that has gotten us confused about how you served your country. You are serving yourself rather than thinking about the country and the American People to the common good atlarge. If you look at the Inspector General system through which this miraculous complaint rose, that was built in response to richard nixon, people look around and say how can we prevent that from happening again. What law can be passed to ensure that it doesnt and that is why Congress Passedn the act of watergate is to try to prevent the recurrence of the same thi thing. It is enemy of the people and it tells the story of a whistleblower who in the end basically loses everything but les final line resonates with a lot of whistleblowers and its a sort of confused statement of but i was right and it doesnt seem to have made a difference. What they were doing was wrong. There is a sense of right and wrong. I didnt have a choice. There were a lot of people who were not like that. Lo im going to send you to the mercy of the audience. The microphone will find you with questions so they can get it on tape. Just raise your hand and she will come and find you. You can ask me anything. I was wondering if you came across whistleblowers who were not right who maybe have their own sense of whats right or wrong and it may not agree with what the law is. So, what is your thought on that . That is a good question and the way it is, you have to have a reasonable belief that what you have seen is wrong. People can be wrong about that. You dont hear about those whistleblowers because the cases are investigated and you never hear anything more about it. You only hear about them when they turn out to be right people might think that there is wrongu but there isnt and you dont hear about them. We are humans. We all have our biases and misconceptions and some people are just plain difficult. You talk about defining what a whistleblower is and isnt early on i but very narrowly. I wanted it to be connected to the american tradition which is rooted in the rule of law which means there is a distinction between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood and we can look at the evidence and see whether something violated to see whether something violated the law or is unconstitutional. If you are writing a book today, woul, what you write it differently than you did g originally . That is a good question. I struggled for so long it was seven years in the making if you can believe that. That is a very painful thing i call it might exercise and revenge through suffering but the upside is im happy with how it turned out. You have to read it and tell me what you think because i wrote the last chapter in the past tense i make some suggestions about the things we could do but its funny i could see Something Like this coming because i know a lot of people think that the state is partisan and nefariously plotting to overthrow american leaders but that is in thet Intelligence Committee that i encountered in my research. So that is kind of what is going on and you start paying closer attention. [inaudible] [laughter] the thing that made a difference if i was talking with a screenwriter who made the film zero dark 30 because he was working on a television series. This isnt revealing anything secret. You will see it on. This was a couple of years ago, russian intervention in our elections. I got asked it was fun for mo as an academic to think about a tv show. Sometimes it fe