List of whistleblowers

This is a list of major whistleblowers from various countries. The individuals below brought attention to abuses of government or large corporations. Many of these whistleblowers were fired from their jobs or prosecuted in the process of shining light on their issue of concern. This list is not exhaustive.

Before 1960

Year	Image	Name	Gender	Organization	Action
1564		Andrey Kurbsky	Male	Boyars	Muscovite nobleman, a Rurikid, closely related to Ivan the Terrible, defected to Grand Duchy of Lithuania and soon began exposing Ivan's regime.
1777		Samuel Shaw	Male	United States Continental Navy	Along with Third Lieutenant Richard Marven, midshipman Shaw was a key figure in the passage of the first whistleblower law passed in the United States by the Continental Congress. During the Revolutionary War, the two naval officers blew the whistle on the torturing of British POWs by Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy. The Continental Congress enacted the whistleblower protection law on July 30, 1778, by a unanimous vote. In addition, it declared that the United States would defend the two against a libel suit filed against them by Hopkins.
1893		Edmund Dene Morel	Male	Congo Free State	English shipping clerk turned journalist who reported on the atrocities in the Congo Free State in Africa and became an anti-slavery campaigner. His revelations led to a strong campaign against Belgian King Leopold II's autocratic regime in his African territory, where the rubber plantations brutally exploited slave labor.
1930		Boris Bazhanov	Male	CPSU Secretariat	Stalin's personal secretary, who fled abroad in 1928, and while living in the Western countries, exposed many secrets concerning Stalin's rise to power and the Stalin regime. First book of his memoirs was published in Paris in 1930.
1931		Herbert Yardley	Male	United States Cipher Bureau	Cryptologist and Head of the Cipher Bureau, the first U.S. SIGINT agency better known as "The Black Chamber", who exposed the inner workings of the organization and its surveillance policies in his eponymous 1931 book, The American Black Chamber, after the United States Department of State withdrew funding from the organization's activities in 1929, citing ethical concerns. However, while "The Black Chamber" ceased operations following the withdrawal of funding, the publication of Yardley's book two years later and its resultant controversy in government circles caused the amendment of the Espionage Act of 1917 to prohibit the disclosure of foreign code or any communication transmitted through code. Though Yardley remains a controversial figure in the intelligence community, he was honored by the National Security Agency in 1999.
1933		Smedley Butler	Male	United States Marine Corps	Retired U.S. Marines Corps Major General, a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, who alleged to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives that business leaders had plotted a fascist coup d'état against the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in what became known as the Business Plot. In his book War Is a Racket, Butler listed well-known U.S. military operations that he alleged were not about protecting democracy as was told to the public but in furthering the business interests of U.S. banks and corporations.
1933/ 1934		Herbert von Bose	Male		Press Chief of Adolf Hitler's conservative Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen. He used his position inside the government apparatus to pass on information about secret atrocities and malfeasances committed by the Nazi Government and Part organizations (especially the SA and SS) to the foreign press - especially to Claud Cockburn, editor of the London-based muckraking journal The Week - in order to alarm the world public about those goings-on. On June 30, 1934, he was murdered by a squad of SS-men dispatched to his office by Heinrich Himmler, who shot him in the back of the head. Jessica Mitford dubbed him "Deep Throat of the Third Reich"
1942		Jan Karski	Male	Polish Home Army	Polish resistance fighter, who during World War II twice visited the Warsaw ghetto, and met with United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with the UK Foreign Secretary, and with the Polish shadow government in London, to report what he had witnessed concerning conditions for Jewish people, and the extermination camps. His report was not taken seriously by any authority.

1960s–1970s

Year	Image	Name	Gender	Organization	Action
1963		John Paul Vann	Male	United States Army	American colonel, who, during the Vietnam War, reported to his superiors that American policy and tactics were seriously flawed, and later went to the media with his concerns. Vann was asked to resign his commission, did so, but later returned to Vietnam.
1965		Meier 19	Male	Swiss Police
1966		Peter Buxtun	Male	United States Public Health Service	Exposed the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
1967		John White	Male	United States Navy	U.S. Navy Lieutenant Jg, White wrote this letter to the editor of the New Haven (Conn.) Register. He asserted that U.S. President Lyndon Johnson lied to Congress about faulty sonar reports used to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. White continued his whistleblowing activities by appearing in the 1968 documentary In the Year of the Pig. In 2014, he published his post-mortem entitled The Gulf of Tonkin Events: Fifty Years Later (A Footnote to the History of the Vietnam War).
1971		Daniel Ellsberg	Male	United States State Department	Ellsberg was a former RAND Corp. military analyst who, along with Anthony Russo, leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret account of the Vietnam War to The New York Times. The Pentagon Papers revealed endemic practices of deception by previous administrations, and contributed to the erosion of public support for the war. The release triggered a legal case concerning government efforts to prevent the publication of classified information that was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court (New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713)). Ellsberg himself was the subject of retaliation by the Nixon Administration.
1971		Frank Serpico	Male	New York Police Department	Former New York City police officer who reported several of his fellow officers for bribery and related charges in front of the Knapp Commission probing police corruption in the NYPD. Serpico was the first police officer in the history of the NYPD to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systemic corruption payoffs amounting to millions of dollars. The 1973 film Serpico is an account of his story.
1971		Perry Fellwock	Male	National Security Agency	Former NSA analyst who revealed the existence of the NSA and its worldwide covert surveillance network in Ramparts magazine in 1971. At the time, the NSA was an ultra secretive scarcely known organization. Because of the Fellwock revelations, the U.S. Senate Church Committee introduced successful legislation to stop NSA spying on American citizens. Fellwock was motivated by Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers.
1971		Vladimir Bukovsky	Male	Soviet abuse of psychiatry	In the Soviet Union, during the leadership of general secretary Leonid Brezhnev, psychiatry was used as a tool to eliminate political dissidents. In 1971, Vladimir Bukovsky smuggled to the West a file of 150 pages documenting the political abuse of psychiatry, which he sent to The Times. The documents were photocopies of forensic reports on prominent Soviet dissidents. In January 1972, Bukovsky was convicted of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda under Criminal Code, mainly on the ground that he had, with anti-Soviet intention, circulated false reports about political dissenters confined in mental hospitals. Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union was denounced in the course of the Congresses of the World Psychiatric Association in Mexico City (1971), Hawaii (1977), Vienna (1983) and Athens (1989).
1972		W. Mark Felt	Male	Federal Bureau of Investigation	Known only as Deep Throat until 2005, Felt was Associate Director of the FBI, the number-two job in the Bureau, when he leaked information about President Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal. The scandal would eventually lead to the resignation of the president, and prison terms for White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman and presidential adviser John Ehrlichman.
1973		Stanley Adams	Male	Hoffmann-LaRoche	A senior executive at Swiss pharmaceutical company Hoffman-LaRoche, Adams supplied evidence to European Economic Community regulators on the company's price fixing in the international vitamin market. The EEC revealed his name during the resulting investigation and Adams was arrested for industrial espionage by the Swiss government and spent six months in jail. He fought for ten years to clear his name and receive compensation from the EEC.
1973		A. Ernest Fitzgerald	Male	United States Department of Defense	U.S. Air Force auditor who exposed to Congress a $2 billion cost overrun associated with Lockheed's C-5A cargo plane. Fitzgerald retired from the Defense Department in 2006.
1973		Henri Pezerat	Male	French National Centre for Scientific Research	Henri Pezerat, working on the Jussieu Campus, detected asbestos fibres falling from the ceiling and created a committee to study and inform people about the dangers of asbestos.
1974		Karen Silkwood	Female	Kerr-McGee	There have been a number of nuclear power whistleblowers who have identified safety concerns at nuclear power plants. The first prominent nuclear power whistleblower was Karen Silkwood, who worked as a chemical technician at a Kerr-McGee nuclear plant. Silkwood became an activist in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union in order to protest health and safety issues. In 1974, she testified to the United States Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns. The 1983 film Silkwood is an account of this story.
1976		Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh	Male	General Electric	Nuclear power whistleblowers. On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh (known as the GE Three) "blew the whistle" on safety problems at nuclear power plants, and their action has been called "an exemplary instance of whistleblowing". The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant impact. They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from responsible positions in General Electric's nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal agencies, and overseas governments. The consulting firm they formed, MHB Technical Associates, was technical advisor for the movie, The China Syndrome. The three engineers participated in Congressional hearings which their disclosures precipitated.
1977		Frank Snepp	Male	Central Intelligence Agency	CIA analyst at the US Embassy, Saigon who published Decent Interval in 1977 about Operation Frequent Wind and the failures of the CIA and other American entities to properly prepare for the Fall of Saigon. Although he redacted all names, methods, and sources from the book, after it was published, CIA Director Stansfield Turner had Snepp successfully prosecuted for breach of contract for violating his non-disclosure agreement. Snepp lost all income, including royalties, from publication of the book, a verdict upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1980s

Year	Image	Name	Gender	Organization	Action
1981		Ralph McGehee	Male	Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)	Ralph Walter McGehee (born 1928) served for 25 years in American intelligence, being a former case officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). From 1953 to 1972, his assignments were in East Asia and Southeast Asia, where he held administrative posts. After leaving the Central Intelligence Agency, McGehee brought to the public his highly critical views, based on his experience. He has discussed and illustrated how the CIA's covert actions and interventionist policies can produce unfavorable outcomes. A 1981 allegation by McGehee about CIA involvement in the Indonesian killings of 1965–1966 was censored by the CIA, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to sue on his behalf. The CIA prevailed.
		Viktor Suvorov	Male	GRU	Former Soviet military intelligence officer, who after his defection to the West in 1978, exposed in his books various secrets related to the Soviet military and foreign intelligence. The first book of his memoirs was published in 1981.
1984		Clive Ponting	Male	United Kingdom Ministry of Defence	Senior civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence who leaked classified documents to Labour Member of Parliament Tam Dalyell confirming that the General Belgrano was sunk by British forces during the Falklands War while outside the total exclusion zone, contradicting statements by the Thatcher Government.
1984		John Michael Gravitt	Male	General Electric	Became the first individual in 40 years to file a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act after the statute had been weakened in 1943. Gravitt, a machinist foreman, sued GE for defrauding the United States Department of Defense when GE began falsely billing for work on the B1 Lancer bomber. Gravitt was laid off following his complaints to supervisors about the discrepancies. The case of Gravitt v. General Electric and Gravitt's deposition to Congress led to federal legislation bolstering the False Claims Act in 1986. The amended Act made it easier for whistleblowers to collect damages. Gravitt's suit proceeded under the 1986 amendments and GE settled the case for a then record $3.5 million.
1984		Duncan Edmonds	Male	Canadian Government	Canadian civil servant who reported to his chief, the top Canadian civil servant, that Minister of Defence Robert Coates had visited a West German strip club while on an official mission, with NATO documents in his possession, creating a security risk. Coates was asked to resign from Cabinet by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who also fired Edmonds and made him persona non grata in government circles.
1984?		Ingvar Bratt	Male	Bofors	Engineer who revealed himself as the anonymous source in the Bofors Scandal about illegal weapon exports. An act that led to a new Swedish law concerning company secrets which commonly is referred to as Lex Bratt.
1985		Cathy Massiter	Female	MI5	Former MI5 officer who accused the British security service of having over-zealously interpreted which groups qualified as subversive, thus justifying surveillance against them. Massiter revealed that MI5 had spied on trade unions, civil liberty organisations and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
1985		Ronald J. Goldstein	Male	EBASCO Constructors Inc.	Nuclear power whistleblower Goldstein was a supervisor employed by EBASCO, which was a major contractor for the construction of Houston Lighting and Power Company's South Texas Project (a complex of two nuclear power plants). In the summer of 1985, Goldstein identified safety problems to SAFETEAM, an internal compliance program established by EBASCO and Houston Lighting, including noncompliance with safety procedures, the failure to issue safety compliance reports, and quality control violations affecting the safety of the plant. SAFETEAM was promoted as an independent safe haven for employees to voice their safety concerns. The two companies did not inform their employees that they did not believe complaints reported to SAFETEAM had any legal protection. After he filed his report to SAFETEAM, Goldstein was fired. Subsequently, Goldstein filed suit under federal nuclear whistleblower statutes. The U.S. Department of Labor ruled that his submissions to SAFETEAM were protected and his dismissal was invalid, a finding upheld by Labor Secretary Lynn Martin. The ruling was appealed and overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that private programs offered no protection to whistleblowers. After Goldstein lost his case, Congress amended the federal nuclear whistleblower law to provide protection reports made to internal systems and prevent retaliation against whistleblowers.
1986		Roger Wensil	Male	B.F. Shaw Co.	Roger D. Wensil was America's first nationally recognized whistleblower at a nuclear weapons facility. In 1985, Wensil was wrongfully dismissed by the DuPont BF Shaw Company after exposing the illegal sale and use of drugs taking place at the Savannah River Nuclear Weapons Facility, which provided weapons-grade plutonium for the U.S. government. Wensil was reinstated by the Department of Energy in 1987, but he again faced workplace retaliation and forced out of his job shortly after. Wensil's case led to the passing of the nuclear weapon whistleblowers protection in 1992.
1986		Mordechai Vanunu	Male	Israeli nuclear weapons program	Revealed Israel's clandestine nuclear program to the British press. He spent seventeen and a half years in prison as a result, the first eleven of these in solitary confinement. After his release, sanctions were placed on him: among others, he was not allowed to leave Israel or speak to foreigners. The sanctions have been renewed every twelve months. At present, he is appealing a further six-month prison sentence imposed by an Israeli court for having spoken to foreigners and foreign press.
1987		Joy Adams	Female	B.F. Shaw Co.	Joy P. Adams was terminated in retaliation after testifying in support of Roger Wensil, a whistleblower who disclosed safety violations at the federal Savannah River nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina.
1987		Howard Samuel Nunn	Male	Duke Power Company	Howard Samuel Nunn blew the whistle on the Duke Power Company and won his case in 1987. Nunn alleged that he was fired from Duke Power Company's Catawba Nuclear Power Station for raising concerns about safety and quality control, according to the court decision.
1987		Douglas Plumley	Male	Federal Prisoner	Doug Plumley was a federal prisoner at the maximum-security prison in Lompoc, California in 1987. Plumley lost his job with the federal prison training program after writing a letter of complaint about the use of allegedly hazardous chemicals at Lompoc. He then filed another complaint concerning his dismissal to the Department of Labor. Plumley's case led to a ruling by an administrative law judge that prison inmates can be considered “federal employees,” thus protected against employer retribution under the whistleblower protection law.
1988		Joseph Macktal	Male	Halliburton	Macktal was an electrician for Halliburton Brown and Root (HB&R) who witnessed hazardous conditions during the construction of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant. After he reported the safety issues to HB&R, the company's lawyers coerced him into signing a non-disclosure agreement that prohibited him from going to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with his concerns. Macktal willfully violated his non-disclosure agreement, sparking a seven-year legal battle that resulted in the Department of Labor ultimately voiding his entire settlement agreement and allowing him to pursue his whistleblower case. Macktal's case set a legal precedent for whistleblowers who reported safety violations within the nuclear industry by disallowing non-disclosure agreements.
1988		Peter Wright	Male	MI5	Former science officer of MI5 who claimed in his book, Spycatcher, that the UK Security Service plotted to remove Prime Minister Harold Wilson from office and the Director General of MI5 was a Soviet spy. After its publication in Australia, which the Thatcher government tried to block, the government attempted to ban the book in Britain under the Official Secrets Act. Through litigation, it succeeded in imposing a gag order on English newspapers to prevent them from publishing Wright's allegations. The gag orders were upheld by the Law Lords. Eventually, in 1988, the book was cleared for legitimate sale when the Law Lords acknowledged that overseas publication meant it contained no secrets. However, Wright was barred from receiving royalties from the sale of the book in the United Kingdom. In November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging its own newspapers. The British Government's legal cost were estimated at £250,000 in 1987.
1988		Harry Templeton	Male	The Mirror Group	Harry Templeton worked as a printer on newspapers owned by Robert Maxwell's Mirror Group. In 1985, Templeton was appointed as a trustee of the Mirror Group Pension Scheme, but was fired in 1988 after challenging Maxwell's misuses of pension funds. Only after Maxwell's death a couple of years later was it revealed that Maxwell had stolen £400m of staff pension money.
1988		Roland Gibeault	Male	Genisco Technology	Gibeault filed a qui tam lawsuit against defense subcontractor Genisco Technology Corp. after working undercover for 18 months with the FBI and DCIS to uncover the company's fraudulent test methods that were used to pass key components for the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) missile. The FBI and DCIS case resulted in a plea-bargained $725,000 fine and three Genisco executives sent to federal prison. Gibeault, who was fired from Genisco following revelation of whistleblowing, received $131,250 of the fine. In 1989, Gibeault and fellow employee Inge Maudal also filed qui tam actions against Genisco's parent company, Texas Instruments.
1988		Michael Haddle	Male	Healthmaster, Inc.	Worked for Healthmaster, Inc. and blew the whistle on whistleblower retaliation when he was fired from his job because he was involved and testified in a Medicare fraud case against Healthmaster. He filed a complaint in 1998 and the Eleventh Circuit court ruled that he had not been retaliated against, but the Court of Appeals reversed that finding, also in 1998. The U.S. Department of Justice submitted an amicus brief in support of Haddle before the decision was reversed.
1989		Douglas D. Keeth	Male	United Technologies Corporation	Filed a qui tam lawsuit against United Technologies Corp. (UTX) where he held the title vice president of finance. Mr. Keeth and others had investigated billing practices at UTX's Sikorsky Aircraft division, uncovering inflated progress billings going back at least as far as 1982. UTX offered Mr. Keeth a $1 million severance payment if he would keep quiet, but Keeth rejected the offer. In 1994, UTX paid $150 million to the government and Keeth was awarded a bounty of $22.5 million.
1989		William Schumer	Male	Hughes Aircraft	Filed a lawsuit January 1989 alleging fraud by Hughes Aircraft with respect to the B-2 bomber. In 1997 the Supreme Court held that the claim should have been dismissed as based on invalid retroactive legislation because the alleged fraud occurred in 1982–1984, before the 1986 amendments to the Fraudulent Claims Act which might have permitted it. The government did not support Schumer in his lawsuit as it had determined the alleged fraud had actually benefited the government by shifting costs from the cost-plus B-2 contract to the fixed-price F-15 contract.
1989/ 1991		Myron Mehlman	Male	Mobil	A toxicologist, he warned managers at Mobil that the company's gasoline that was being sold in Japan contained benzene in excess of 5 percent, and that levels needed to be reduced. Upon his return to the United States, he was fired. He later successfully sued the company.

1990s

Year	Image	Name	Gender	Organization	Action
1990		Vera English	Female	General Electric Company	Vera English was employed as a lab technician at a nuclear facility operated by General Electric Company (GE). English was terminated after exposing widespread radioactive contamination in the facility. Her Supreme Court case, English v. General Electric Company, set precedent that allowed whistleblowers to pursue cases under state law. Her victory also demonstrated the application of whistleblower protection legislation in cases of whistleblowing in nuclear energy cases.
1990		Arnold Gundersen	Male	Nuclear Energy Services	Nuclear power whistleblower Arnold Gundersen discovered radioactive material in an accounting safe at Nuclear Energy Services (NES) in Danbury, Connecticut, the consulting firm where he held a $120,000-a-year job as senior vice president. Three weeks after he notified the company president of what he believed to be radiation safety violations, Gundersen was fired. According to The New York Times, for three years, Gundersen "was awakened by harassing phone calls in the middle of the night" and he "became concerned about his family's safety". Gundersen believes he was blacklisted, harassed and fired for doing what he thought was right. NES filed a $1.5 million defamation lawsuit against him that was settled out-of-court. A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report concluded that there had been irregularities at NES, and the Office of the Inspector General reported that the NRC had violated its own regulations by sending business to NES.
1992		Mark Whitacre	Male	Archer Daniels Midland	PhD scientist and former Divisional President with Archer Daniels Midland, who worked with the FBI as a secret informant, to blow the whistle on price-fixing cartel in his company. This story is featured in the film The Informant! where Whitacre is portrayed by Matt Damon.
1992		Keith A. Schooley	Male		Keith A. Schooley (born 1952) is an American author and former stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, who brought attention to fraud and corruption within the firm at the Oklahoma and Texas offices in 1992 as a whistleblower. As a result, he was terminated from the firm, and sued the corporation in a case that went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
1992		Linda Mitchell	Female	Arizona Public Service Company	While working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Mitchell blew the whistle on the Arizona Public Service Company, which owned the generating station. In 1985, Mitchel reported various safety concerns she had at Palo Verde to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and continued to bring up concerns to management about concerns regarding computer programs the facility used and the layout of the plant. Mitchell filed a complaint in 1989 to the NRC, alleging that the Arizona Public Service Co. tried to suppress an NRC investigator's findings of safety issues at Palo Verde. She was subjected to severe harassment in the workplace and in her personal life and won a Department of Labor discrimination lawsuit in 1992. In 1994, Mitchell was granted permission to have an administrative public hearing before the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board; she also asked for the three units at Palo Verde to be halted to 0% power until a review of the work environment could be conducted.
1993		Sarah Thomas	Female	Arizona Public Service	Arizona Public Service (APS) employee Sarah Thomas was harassed and retaliated against by her supervisor after she raised concern regarding safety and regulatory violation that occurred in her workplace. She filed a complaint with the Department of Labor concerning the safety violations, failure to promote, and harassment on the job. APS was ordered to promote Thomas to Senior Test Technician and provide compensation for damages she suffered as the result of discriminatory treatment.
1994		William Marcus	Male	Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)	As a Senior Science Advisor for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Marcus witnessed the Office of Drinking Water approve a policy that added fluoride to the nation's drinking water. Marcus was fired after he reported the fluoride could increase cancer rates in the affected population. His testimony led to the discovery of numerous frauds committed by major chemical companies who tried to silence his concerns. Marcus prevailed in front of an Administrative Law Judge and was reinstated with full back pay, as well as a large compensatory damage reward.
1994		André Cicolella	Male	French Institute for Research and Security	André Cicolella showed that fetal malformations are associated with being exposed in utero to glycol ethers. The French Institute for Research and Security decided not to allow him to participate in a symposium that he was organizing on health risks linked with ether glycols, and fired him. In 1998 it was confirmed that he was right.
1995		William Sanjour	Male	United States Environmental Protection Agency	William Sanjour worked for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for over 25 years, where he constantly challenged the safety practices of the agency and ensured the EPA properly dealt with hazardous waste. In 1995, Sanjour won a landmark lawsuit that set a nationwide precedent and First Amendment right permitting federal employees to blow the whistle on their employers. In Sanjour v. EPA, he challenged agency rules restricting EPA employees from talking to environmental groups, a decision that has not been overruled to this day. Sanjour was the recipient of the 2007 Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Sentinel Award, which recognizes those who “choose truth over self.”
1995		Allen Mosbaugh	Male	Georgia Power Company	Reported safety concerns at Georgia Power Company in 1990 when he worked at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant as a superintendent of engineering liaison. In 1989, he sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a memo about a “violation of technical specifications” in regards to specific valves at the plant. In September 1990, Mosbaugh joined Marvin Hobby in petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct a review of the Georgia Power Company and impose civil penalties for improper operation at the facility and illegally transferring control to the Southern Nuclear Operating Company. Mosbaugh also recorded his coworkers and superiors that documented safety violations. He was discharged from his job in October 1990 and filed a complaint alleging that his firing was an act of whistleblower retaliation under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, but the administrative law judge ruled in 1992 that Georgia Power Company had not acted in retaliation. In 1993, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a report that supported Mosbaugh's whistleblower retaliation claim. In 1995, the Secretary of Labor concluded that Mosbaugh had been retaliated against after he engaged in “protected activity,” which reversed the 1992 ruling.
1996		Shannon Doyle	Male	Alabama Power	Reported safety violations at the J.M Farley Nuclear Plant, run by Alabama Power, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1989, Doyle filed a complaint against Hydro Nuclear Services under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 when the company did not hire him as a “casual employee” because he did not sign a release that allowed the company to perform a background check.
1996		George Galatis	Male	Nuclear power industry	Nuclear power whistleblower George Galatis was a senior nuclear engineer who reported safety problems at the Millstone 1 Nuclear Power Plant, relating to reactor refueling procedures, in 1996. The unsafe procedures meant that spent fuel rod pools at Unit 1 had the potential to boil, possibly releasing radioactive steam. Galatis eventually took his concerns to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to find that they had "known about the unsafe procedures for years". As a result of going to the NRC, Galatis experienced "subtle forms of harassment, retaliation, and intimidation". The NRC Office of Inspector General investigated this episode and essentially agreed with Galatis in Case Number 95-771, the report of which tells the whole story. George Galatis was the subject of a Time magazine cover story on March 4, 1996. Millstone 1 was permanently closed in July 1998.
1996		Jeffrey Wigand	Male	Brown & Williamson	Jeffrey Wigand had been recently fired from his position as vice president of research and development at tobacco company Brown & Williamson when, on February 4, 1996, he stated on the CBS news program 60 Minutes that the company intentionally manipulated the level of nicotine in cigarette smoke to addict smokers. Wigand claims that he was subsequently harassed and received anonymous death threats. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film The Insider.
1996		Allan Cutler	Male	Canadian government	The first whistleblower on the Canadian "AdScam" or sponsorship scandal. Without legal protection, he was fired by the Canadian government. As the case developed, federal legislation was passed to protect future whistleblowers in the Canadian civil service. Several convictions have been recorded to date with the case, with proceedings still in progress.
1996		David Franklin	Male	Parke-Davis	Exposed illegal promotion of the epilepsy drug Neurontin for un-approved uses while withholding evidence that the drug was not effective for these conditions. Parke-Davis's new owners Pfizer eventually pleaded guilty and paid criminal and civil fines of $430 million. The case had widespread effects including: establishing a new standards for pharmaceutical marketing practices; broadening the use of the False Claims Act to make fraudulent marketing claims criminal violations; exposing complicity and active participation in fraud by renowned physicians; and demonstrating how medical literature had been systematically adulterated by the pharmaceutical industry and its paid clinical consultants. Under the False Claims Act Dr Franklin receives $24.6m as part of the settlement agreement.
1996		Michael Ruppert	Male	Los Angeles Police Department	Former LAPD narcotics officer who contested the CIA director John Deutch's assertions that the CIA was not complicit in drug trafficking during a town hall meeting at Los Angeles' Locke High School on November 5, 1995. At the meeting, Ruppert publicly alleged the existence of classified CIA programs named "Amadeus", "Pegasus", and "Watchtower", claiming to possess evidence for the programs including redacted documents from "Watchtower", and stated that CIA officers had attempted to involve him in protecting these CIA operations during the late 1970s. His account corresponds to similar allegations regarding Operation Watchtower.
1996/ 1998		Nancy Olivieri	Female	Apotex	Starting in 1996, Olivieri was part of a group conducting a clinical trial in order to evaluate the use of a drug of Apotex, deferiprone, in treating persons with a blood disorder, thalassaemia. During the course of the trial, Olivieri became concerned about evidence that pointed to the toxicity of the study drug and to the drug being inefficacious. Olivieri informed both the research ethics board that was monitoring the study and Apotex, the drug maker. The research ethics board instructed Olivieri to inform participants about her concerns. Apotex responded by noting that Olivieri had signed a confidentiality agreement as part of the drug trial and that informing participants about her concerns, the validity of which Apotex disputed, would violate that confidentiality agreement. Apotex threatened to vigorously pursue all legal remedies against her if she disclosed her conclusions to patients. Olivieri disclosed her concerns to her patients and Apotex ended the portion of the study in which she was participating. In 1998, the New England Journal of Medicine published her paper suggesting that deferiprone led to progressive hepatic fibrosis.
1997		Frederic Whitehurst	Male	Federal Bureau of Investigation	A chemist at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation who was the FBI Laboratory's foremost expert on explosives residue in the 1990s, Whitehurst became the first modern-day FBI whistleblower. He reported a lack of scientific standards and serious flaws in the FBI Lab, including in the first World Trade Center bombing cases, and the Oklahoma City bombing case. Whitehurst's whistleblower disclosures triggered an overhaul of the FBI's crime lab following a report by the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General in 1997. In 1997, Whitehurst testified at the House Judiciary Subcommittee's hearings on the FBI crime lab. Dr. Whitehurst filed a federal lawsuit claiming whistleblower retaliation, and he reached a settlement with the FBI worth more than $1.16 million. Whitehurst now directs the FBI Oversight Project of the National Whistleblower Center.
1997		David Shayler	Male	MI5	Along with girlfriend Annie Machon, resigned from MI5 to expose alleged criminal acts by the UK Secret Services, including a failed assassination attempt on Muammar Gaddafi. Shayler also accused the Security Services of planting false stories in the press, substantiated in one example by a court.
1997		Christoph Meili	Male	UBS	A night guard at a Swiss bank, he discovered that his employer was destroying records of savings by Holocaust victims, which the bank was required to return to heirs of the victims. After the Swiss authorities sought to arrest Meili, he was given political asylum in the United States.
1997		Alan Parkinson	Male	Australian Government	Alan Parkinson is a mechanical and nuclear engineer who has written the 2007 book, Maralinga: Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up, about the clean-up of the British atomic bomb test site at Maralinga in South Australia. In 1993, Parkinson became the key person on the Maralinga clean-up project, representing the then federal Labor government. By 1997, however, there was much cost-cutting involved which compromised the project, and personal differences about how the project should proceed, which led to the sacking of Parkinson by the new Howard government. The clean-up was totally unsatisfactory according to Parkinson and he exposed the situation through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, provoking a strong rebuttal and personal abuse from the government.
1998		Shiv Chopra	Male	Canadian government	A microbiologist and activist who was involved in one of the first major whistleblowing incidents in the Canadian public service.
1998		Paul van Buitenen	Male	European Commission	Accused European Commission members of corruption. (See Resignation of the Santer Commission).
1998		Marc Hodler	Male	International Olympic Committee	IOC member who blew the whistle on the Winter Olympic bid scandal for the 2002 Salt Lake City games.
1998		Linda Tripp	Female	Clinton Administration	Tripp was a White House staff member who disclosed to the Office of Independent Counsel that Monica Lewinsky committed perjury and attempted to suborn perjury, and President Bill Clinton committed misconduct, by denying the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in the Paula Jones federal civil rights suit. A victim of retaliation by the Clinton Administration, Tripp successfully sued the Department of Defense and the Justice Department for releasing information from her security file and employment file to the news media in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. In 2003, Tripp settled with the federal government for over $595,000. In addition, she received a retroactive promotion and retroactive pay for the years 1998, 1999, and 2000, a pension and was cleared to work for the federal government again.
1999		Harry Markopolos	Male		Early whistleblower of suspected securities fraud by Bernard Madoff, tipping off the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) repeatedly.
1999		Youri Bandazhevsky	Male		In 1999, Youri Bandazhevsky released the results that he accumulated about the health problems of children in the contaminated area of Chernobyl. He is arrested in July 1999.
1990s/ 2000s		Marlene Garcia-Esperat	Female	Philippines Department of Agriculture	Former analytical chemist for the Philippines Department of Agriculture who became a journalist to expose departmental corruption, and was murdered in 2005. Her assailants later surrendered to police, and have testified that they were hired by officials in the Department of Agriculture.
1990s/ 2000s		Janet Howard, Tanya Ward Jordan and Joyce E. Megginson	Female	United States Department of Commerce	Exposed widespread systemic racism and retaliation within the Department of Commerce against African-American employees.

2000s

Year	Image	Name	Gender	Organization	Action
2000s		Karen Kwiatkowski	Female	United States Air Force	Retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who worked as a desk officer in The Pentagon and in a number of roles in the National Security Agency. She has written a number of essays on corrupting political influences of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has said that she was the anonymous source for Seymour Hersh and Warren Strobel on their exposés of pre-war intelligence.
2000s		Stefan P. Kruszewski	Male	Pharmaceutical companies	Kruszewski is a whistleblower, with settlements from suits brought against Southwood Psychiatric Hospital, Pfizer, Inc., and AstraZeneca. Kruszewski became aware of inadequate care and the exploiting of state-committed mentally ill children through overmedication and physical and chemical restraints while working for the Department of Public Welfare, Bureau of Program Integrity for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When he refused to keep silent about his discoveries, he was fired from his position at the state. Kruszewski won settlements for both a First Amendment case against the state of Pennsylvania as well as his first Qui tam lawsuit against the hospital. In the cases against pharmaceutical giants, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, Kruszewski highlighted clinical science that was misrepresented by the defendants in their marketing and promotion of certain drugs. He also demonstrated problems with off-label marketing (marketing that promotes uses, patients or doses that are not approved by the US FDA) which resulted in heightened, but often non-transparent, risk to the health of patients and exceptional costs to taxpayers and state and federal governments.
2000s		Guy Pearse	Male	Large fossil fuel companies in Australia	According to the research of Pearse, lobby groups representing the largest fossil fuel producing or consuming industries in Australia referred to themselves as the Greenhouse Mafia. These groups are represented in Canberra by the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (AIGN). AIGN members boasted to Pearse in recorded interviews how they routinely gained access to what should be confidential information concerning government policy on energy and transport. Pearse cited recorded interviews with AIGN members and said that lobbyists had written cabinet submissions, ministerial briefings, and costings in two departments on at least half a dozen occasions over a decade. According to Pearse, those within groups lobbying for unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions have been able to ensure that government ministers hear mostly matching advice from their own departmental officials. Pearse says that this influence is entrenched to such an extent that fossil fuel industry lobby groups have actually been writing Australia's greenhouse policy at least since the Kyoto Protocol in 1998, and probably even before John Howard became Prime Minister in 1996. Disillusioned, Pearse became a whistleblower, and in July 2007, Pearse released his book on the subject, High & Dry: John Howard, Climate Change and the Selling of Australia's Future. In early 2007, Clive Hamilton wrote his book titled Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, drawing heavily on Pearse's research.
2000		Paul Jayko	Male	Ohio Environmental Protection Agency	Paul Jayko was an Environmental Specialist for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. In 1997, when Jayko was assigned as a site coordinator for River Valley Schools area, he discovered that school buildings were built on a site of a former military installation, where carcinogenic materials were buried and disposed. When he attempted to investigate the link between the site and the increased incidence of leukemia in the area, Jayko gradually lost his responsibilities and was ultimately terminated. Later, the manager responsible for retaliation against Jayko lost his bid to become Director Enforcement for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in large part due to the finding by the judge in the Jayko case that the head of the Ohio's EPA personally retaliated against Mr. Jayko.
2000		Marsha Coleman-Adebayo	Female	United States Environmental Protection Agency	Marsha Coleman-Adebayo was a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of the Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She blew the whistle on the EPA for racial and gender discrimination in violation of Civil Rights Act of 1964 which began after she was removed from her position in South Africa where her "job was to essentially help the South African government to work on issues that impact public health". In South Africa she brought to the attention of the EPA the dangerous conditions an American company was exposing African workers who were mining to vanadium, a dangerous substance. Her case eventually led to the passing of the No-FEAR Act in 2002 that makes federal agencies more accountable for employee complaints.
2001		James J. Bobreski	Male	D.C. Water and Sewage Authority (WASA)	James J. Bobreski blew the whistle on the D.C. Water and Sewage Authority (WASA) in 1999 while working at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater treatment plant as a contracted process control technician. He raised concerns that the plant's safety alarms were functioning incorrectly and a chlorine gas leak had occurred at Blue Plains. Bobreski was fired after notifying supervisors of faulty gas sensors and told The Washington Post about WASA's actions; he filed a whistleblower protection complaint with the Department of Labor and won his case in 2001. A judge later ruled in 2005 that Bobreski's whistleblower protection had been violated.
2001		Paul Darke	Male	Leonard Cheshire Disability	After resigning from the role of national advocacy officer, Darke set up a website www.leonard-cheshire.com highlighting their role in institutionalising those with disabilities and neglecting those in their care. Among other things, he stated that 'the main reason you cease to be a Leonard Cheshire service user is death' and that charity donations would pay for 'private medical insurance of senior directors and management get-togethers costing £10,000 a weekend'. After a heated debate on BBC Radio 4, as well as 50,000 hits on the website, Leonard Cheshire submitted a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization. WIPO ruled that Darke has no right or legitimate interest in the domain name; and that it has been registered and used by him in bad faith. Leonard Cheshire have subsequently changed their name to Leonard Cheshire Disability.
2001		Joseph Nacchio	Male	Qwest /National Security Agency	Nacchio was chairperson and CEO of Qwest when it refused to participate in NSA spying on its customers in February 2001. Qwest was the only telecommunications company to require FISA court orders. Nacchio claims that in retaliation, Qwest subsequently was denied government contracts.
2001		Pascal Diethelm (see French Wikipedia), Jean-Charles Rielle (see French Wikipedia)	Male	Philip Morris USA and University of Geneva	Swiss tobacco control advocates and alumni from the University of Geneva who revealed the secret ties of Ragnar Rylander (see French Wikipedia), professor of environmental health, to the tobacco industry. In a public statement made in 2001, Pascal Diethelm and Jean-Charles Rielle accused Rylander of being "secretly employed by Philip Morris" and qualified of "scientific fraud without precedent" the concealment of his links with the tobacco industry for a period of 30 years, during which he publicly presented himself as an independent scientist, while obeying orders given by Philip Morris executives and lawyers, publishing articles and organizing symposia which denied or trivialized the toxicity of secondhand smoke. After a long trial, which went up to the supreme court of Switzerland, all accusations were found to be true. Following this judgment, the University of Geneva prohibited its members from soliciting research subsidies or direct or indirect consultancies with the tobacco industry.
2001		Jesselyn Radack	Female	United States Department of Justice	Radack, a DOJ lawyer, told Newsweek that the DOJ both lied about and destroyed documents regarding John Walker Lindh's interrogation and his parent's attempts to get him a lawyer. The DOJ retaliated by pushing her out of the Department, getting her fired from her next job, trying to get her law licence revoked, and other means.
2002		David Lewis	Male	U.S. Environmental Protection Agency	Dr. David Lewis was a senior research microbiologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His research assessing the link between human health and use of treated sewage sludge prompted the Centers for Disease Control to issue guidelines protecting workers handling treated sewage sludge. Dr. Lewis published an article criticizing the EPA's sludge rule in 1999.
2002		Marvin Hobby	Male	Georgia Power Company	Marvin Hobby was a top ranking corporate officer at Georgia Power Company who reported safety issues at nuclear power plants. In 1989, Hobby informed upper management at Georgia Power Co. that they were not following government policies as it prepared to turn over control of a plant in Waynesboro, Georgia. A few months later, Hobby was removed from his position. In 1995, the Secretary of Labor issued a decision that found Georgia Power Company guilty of violating the whistleblower protection provisions of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 when they fired Hobby. Twelve years after reporting his concerns, Hobby was paid $4 million by Georgia Power Co. for his efforts.
2002		Dr. Aaron Westrick	Male	Second Chance Body Armor	In 2001, Dr. Aaron Westrick was the research director for Second Chance Body Armor ("SCBA"), the largest manufacturer and supplier of body armor in the United States. Westrick witnessed a rapid decline in the quality of bulletproof vests made with “Zylon” fiber after the material was proven to deteriorate at an alarming rate in certain environments. Westrick warned top officials at SCBA and Zylon manufacturer Toyobo Co. Ltd., that covering up defects and ignoring the problem would put federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies' lives at risk and lead to disastrous consequences for the company. In 2003, a California police officer was shot and killed while wearing a vest made with Zylon fiber, prompting Westrick to file a False Claims Act lawsuit against SCBA and Toyobo Co., Ltd. in 2004. In 2005, the United States Government intervened in the case on behalf of Westrick and after a 13-year legal battle with the Japanese manufacturer of Zylon, Toyobo Co. Ltd., the company agreed to pay a $66 million settlement to the United States for damages.
2002		John Roberts	Male	FBI	John Roberts was a former Unit Chief in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Office of Professional Responsibility. In 2001, Roberts testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the pattern of misconduct surfacing at the highest level of the FBI. Despite having obtained permission to appear on the CBS program 60 Minutes, he was immediately harassed and retaliated against for making these public disclosures. This was the first case in FBI history that a senior-level manager was removed from his position based on his mistreatment of Mr. Roberts. The Roberts retaliation case also led to federal legislation bolstering the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 to ensure FBI whistleblowers have the same rights under the law as any other federal employee.
2002		Richard Maok Riaño Botina AKA "@hackerFiscalia"	Male	Attorney General's Office - Technical Investigation Unit (CTI)	"A former computer expert in the attorney general's office, Richard Maok, has been transferred from his job after compiling data documenting that phone calls from inside the attorney general's office had been made to the phones of presumed paramilitary members in northeast Colombia." "He took all the captured cell phones of the paramilitaries in the legal proceedings, made the crossing and discovered a huge amount of coincidences, that is, paramilitaries and many prosecutorial officials communicated permanently. Congressman Gustavo Petro presented that debate to Congress introduced Mr. Riaño and it was made public." In addition to the Attorney General's Office, that infiltration would reach the national police, the army, the prison system, the intelligence agency, the Supreme Court of Justice and the Colombian Congress itself. The investigation took as a starting point the crossing of information referring to facts in which the violation of human rights occurred, which contained the names of the leaders of the most important paramilitary groups of the moment. That infiltration and the paramilitary actions were aimed at eliminating the political opposition, in order to definitely install the Uribe as the family in power. The hacker of the Prosecutor's Office directly holds former president Álvaro Uribe responsible for that situation. The reprisals against the “Hacker” were swift: house raids and home searches, telephone interception, 24-hour surveillance, judicial complaint, and dismissal, took the situation to a limit that led to the request of refuge in Canada, where Maok Riaño resides 15 years ago."
2002		Kathryn Bolkovac	Female	United Nations International Police	Originally hired by the U.S. company DynCorp as part of a $15 million UN contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia. She eventually reported that such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking. Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. Bolkovac filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on August 2, 2002, the tribunal unanimously found in her favor.
2002		Cynthia Cooper	Female	Worldcom	Exposed corporate financial scandal. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002.
2002		Sherron Watkins	Female	Enron	Exposed corporate financial scandal as Enron vice president in 2001. Watkins emailed Enron founder Kenneth Lay about fraudulent accounting at the company, and two months later Enron lost $1.2 billion in shareholder equity. Four months later, the company went bankrupt and had to seek bankruptcy protection. When Enron was investigated by Congress, Watkins testified about the fraud at Enron and her experience going to Lay about the issues in the company. She has since been active in whistleblower advocacy, speaking at the 2019 celebration of National Whistleblower Day. Watkins also submitted comments in August 2019 about the SEC's proposed amendments to their whistleblower program. Watkins was named Time's People of the Year in 2002.
2002		Diann Shipione	Female	San Diego	Diann Shipione, a former trustee of the San Diego City retirement board, is credited with exposing unlawful underfunding of the city's pension fund and the omission of multiple billions of dollars of pension and retiree healthcare debt in the City of San Diego municipal bond offering sales documents. She was, in her professional life, formerly a vice president at UBS Financial Services. City officials and pension board trustees created a multi-year smear campaign, including filing ethics charges against her and plotting to have her arrested by the San Diego City Police. The scandal caused widespread fallout in the city's political and financial sectors. Several city officials resigned, including the City Auditor, City Manager, City Treasurer and the Mayor. The City became the target of two federal investigations and in November 2006, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission entered an order sanctioning the City of San Diego for committing securities fraud. Shipione was eventually proven right about her concerns and received public recognition for her pension system related services from many civic organizations in San Diego.
2002		Coleen Rowley	Female	Federal Bureau of Investigation	Outlined the FBI's slow action before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Jointly named Time's People of the Year in 2002.
2002		William Binney J. Kirke Wiebe Edward Loomis	Male	National Security Agency	NSA officials initially joined House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark in asking U.S. Department of Defense inspector general to investigate wasteful spending on the Trailblazer Project and the NSA officials eventually went public when they were ignored and retaliated upon. They claim that Thinthread was more focused thus more effective and lower cost than Trailblazer and subsequent programs, which automatically collected trillions of domestic communications of Americans in deliberate violation of the U.S. Constitution.
2002		Marta Andreasen	Female	European Commission	Argentine-born Spanish accountant, employed by the European Commission as Chief Accountant, and notable for raising concerns about fraud potential within EU, neglected by the Commission.
2002		Glenn Walp Steven L. Doran	Male	University of California Los Alamos National Laboratory	Glenn Walp and Steven L. Doran were hired to investigate allegations of fraud at the University of California's Los Alamos National Laboratory. They were fired after they exposed breaches of security as well as fraud and mismanagement to the Department of Energy. Their investigation resulted in congressional hearings. Walpo received a $930,000 settlement from the University of California (UC) for wrongful termination. Doran accepted UC's offer of a position as security consultant.
2002		Sibel Edmonds	Female	Federal Bureau of Investigation	Former FBI translator naturalized American citizen of Turkish descent who was fired in 2002 by the FBI for attempting to report cover-ups of security issues, potential espionage, and incompetence. She has been gagged by the State Secrets Privilege in her efforts to go to court on these issues, including a rejection in 2005 by the Supreme Court of the United States to hear her case without comment. She is the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) that is looking to lobby congress and help other whistleblowers with legal and other forms of assistance.
2003		Bassem Youssef (FBI agent)	Male	Federal Bureau of Investigation	Bassem Youssef was a Unit Chief in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Counterterrorism Division who blew the whistle on FBI hiring practices and sued the FBI for discrimination in 2003. His lawsuit claimed that in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he had been passed over for promotions to work in counterterrorism, even though he had relevant experience and was one of the only fluent Arabic speakers at his level at the FBI at the time. Instead, others with less relevant experience and skills were promoted to counterterrorism positions, and when Youssef spoke out against these practices, he was retaliated against. He was assigned a desk job and stated that post-9/11, his skills as an Arabic speaker and polygraph examiner had not been used. In 2006, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility ruled that the FBI had illegally retaliated against Youssef because of his whistleblowing.
2003		Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford	Male	U.S. Army	Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford is a retired counterintelligence agent with over 30 years of military service. He was stationed in Samarra, Iraq in June 2003 with the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence (M.I.) Battalion. After reporting to superiors systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees at Samarra, Sgt. Ford was judged mentally unstable by an Army psychiatrist and renditioned to Landstuhl, Germany to receive further psychological evaluation. In all following psychiatric assessments, Ford was determined to be of sound mind. In later interviews and press appearances, Ford also alleges he witnessed the diversion of U.S.-made weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria and suggests these munitions were deployed by the Syrian military against rebels and civilians during the Syrian civil war.
2003		Courtland Kelley	Male	General Motors	Courtland Kelley was the head of the General Motors inspection and quality assurance program for many years. He found faults in the Chevrolet Cavalier and the Chevrolet Cobalt, and repeatedly reported them, with little response. He thought his supervisors were more interested in maintaining sales and their own positions than with expensive recalls. In 2003, Kelley sued GM alleging that the company had been slow to address the dangers in its cars and trucks. Even though he lost the court case, Kelley thought that by blowing the whistle he had done the right and proper thing. Faulty ignition switches in the Cobalts, which cut power to the car while in motion, were eventually linked to many crashes resulting in fatalities, starting with a teenager in 2005 who drove her new Cobalt into a tree. In May 2014 the NHTSA fined the company $35 million for failing to recall cars with faulty ignition switches for a decade, despite knowing there was a problem with the switches. Thirteen deaths were attributed to the faulty switches during the time the company failed to recall the cars.
2003		Diane Urquhart	Female	Canadian Government	Former senior securities industry executive who revealed to the Canadian House of Commons's finance committee that Canadian frozen non-bank asset-backed commercial paper caused a loss of $7–$13 billion held primarily by government, corporation pension funds and treasuries.
2003		Katharine Gun	Female	United Kingdom GCHQ	Leaked top-secret information to the press concerning alleged illegal activities by the United States and the United Kingdom in their push for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
2003		Robert MacLean	Male	United States Transportation Security Administration	U.S. Federal Air Marshal who exposed the TSA's agency-wide plan to remove Federal Air Marshals from nonstop, long distance flights for two months in order to avoid expenditures associated with air marshals lodging in hotels overnight. The plan was formulated in response to a budget shortfall due to overspending. The plan was formulated three days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an Advisory that warned the airline industry and law enforcement of a suicide hijacking plot in which terrorists would exploit U.S. immigration and airport security loopholes. After outrage from U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, TSA's plan was rescinded before becoming operational. MacLean was fired after DHS discovered he disclosed the plan. On January 27, 2014, the Obama administration appealed MacLean's federal appeals court win to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court accepted DHS' appeal for review and affirmed the Federal Circuit's decision in MacLean's favor 7-2. The decision was written by Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts.
2003		Joseph Wilson	Male	United States Government	Former U.S. ambassador, whose editorial in The New York Times, "What I Didn't Find in Africa", showed reasons for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
2003		Richard Convertino	Male	United States Department of Justice	Former federal prosecutor who obtained the first conviction of a defendant in a terrorism case post-9/11. After Convertino testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in September 2003 about the lack of Bush Administration support of anti-terrorism prosecutions post-9/11, Convertino alleges the Justice Department leaked information and violated a court order to publicly smear him in retaliation for his whistleblowing. Convertino filed a lawsuit under the Privacy Act against the Department of Justice in response to the retaliation he experienced. Additionally, the Justice Department indicted Convertino for obstruction of justice and lying, which Convertino alleges is further whistleblower retaliation. The Department of Justice later dropped their charges against Convertino.
2003		Satyendra Dubey	Male	India National Highways Authority	Accused his employer NHAI of corruption in highway construction projects in India, in letter to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Assassinated on November 27, 2003. Enormous media coverage following his death may lead to Whistleblower Act in India.
2004		Joe Darby	Male	United States Army	First alerted the U.S. military command of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison, in Abu Ghraib, Iraq.
2004		Neil Patrick Carrick	Male	Greater Grace World Outreach	A former member and staff member of Greater Grace World Outreach in Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. who uncovered financial and sexual abuse by church leaders. Eventually, The Baltimore Sun would publish a front-page story uncovering a $500,000 payoff regarding a cover-up of an affair of a staff Pastor. Multiple articles across the United States and Internationally would follow. Following the split of the international organization hundreds of congregations, schools would change their affiliation with the organization. In the following years, several individuals would be convicted of sexual abuse related crimes including staff members from the Baltimore Church.
2004		Hans-Peter Martin	Male	European Parliament	Accused Parliament members of invalid expense claims.
2004		Craig Murray	Male	United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office	British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who opposed the Karimov regime's use of torture and its other violations of human rights, and British Government support for the use of torture.
2004		Gerald W. Brown	Male	Nuclear power industry	Nuclear power whistleblower Gerald W. Brown was a former firestop contractor and consultant who uncovered the Thermo-lag circuit integrity scandal and silicone foam scandals in U.S. and Canadian nuclear power plants, which led to Congressional proceedings as well as Provincial proceedings in the Canadian Province of Ontario concerning deficiencies in passive fire protection.
2004		Samuel Provance	Male	United States Army	System administrator for U.S. Army Military Intelligence at the Abu Ghraib prison who publicly revealed the role of interrogators in the abuses, as well the general effort to cover-up the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse itself.
2004		Peter Rost	Male	Pfizer	Former vice president at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Rost reported about accounting irregularities and other irregularities to his management. He was then transferred from Sweden to a position in New Jersey, a change that he characterized as a retaliatory demotion. He sued Wyeth, and the case was settled out of court on undisclosed terms. He moved to Pharmacia, where he became concerned about off-market labeling of Genotropin. He reported this activity to his managers at Pfizer after Pfizer's purchase of Pharmacia, and later filed a False Claims suit against the company. The Department of Justice declined to join the suit as Pfizer had already disclosed the violations. While a highly paid executive at Pfizer, Rost publicly took positions opposed to those of Pfizer such as advocating drug reimportation and writing a glowing review of a book highly critical of the industry. He was exiled internally by Pfizer and removed from all responsibilities and decision making, a move which Rost says was due to his whistleblowing. In 2004, he testified in Congress as a private individual in favour of drug reimportation, a position strongly at odds with the official policy of the pharmaceutical industry. In December 2005, Rost was fired from Pfizer. In September 2006 he published his experiences in the book "The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman."
2005		Sandra Martinez Cam	Female	Philippines Jueteng (illegal numbers game) whistleblower	Sandra Martinez Cam, who is a native of Batuan, Masbate, Philippines rose to fame after exposing several scams involving public officials and agencies in the Philippine government. Among these are the "jueteng" (illegal numbers game) scandal, the presence of illegal drugs and high-powered firearms at the Bureau of Corrections, and the escape of the Reyes brothers via the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). An advocate of women's rights, she also uncovered the sex for flight scandal which victimized several female Overseas Filipino Workers in the Middle East. More recently, the fearless Masbatena said she has obtained information that would shed light on the infamous "tanim-bala" (planting of bullets) scheme at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), which has been going on since 2012.
2005		Renee Dufault	Female	Food and Drug Administration	Dufault presented research finding to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2005 that showed caustic soda (lye) used in the production and manufacturing of High Fructose Corn Syrup, left trace amounts of mercury in foods containing High Fructose Corn Syrup. After independent testing verified her finding, she attempted to publish her research and was denied usage of Federal extramural data. She left the FDA in 2008 to make her research public.
2005		Richard Levernier	Male	United States Department of Energy	Richard Levernier is an American nuclear power whistleblower. Levernier worked for 23 years as a nuclear security professional, and identified security problems at U.S. nuclear facilities as part of his job. Specifically, after 9/11, he identified problems with contingency planning to protect U.S. nuclear plants from terrorist attacks. He said that the assumption that attackers would both enter and exit from facilities was not valid, since suicide terrorists would not need to exit. In response to this complaint, the U.S. Department of Energy withdrew Levernier's security clearance and he was assigned to clerical work. Levernier approached the United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which handles U.S. federal whistleblower matters. It took the OSC four years to vindicate Levernier, ruling that the Department's retaliation was illegal – but the OSC could not reinstate Levernier's security clearance, so he was unable to regain work in nuclear security.
2005		Toni Hoffman	Female	Queensland Health, Australia	Toni Hoffman is a senior Australian nurse who exposed the medical malpractice of surgeon Jayant Patel. She originally began to raise doubts about the ability of Patel with hospital management and other staff. Both doctors and surgeons who were familiar with his work were also deeply concerned. Patel became the subject of the Morris Inquiry and later the Davies Commission. Eventually the matter was raised in the Queensland Parliament. Hoffman received the 2006 Australian of the Year Local Hero Award and an Order of Australia Medal, for her role as a whistleblower.
2005		Russ Tice	Male	United States Government	Former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Air Force, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Tice first approached Congress and eventually the media about the warrantless surveillance of the U.S. population by the NSA. Tice was a major source for the 2005 New York Times exposé and spoke out widely following subsequent disclosures by other NSA whistleblowers. He was the first to speak publicly and openly with allegations during the era beginning with the George W. Bush administration (which continues into the Obama administration). He had earlier been known for reporting suspicions that a DIA colleague of his might be a Chinese spy.
2005		Maria do Rosàrio Veiga	Female	World Meteorological Organization	Enquired about a fraud, wrote a final report in 2005. Chief IAIS 2002/nov2006, terminated by the WMO.
2005/ 2011		Thomas Andrews Drake	Male	National Security Agency	Thomas Drake worked at the NSA in various analyst and management positions. He blew the whistle on the NSA's Trailblazer Project that he felt was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and other laws and regulations. He contacted The Baltimore Sun which published articles about waste, fraud, and abuse at the NSA, including stories about Trailblazer. In April 2010, Drake was indicted by a grand jury on various charges, including obstructing justice and making false statements. After the May 22, 2011 broadcast of a 60 Minutes episode on the Drake case, the government dropped all of the charges against Drake and agreed not to seek any jail time in return for Drake's agreement to plead guilty to a misdemeanor of misusing the agency's computer system. Drake was sentenced to one year of probation and community service.
2005		Bunnatine "Bunny" H. Greenhouse	Female	Halliburton	Former chief civilian contracting officer for the United States Army Corps of Engineers who in 2005, exposed illegality in the no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq by a Halliburton subsidiary. The Army retaliated against Greenhouse by demoting her and removing her from her job as a high-level contractor. She testified before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Hearing in 2007 about her experience blowing the whistle and the aftermath of her disclosure.
2005/ 2009		Brad Birkenfeld	Male	UBS	An American banker who formerly worked for UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, he was the first person who exposed what has become a multibillion-dollar international tax fraud scandal over Swiss private banking. He provided extensive and voluntary cooperation with the U.S. government, registering as an IRS whistleblower, Birkenfeld is the only U.S. citizen to be sentenced to prison as a result of the scandal.
2005		Thomas Tamm	Male	United States Department of Justice	Attorney for the DOJ's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review who initially informed The New York Times for the story that became a 2005 exposé on mass warrantless surveillance. His home was raided in 2007 during FBI investigation of the leaks and he began to openly speak out publicly in 2008.
2005		Shawn Carpenter	Male	Sandia National Laboratories	Discovered that a sophisticated group of hackers were systematically penetrating hundreds of computer networks at major U.S. defense contractors, military installations and government agencies to access sensitive information. After informing his superiors at Sandia, he was directed not to share the information with anyone, because management cared only about Sandia's computers. He, however, went on to voluntarily work with the U.S. Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to address the problem. When Sandia discovered his actions, they terminated his employment and revoked his security clearance. His story was first reported in the September 5, 2005, issue of Time. On February 13, 2007, a New Mexico State Court awarded him $4.7 million in damages from Sandia Corporation for firing him. The jury found Sandia Corporation's handling of Mr. Carpenter's firing was "malicious, willful, reckless, wanton, fraudulent, or in bad faith."
2005		Rick S. Piltz	Male	National Aeronautics and Space Administration	Exposed Philip Cooney, a White House official who edited a climate change report to reflect the administration's views without having any scientific background.
2005		Shanmughan Manjunath	Male	Indian Oil Corporation	Former manager at Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), and spoke against adulteration of petrol. He was shot dead on November 19, 2005, allegedly by a petrol pump owner from Uttar Pradesh.
2005		Paul Moore	Male	HBOS	Executive at the UK bank HBOS who in 2005 was fired, allegedly after warning his senior colleagues that the company's sales strategy was at odds with prudent management. In 2009 Moore spoke out about his warnings to the Treasury Select Committee of parliament during its investigation into the turmoil in the UK banking system.
2006		Gary J. Aguirre	Male	United States Securities and Exchange Commission	Exposed the SEC's failure to pursue investigation of John Mack in insider trading case involving Pequot Capital Management and Arthur J. Samberg. Aguirre was fired for complaining about special treatment for Mack, which prompted investigations by the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, culminating in a joint report vindicating Aguirre. Through his FOIA request filed to learn more about his wrongful termination, he uncovered the "smoking gun" that forced the SEC to reopen its case against Pequot, leading to a settlement of $28 million in 2009. A month later, the SEC settled Aguirre's lawsuit for wrongful termination, paying $755,000. Aguirre also won a lawsuit against the SEC filed in District Court.
2006		Rosemary Johann-Liang	Female	U.S. FDA	In 2006, Rosemary Johann-Liang, deputy director of the Division of Drug Risk Evaluation, in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, recommended that the product label for the diabetes drug Avandia include a strong warning that the use of the drug could result in congestive heart failure. She was reprimanded by FDA managers, who transferred the Avandia safety review work to her supervisor. Johann-Liang was vindicated in May 2007, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine aired similar concerns about problems with Avandia, and the FDA finally requested a "Black Box" warning label for the product. Johann-Liang ended up resigning from the FDA.
2006		Michael DeKort	Male	United States Department of Homeland Security – United States Coast Guard	Michael DeKort was an American systems engineer and project manager at Lockheed Martin who posted a whistleblowing video on YouTube.com about the Lockheed Integrated Deepwater System Program. In 2008, DeKort was awarded the Society on Social Implications of Technology's public service award. As well as the Barus Ethics Award from the IEEE for his efforts to ensure accountability and whistleblowing video.
2006		Walter DeNino	Male		Student and lab technician who questioned Eric Poehlman's integrity.
2006		Marco Pautasso	Male	World Intellectual Property Organization	WIPO Senior Auditor blew the whistle on fraud and attempted fraud committed by WIPO Director-General Kamil Idris in November 2006. Worked at WIPO from 2003 to 11/2006; now consultant.
2006		Mark Klein	Male	AT&T, National Security Agency	Retired communications technician for AT&T who revealed the details of the secret 2003 construction of a monitoring facility in Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. The facility is alleged to be one of several operated by the National Security Agency as part of the warrantless surveillance undertaken by the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
2006		Cate Jenkins	Female	United States Environmental Protection Agency	Wrote memos to the EPA Inspector General, U.S. Congress, and FBI detailing the chemical composition of dust from the September 11 attacks and its hazards to responders. She alerted The New York Times in 2006 and said in a 2009 CBS interview that the EPA explicitly lied about the danger of the dust which caused chemical burns in the lungs of responders, debilitating illnesses in many that included fatalities, and that it could have been prevented with proper safety equipment. Jenkins claims that the EPA has been misleading about evidence of debris inhalation hazards since the 1980s. She was fired and in 2012 successfully sued to be reinstated.
2006		Michael G. Winston	Male	Countrywide	Former executive at the Countrywide Financial Corporation.
2006/ 2007		Richard M. Bowen III	Male	Citigroup	Starting in June 2006, Senior Vice President Richard M. Bowen III, the chief underwriter of Citigroup's Consumer Lending Group, began warning the board of directors about the extreme risks being taken on by the mortgage operation that could potentially result in massive losses. When Bowen first blew the whistle in 2006, 60% of the mortgages were defective. The amount of bad mortgages began increasing throughout 2007 and eventually exceeded 80% of the volume. Many of the mortgages were not only defective, but were fraudulent. Bowen attempted to rouse the board via weekly reports and other communications. On November 3, 2007, Bowen emailed Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin and the bank's chief financial officer, chief auditor and the chief risk management officer to again expose the risk and potential losses, and claiming that the group's internal controls had broken down. He requested an outside investigation of his business unit that eventually confirmed his charges. In retaliation, Citigroup stripped Bowen of most of his responsibilities and informing him that his physical presence was no longer required at the bank.
2006/ 2013		Adam B. Resnick	Male	Omnicare	Starting in 2006, Resnick sued the pharmaceutical company Omnicare, a major supplier of drugs to nursing homes, under federal whistleblower law, as well as the parties to the company's illegal kickback schemes. Omnicare allegedly paid kickbacks to nursing home operators in order to secure business, which constitutes Medicare and Medicaid fraud. In 2010, Omnicare settled a False Claims Act suit filed by Resnick and taken up by the U.S. Department of Justice by paying $19.8 million to the federal government, while the two nursing homes involved in the scheme settled for $14 million. A second whistleblower lawsuit filed against Omnicare it by Resnick and Total Pharmacy Services V.P. Maureen Nehls related to kickbacks that were part of its 2004 acquisition of Total Pharmacy Services was settled for $17.2 million by Omnicare and $5 million by the Total Pharmacy owners.
1999/ 2007		Jane Turner	Female	Federal Bureau of Investigation	FBI whistleblower Jane Turner was an FBI agent for 25 years blew the whistle on the mishandling of child sex crime case on North Dakota Indian Reservations. As a response to her reporting, the FBI removed Turner from her position. In 2005, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the right of Turner to obtain a jury trial against the FBI and monetary damages. Turner also blew the whistle when she witnessed her colleagues stealing items from Ground Zero of 9/11 during inspections of the site. In 2007, Turner won the final judgement when the Department of Justice vetoed the FBI's appeal of a jury verdict that found the FBI guilty of illegal retaliation against Turner. Turner's case has since been used by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Senate in understanding how to improve the FBI Whistleblower Program.
2007		Daniel Richardson	Male	Bristol-Myers Squibb	Daniel Richardson is a former Senior District Business Manager for Bristol-Myers Squibb. With other whistleblowers, Richardson filed qui tam action against their employer for illegal drug pricing and marketing activities that resulted in increased Medicare and Medicaid costs. The company had to pay $515 million fines and penalties to resolve a broad array of federal and state civil allegations. Richardson and the other whistleblowers received a total of approximately $50 million in rewards.
2007		Justin Hopson	Male	New Jersey State Police	During his first few days as a rookie New Jersey State Trooper, Hopson witnessed an unlawful arrest and false report made by his training officer. When he refused to testify in support of the illegal arrest, he was subjected to hazing and harassment by his fellow troopers. He uncovered evidence of a secret society within the State Police known as the Lords of Discipline, whose mission it was to keep fellow troopers in line. Trooper Hopson blew the whistle on the Lords of Discipline, which sparked the largest internal investigation in State Police history. Hopson filed a federal lawsuit alleging that after he refused to support the arrest, Hopson was physically assaulted, received threatening notes, and his car was vandalized while on duty. In 2007, the State of New Jersey agreed to a $400,000 settlement with Hopson. Justin Hopson and his book were featured on ABC News 20/20 "Confessions of a Cop" in 2012 and "Crossing the Line" in 2014.
2007/ 2009		Sergei Magnitsky	Male	Russian accountant and auditor	Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky (Russian: Серге́й Леонидович Магнитский; April 8, 1972 – November 16, 2009) was a Russian accountant and auditor whose arrest and subsequent death in custody generated international media attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations. Magnitsky had alleged there had been a large-scale theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in prison seven days before the expiration of the one-year term during which he could be legally held without trial. In total, Magnitsky served 358 days in Moscow's notorious Butyrka prison. He developed gallstones, pancreatitis and a blocked gallbladder and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was beaten up just before he died. In 2013, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit news organization, obtained records of companies and trusts created by two offshore companies which included information on at least 23 companies linked to an alleged $230 million tax fraud in Russia, a case that was being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky. The ICIJ investigation also revealed that the husband of one of the Russian tax officials deposited millions in a Swiss bank account set up by one of the offshore companies.
2007		John Kiriakou	Male	Central Intelligence Agency	In an interview to ABC News on December 10, CIA officer Kiriakou disclosed that the agency waterboarded detainees and that this constituted torture. In the months following, Kiriakou passed the identity of a covert CIA operative to a reporter. He was convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and sentenced, on January 25, 2013, to 30 months imprisonment. Having served the first months of his service he wrote an open letter describing the inhuman circumstances at the correction facility.
2007		Anthony D'Armiento	Male	U.S. Coast Guard	Disclosed to a fellow whistleblower unclassified information which showed deficiencies in the U.S. Coast Guard Integrated Deepwater System program and that contractors were failing to meet contractual requirements with apparent U.S. Coast Guard complicity. Was placed on administrative leave, threatened with criminal prosecution, subjected to a retaliatory investigation by Coast Guard Investigative Service, ordered to "cooperate" and had a weapon pulled on him in the office of the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General.
2008		Anat Kamm	Female	Israeli Defense Force	Leaked documents to the media that revealed the IDF had been engaging in extrajudicial killings. While serving as an assistant in the Central Command bureau, Kamm secretly copied classified documents that she leaked to the Israeli Haaretz journalist Uri Blau after her military service was over. The leak suggested that the IDF had defied a court ruling against assassinating wanted militants in the West Bank who could potentially be arrested safely. Kamm was convicted of espionage and providing confidential information without authorization.
2008		Rudolf Elmer	Male	Julius Bär	A long-term employee of the Swiss bank whose final position entailed overseeing its Caribbean operations until he was terminated in 2002, Elmer blew the whistle on Julius Bär in 2008 when he gave secret documents to WikiLeaks. The documents detailed Julius Bär's activities in the Cayman Islands and alleged tax evasion. Convicted in Switzerland in January 2011, he was rearrested immediately for having distributed illegally obtained data to WikiLeaks. Julius Bär alleges that Elmer has doctored evidence to suggest the tax evasion.
2008/ 2012		Robert J. McCarthy	Male	United States Government	Robert J. McCarthy served as Field Solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior and as General Counsel, U.S. Section, International Boundary and Water Commission. The Oklahoma Bar Association honored him in 2008 with its Fern Holland Courageous Lawyer Award for helping to expose the Interior Department's mismanagement of $3.5 billion in Indian trust resources. In 2009, McCarthy disclosed massive fraud, waste and abuse by the IBWC, that imperiled the health and safety of millions of people on both sides of the U.S.- Mexico border and seriously damaged the border ecosystem. In both cases he was forced from government service, but continued to advocate for the victims of government abuse. In addition, his scholarly publications have revealed the fatal flaws in whistleblower protection laws, as well as the need for radical reform of specific government agencies.
2009		Hervé Falciani	Male	HSBC's Swiss subsidiary HSBC Private Bank	Since 2009 he has been collaborating with numerous European nations by providing information relating to more than 130,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts—specifically those with accounts in HSBC's Swiss subsidiary HSBC Private Bank
2009		Wendell Potter	Male	CIGNA	Former head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. He testified against the HMO industry in the U.S. Senate as a whistleblower.
		Cathy Harris	Female	United States Customs Service	A former United States Customs Service employee who exposed rampant racial profiling against Black travellers while working at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Harris's book, Flying While Black: A Whistleblower's Story, she personally observed numerous incidents of Black travellers being stopped, frisked, body-cavity-searched, detained for hours at local hospitals, forced to take laxatives, bowel-monitored and subjected to public and private racist/colorist humiliation. The book also details her allegations of mismanagement, abuses of authority, prohibited personnel practices, waste, fraud, violation of laws, rules and regulations, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, workplace violence, racial and sexual harassment, sexism, intimidation, on and off the job stalking, etc., and other illegal acts that occurs daily to federal employees especially female federal employees at U.S. Customs and other federal agencies.
2009		Ramin Pourandarjani	Male	Iranian Government	An Iranian physician who reported on the state use of torture on political prisoners. He died of poisoning shortly thereafter.
2009		John Kopchinski	Male	Pfizer	Former Pfizer sales representative and West Point graduate whose whistleblower ("qui tam") lawsuit launched a massive government investigation into Pfizer's illegal and dangerous marketing of Bextra, a prescription painkiller. Pfizer paid $1.8 billion to the government to settle the case, including a $1.3 billion criminal fine, which was the largest criminal fine ever imposed for any matter. The Bextra settlement was part of a $2.3 billion global settlement – the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history.
2009		Jim Wetta, Joseph Faltaous, Steven Woodward, Jaydeen Vincente, Robert Rudolph, Hector Rosado, Robert Evan Dawitt, William Lofing, Bradly Lutz	Male	Eli Lilly	Nine sales representatives for Eli Lilly filed separate qui tam lawsuits against the company for illegally marketing the drug Zyprexa for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. According to the settlement, the drug was marketed for other medical conditions not approved by the FDA, known as off-label use. The Government's investigation was triggered by a lawsuit filed by nine sales representatives (Realtors). Eli Lilly pleaded guilty to actively promoting Zyprexa for off-label uses, particularly for the treatment of dementia in the elderly. The $1.415 billion penalty included an $800 million civil settlement and a $515 million criminal fine—the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation in United States history. Contingent upon the United States receiving the Federal Settlement amount, the nine whistle blowers shared $78,870,877, of the federal share of the civil settlement.
2009		Alexander Barankov	Male	Belarus Ministry of Internal Affairs	Claimed corruption among Belarusian police; charged with bribery and fraud in 2009; became a political refugee in Ecuador in 2010; as of August 2012, faces extradition back to Belarus.
2009		Linda Almonte	Female	JP Morgan Chase	Filed suit under the Dodd Frank Act whistleblower program regarding alleged corrupt practices including robosigning at JP Morgan.

2010s

Year	Image	Name	Gender	Organization	Action
2010		Andrew Maguire	Male		Andrew Maguire is a British commodities trader and whistleblower. He presented evidence to United States regulators alleging that fraud had been committed, and that prices in the international gold and silver markets had been manipulated. He went public in April 2010 with assertions of market manipulation by JPMorgan Chase and HSBC of the gold and silver markets.
2010		Chelsea Manning	Female	United States Army	U.S. Army intelligence analyst who released the largest set of classified documents ever, mostly published by WikiLeaks and their media partners. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. Manning was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
2011/ 2013		Monica Bennett-Ryan	Female	Australian Defence Intelligence and Security Authority (DSA)	In 2009, Monica Bennett-Ryan, an Australian whistleblower, uncovered corruption in Australia's Defence Intelligence and Security Authority (DSA). In 2011, without any evidence, she and two others, Janice Weightman and Owen Laikum, publicly declared they had been ordered to falsify information on security clearances. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, ordered an investigation and the Investigator General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) in 2013 found their claims to be true. Over 20,000 paper clearances had been compromised, including more than 5,000 Top Secret clearances. (ABC Lateline, May 2011) WHAT THEY SAW "The Parliament owes these three brave people a great debt of gratitude for coming forward in the circumstances." Senator David Johnston (Ministerial Statement to the Senate in the Parliament of Australia, 9 Feb 2012)
2011		Michael Woodford	Male	Olympus Corporation	Corporate president, revealed the Olympus scandal in which past losses concealed and written off via excessive fee payments
2011		Clare Rewcastle Brown	Female	Sarawak Report	Operated and founded the radio network Radio Free Sarawak and whistleblowing site Sarawak Report. Before February 2011, Sarawak Report and Radio Free Sarawak operated anonymously. However, Rewcastle Brown and Radio Free Sarawak's DJ is Peter John Jaban decided to go public after one of her informants, a former Taib aide, was found dead. Ross Boyert, who used to head Taib's supposed real estate arm in the United States, was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room with a plastic bag around his head in September 2011. Boyert had claimed that he and his family had been harassed since he filed a lawsuit against the real estate company in 2007. Sarawak Report later revealed a barrage of exposés including the April 2011 Sarawak election's fraud, FBC Media's scandal, Musa Aman timber corruption, Red Granite Pictures' controversy and with her latest being the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.
2011		Blake Percival	Male	USIS	Percival filed a Qui Tam Whistleblower claim under seal in 7/2011 alleging that USIS had defrauded the U.S. Government by submitting unfinished background investigations to the government for payment. USIS had been under scrutiny since it was revealed that they had performed the background investigation of Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis.
2011		Everett Stern	Male	HSBC	AML compliance officer for HSBC who uncovered billions of dollars of illegal money laundering transactions that he began reporting to the FBI and the CIA in 2011, which led to an SEC investigation and a $1.92 billion fine against HSBC the following year. These encompassed charges of money laundering for drug traffickers, terrorist financiers, and nations under U.S. and international sanctions.
2011		Manasse Nzobonimpa	Male	EALA	In 2011, Manasse Nzobonimpa made allegations accusing a group of officials of the Burundi Government (including the President Pierre Nkurunziza) of corruption and human rights violations. He was then forced into exile with his family
2012		Vijay Pandhare	Male	Chief Engineer, Irrigation Department, Government of Maharashtra	Pandhare was a bureaucrat belonging to the Irrigation Department in the Indian state of Maharashtra. He blew the whistle on the Maharashtra Irrigation Scam of 2012 that led to the resignation of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
2012		Carmen Segarra	Female	U.S. New York Federal Reserve's appointed regulator to Goldman Sachs	Carmen Segarra discovered that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict of interest policy when it advised El Paso Corp. on selling itself to Kinder Morgan, a company which Goldman Sachs owned a $4 billion stake. She was forced by her superiors at the Federal Reserve to falsify her report, but stated that her professional view of the situation had not changed. She was shortly thereafter fired. The New York Federal Reserve disputes that she was fired in retaliation.
2012		Silver Meikar	Male	Estonian Reform Party	In May 2012 Meikar published an article, admitting that he had donated cash to Estonian Reform Party in 2009 and 2010, coming from unknown sources and given him by co-politician Kalev Lillo, according to a proposition made by Kristen Michal, Reform Party's secretary general. The scandal became known as Silvergate. Lillo and Michal were presented with criminal charges. After a long and heated discussion in media, charges were dropped, as it was not possible to gather enough evidence. On October 24, 2012, Meikar was expelled from the party. Consequently, Kristen Michal stepped down as the minister of justice.
2012		Antoine Deltour	Male	PricewaterhouseCoopers	In 2012 Deltour's leaking of 28,000 pages of confidential documents revealing how multinational companies routed funds to lower corporate tax bills, gave rise to the Luxembourg Leaks journalistic investigation and attracted international attention to tax avoidance schemes in Luxembourg and elsewhere. There was no suggestion that the arrangements were illegal under Luxembourg law, but the disclosures prompted wider public debate on corporate tax avoidance schemes and criminal charges against Deltour.
2013		David P. Weber	Male	United States Securities and Exchange Commission	Weber, an attorney and Certified Fraud Examiner, was the assistant inspector general of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He learned of misconduct in the Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford investigations, and of suspected hacking by a unit of the Chinese military. He insisted that agency management report the misconduct and hacking to Congressional Oversight Committees, but instead was terminated for supposedly unrelated reasons. Shortly after his lawsuit became public, news stories broke that the People's Liberation Army compromised information technology at 160 U.S. corporations and government agencies.
2013		Edward Snowden	Male	National Security Agency	Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Snowden released classified material on top-secret NSA programs including the PRISM surveillance program to The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013.
2013		Witness K		Australian Secret Intelligence Service	Exposed the Australia-East Timor spying scandal, that the Australian government had bugged negotiations with East Timor to force them to sign contracts that allowed the Australian government to continue extracting from their oil and gas fields, and that the then Foreign Minister of Australia, Alexander Downer went on to score a lucrative contract with Woodside Petroleum, who held the license over the oil fields. The Australian government is attempting to try Witness K and their lawyer, Bernard Collaery in a secret court for breaching national security.
2014		John Tye	Male	U.S. State Department	Former State Department official John Tye released an editorial in The Washington Post in July 2014, highlighting concerns over data collection under Executive Order 12333. While Tye's concerns are rooted in classified material he had access to through the State Department, he has not publicly released any classified materials.
2007/ 2014		Howard Wilkinson	Male	Danske Bank	During his time as a manager at Danske Bank, Howard Wilkinson witnessed a $200 billion money laundering scheme that funneled money from Russia to the United States through Europe. He reported the suspected activities at the Estonian branch where he worked until 2014, but his internal reports were ignored. In 2018, news of a massive money laundering scheme and an anonymous internal whistleblower at Danske Bank broke. Wilkinson's name was illegally leaked a few days later. In December 2018, Wilkinson testified in front of the Danish Parliament, discussing his role as a whistleblower and addressing the EU whistleblower laws. Wilkinson's case was featured on the CBS 60 Minutes television program in May 2019.
2015		John Doe		Mossack Fonseca	John Doe is the pseudonym used by the anonymous whistleblower in the 2015 Panama Papers leak, who disclosed 11.5 million documents detailing financial and attorney–client information from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
2016		Julio Escobar	Male	Universal health Services	Julio Escobar and his wife Carmen Correa filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the Universal Health Services (UHS) after the death of their teenage daughter Yarushka Rivera. Rivera died of a seizure after being treated at Arbour Counseling Services, a mental health service provider operated by UHS. An investigation into the death revealed that Arbour had violated the state Medicaid regulations during Rivera's treatment by allowing unlicensed and unsupervised clinicians to diagnose and prescribe medication. The unanimous Supreme Court decision on Universal Health v. Escobar set a significant precedent that permits corporations to be liable for fraud under the False Claims Act when they fail to disclose material non-compliance with regulatory requirements.
2016		Edgar Matobato	Male	Davao Death Squad	Edgar Matobato (born Edgar Matobato y Bernal) is a self-confessed professional hitman and serial killer who claims to be a former member of the Davao Death Squad or the "DDS", an alleged vigilante group organized by former Davao City Mayor now Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte tasked to summarily execute suspected criminals. He appeared before the Philippine Senate on September 15, 2016 during a hearing on extra-judicial killings. At the hearing, Matobato recounted his experiences as a killer and narrated how he killed his victims. He revealed that Duterte once killed a certain Hamizola using an Uzi, emptying the gun on the victim. On October 7, 2016, Edgar Matobato was turned over by Senator Antonio Trillanes to the Philippine National Police after an arrest warrant was issued to him.
Oct. 2017/ Oct. 2018		Natalie Edwards	Female	Financial Crimes division (FinCEN) of the United States Treasury	Natalie Edwards, a senior official with the Financial Crimes division (FinCEN) of the United States Treasury, informed BuzzFeed News of numerous suspicious activity reports (SARs) involving Maria Butina, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, the Russian Embassy in the United States, and a Russian firm associated with money laundering, Prevezon Alexander, LLC. The information in these SARs contained details about Russia's involvement in the 2016 United States presidential election.
2019		Aleksandar Obradović	Male	State-owned company Krušik Valjevo	Aleksandar Obradović leaked documents which revealed corruption and fraud inside of a state-owned company Krušik Valjevo where he was a manager. Those documents showed company represented by a father of the minister of the police buying weapons by privileged price from Krušik. Weapons manufactured in Krušik were later found used by ISIS fighters in Yemen. Obradović was arrested at his workplace on charges of espionage. He spent three weeks in central prison in Belgrade before being sentenced to house arrest, after 2 months he was released from house arrest but he wasn't let back in the factory.
2019/ 2020		Anonymous		Central Intelligence Agency	On August 12, 2019, an unnamed CIA officer filed a whistleblower complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community under provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. On September 18, The Washington Post broke the story, saying the complaint concerned a promise U.S. President Donald Trump made during communication with an unnamed foreign leader. On September 24, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced a formal impeachment inquiry, which was widely attributed to the whistleblower's complaint. What became known as the Trump–Ukraine scandal culminated on December 18 in the impeachment of the president. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. Senate acquitted Trump of the charges brought against him by the House.
2019/ 2020		Li Wenliang	Male	Wuhan Central Hospital	Li Wenliang (Chinese: 李文亮; pinyin: Lǐ Wénliàng; 12 October 1986 – 7 February 2020) was a Chinese ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital who warned about the COVID-19 pandemic on 30 December 2019. On 3 January 2020, Wuhan police summoned and admonished him for "making false comments on the Internet." Li returned to work but later contracted the virus from an infected patient. He died from the infection on 7 February 2020.
2021		Ronnie Lovel	Unknown	Geneva	Snitches on his friends with no shame
2021		Frances Haugen	Female	Facebook	Frances Haugen, formerly a product manager in the civic integrity department at Facebook, disclosed thousands of internal documents related to user research and impact, special policy exceptions for high-profile users, and hate speech, among others, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Wall Street Journal, in a leak termed the Facebook Files.

External links

Media related to Whistleblowers at Wikimedia Commons