- #1
edward
- 62
- 166
I seem to sense that whistle blowers are seen as lesser citizens. Is it the old stool pigeon connotation? There is something to this that doesn't make sense. Many people have given valuable information about illegal acts and corruption only to end up on the losing side.
In this next case a government employee was demoted and her life thoroughly trashed.
I understand that Haliburton is a powerful company, but that doesn't explain why her friends abandoned her. Do we have a collective darker side when it comes to accepting those who report wrongdoing? It appears that we do.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
In this next case a government employee was demoted and her life thoroughly trashed.
I understand that Haliburton is a powerful company, but that doesn't explain why her friends abandoned her. Do we have a collective darker side when it comes to accepting those who report wrongdoing? It appears that we do.
"Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton (nyse: HAL - news - people ) subsidiary KBR (nyse: KBR - news - people ).
Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.
People she has known for years no longer speak to her.
"It's just amazing how we say we want to remove fraud from our government, then we gag people who are just trying to stand up and do the right thing," she says."
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html
Last edited by a moderator: