Letter to a Whistleblower
I've been communicating with Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (aka "The Insider"), who blew the whistle on the tobacco industry's knowledge of the addictive nature of their products, since last August. He has passed on information I've sent him about the Traffic.com scandal to his media contacts, and has suggested folks for me to contact.
Yesterday he gave a luncheon talk at a conference in DC designed to support whistleblowers and promote new whistleblower support legislation, which prompted my email message to him this morning.
Dr. Wigand,
I caught much of the DC "whistleblower conference" yesterday on C-SPAN3, including your very thoughtful post-luncheon talk. I could relate to much of your experience and many of your observations, particularly the part about how you got your ass kicked, which in turn silenced others who might have been contemplating going public with similar concerns.
FYI -- this is the third major time in my life I've been a whistleblower, and the first two times I indeed got my ass kicked. The first time I was an engineer at Motorola (back in the late 70s) and decided to tell top management why morale was so low and other engineers were leaving in droves. (I knew that very few of the people leaving were telling the real reasons, because they didn't want to "burn their bridges.") In my naivete I decided that I was going to try to change the organization, but would have to leave if I couldn't. So I and a college friend of mine bypassed 12 levels in the hierarchy to vent our spleens about the stifling working conditions with the Exec. VP of the company, who had been an engineer in our division 25 years earlier. I won't bore you with the details, but when no changes resulted from all my efforts after six weeks or so I resigned. The very next day, my boss held an all-hands meeting with 50 of my co-workers, and announced that the company had put me on "mental leave." Of course, all of my co-workers who thought that perhaps things might change for the better realized that the only successful strategy was to shut up. I was so pissed that I flew to New York to meet with the Editor in Chief of the top electronic engineering newspaper to see if he was interested in a whistleblower story. He wasn't, but was so impressed by the writing in my memos to Motorola management that he offered me a job as West Coast editor for the publication. Nonetheless, I had to change both location and avocation because of the company's efforts to discredit me.
The second time I was an internal whistleblower I was a senior manager at a ground-breaking computer research consortium in Austin (where I moved from California). The consortium's support had been declining for several years because no one had a unifying vision for why we existed in the first place. So I offered to head up a little skunk works project to come up with that vision. Shortly thereafter, a new President was hired and, although I actually reported to a Vice President on his staff, the new President invited me to participate in his staff meetings. As the consortium was continuing to decline, one of the technologists in my part of it sent around a goodbye email message announcing that he was returning to his parent company, but that he was sure that everything in the program was "poised for success" (his words). I knew that wasn't at all the case, and that the part of the organization he worked in was going down the tubes very rapidly. I sat on his email message for a day or so, and then decided I couldn't let it go unchallenged. So I responded to it with specific information about how that part of the organization was being mismanaged, and copied over 100 people on that email message (including all the top executives). My theory was that a "truth nuke" would rapidly change things for the better, since the slower approach I had tried years earlier at Motorola hadn't worked. My email response was primarily targeted for the new President, who I thought would immediately look into my charges. Unfortunately, my "truth nuke" had only one casualty: me. I was fired within two hours of sending that message by the Chairman (who was still CEO) and the VP of Personnel. Unfortunately, the President was out of town and wouldn't see my message until the next day, when I was long gone. Of course, virtually all of the points I made in that memo were true (and most people who worked in the program knew it, but also knew that criticizing management was a terminal offense), and the whole program went out of business a few years later. By the way, I am quoted about many of these points in a book called "R&D Collaboration on Trial" that was published by the Harvard Business School Press a couple years later.
It took me eight years to get back to where I had been economically at that research consortium. I had to once again change careers and change employers, ultimately becoming a consultant to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation in DC. So I know what can happen when one is foolish enough (and has enough integrity) to tell the truth in a bureaucracy where most people -- particularly the ones in control -- don't want to hear it.
And now I'm doing it again, based largely on the knowledge I've gained in working for the USDOT about a very egregious ongoing scandal involving both elected and appointed officials. This time I'm taking on some really big fish -- several senior people in the Bush Administration, including a Cabinet Secretary and Deputy Secretary. If/when this scandal becomes public, I very likely will get my ass kicked once again, big time.
Such is the lot of the whistleblower/rabblerouser.
Jerry
P.S. Thankfully, I have found support for investigating this scandal from seemingly amazing places. Even though this scandal involves the Bush Administration, conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch is so far willing to pursue the truth no matter where it leads -- see the attached memo he just sent to USDOT Secretary Mary Peters last Thursday.
Yesterday he gave a luncheon talk at a conference in DC designed to support whistleblowers and promote new whistleblower support legislation, which prompted my email message to him this morning.
Dr. Wigand,
I caught much of the DC "whistleblower conference" yesterday on C-SPAN3, including your very thoughtful post-luncheon talk. I could relate to much of your experience and many of your observations, particularly the part about how you got your ass kicked, which in turn silenced others who might have been contemplating going public with similar concerns.
FYI -- this is the third major time in my life I've been a whistleblower, and the first two times I indeed got my ass kicked. The first time I was an engineer at Motorola (back in the late 70s) and decided to tell top management why morale was so low and other engineers were leaving in droves. (I knew that very few of the people leaving were telling the real reasons, because they didn't want to "burn their bridges.") In my naivete I decided that I was going to try to change the organization, but would have to leave if I couldn't. So I and a college friend of mine bypassed 12 levels in the hierarchy to vent our spleens about the stifling working conditions with the Exec. VP of the company, who had been an engineer in our division 25 years earlier. I won't bore you with the details, but when no changes resulted from all my efforts after six weeks or so I resigned. The very next day, my boss held an all-hands meeting with 50 of my co-workers, and announced that the company had put me on "mental leave." Of course, all of my co-workers who thought that perhaps things might change for the better realized that the only successful strategy was to shut up. I was so pissed that I flew to New York to meet with the Editor in Chief of the top electronic engineering newspaper to see if he was interested in a whistleblower story. He wasn't, but was so impressed by the writing in my memos to Motorola management that he offered me a job as West Coast editor for the publication. Nonetheless, I had to change both location and avocation because of the company's efforts to discredit me.
The second time I was an internal whistleblower I was a senior manager at a ground-breaking computer research consortium in Austin (where I moved from California). The consortium's support had been declining for several years because no one had a unifying vision for why we existed in the first place. So I offered to head up a little skunk works project to come up with that vision. Shortly thereafter, a new President was hired and, although I actually reported to a Vice President on his staff, the new President invited me to participate in his staff meetings. As the consortium was continuing to decline, one of the technologists in my part of it sent around a goodbye email message announcing that he was returning to his parent company, but that he was sure that everything in the program was "poised for success" (his words). I knew that wasn't at all the case, and that the part of the organization he worked in was going down the tubes very rapidly. I sat on his email message for a day or so, and then decided I couldn't let it go unchallenged. So I responded to it with specific information about how that part of the organization was being mismanaged, and copied over 100 people on that email message (including all the top executives). My theory was that a "truth nuke" would rapidly change things for the better, since the slower approach I had tried years earlier at Motorola hadn't worked. My email response was primarily targeted for the new President, who I thought would immediately look into my charges. Unfortunately, my "truth nuke" had only one casualty: me. I was fired within two hours of sending that message by the Chairman (who was still CEO) and the VP of Personnel. Unfortunately, the President was out of town and wouldn't see my message until the next day, when I was long gone. Of course, virtually all of the points I made in that memo were true (and most people who worked in the program knew it, but also knew that criticizing management was a terminal offense), and the whole program went out of business a few years later. By the way, I am quoted about many of these points in a book called "R&D Collaboration on Trial" that was published by the Harvard Business School Press a couple years later.
It took me eight years to get back to where I had been economically at that research consortium. I had to once again change careers and change employers, ultimately becoming a consultant to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation in DC. So I know what can happen when one is foolish enough (and has enough integrity) to tell the truth in a bureaucracy where most people -- particularly the ones in control -- don't want to hear it.
And now I'm doing it again, based largely on the knowledge I've gained in working for the USDOT about a very egregious ongoing scandal involving both elected and appointed officials. This time I'm taking on some really big fish -- several senior people in the Bush Administration, including a Cabinet Secretary and Deputy Secretary. If/when this scandal becomes public, I very likely will get my ass kicked once again, big time.
Such is the lot of the whistleblower/rabblerouser.
Jerry
P.S. Thankfully, I have found support for investigating this scandal from seemingly amazing places. Even though this scandal involves the Bush Administration, conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch is so far willing to pursue the truth no matter where it leads -- see the attached memo he just sent to USDOT Secretary Mary Peters last Thursday.
posted by Jerry Werner | 7:51 AM
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