The So-Called ‘Whistleblower Organizations’: Munchausen by
Proxy
By Professor William Weaver
In the syndrome
Munchausen by proxy, parents inflict injuries on their children to put
themselves in the position of rescuer in nursing them back to health. It is
done to gain attention, sympathy, or for other reasons of personal
satisfaction. The well-being of the child is sacrificed to the parents’ desires
for attention, even though the parents represent themselves as selflessly
devoted to the health and safety of the children under their control.
Something
similar occurs in the relationship between government oversight organizations
and their prize whistleblowers. I say "prize" whistleblowers because
it is rare indeed for whistleblowers applying for help from oversight
organizations to receive a response, much less aid. Member after member of the
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) relates how oversight
organizations fail to respond to their inquiries, and when there is a reply it
is usually an explanation that the organization is too busy saving other people to help out. But those whistleblowers
who are deemed "prizes," the ones who have attracted media attention
or plainly promise to do so, are paraded up and down the pages of the media and
self-congratulatory publications by the organizations involved. Like the
parents with Munchausen by proxy use their children, these organizations use
whistleblowers to gain attention. They use this attention to aid in fund
raising, to pander their image to the public, and to keep a steady steam of
whistleblowers applying for help.
Most important
to maintenance of control is that these oversight organizations demand sole
power to speak for the whistleblowers, that whistleblowers are presented to the
public in the way the organization wishes them to be seen. Whistleblowers are
forced to be a "story" rather than a person; a story that advances
the goals of the organization often times at the expense of the whistleblower.
And once the brief foray into public light is over, whistleblowers are left
behind by these organizations in their rush to the next media prize to help
keep organizational funding coming in and to keep fresh their fevered
self-glorification. Led on by false hope, whistleblowers are trapped between abuse
by vengeful administrators and exploitation by those they turn to for help.
When times are
bad, they are good for these organizations. When travesty is aplenty, the crop
of media martyrs is bountiful. The more hopeless the outlook, the more cruel
the treatment of employees by government administrators, the more successful
the fund drives and chest-beating false bravado of the organizations. These
organizations are part of a co-dependency that has misery and continuation of
the conditions that give rise to whistleblowers as its fuel. They have
developed entrenched and deep relationships with government agencies and
members of Congress that result in a complicated waltz of agreed
ineffectiveness. It is in the interest of all parties involved, except of course
the whistleblowers, to never accomplish anything in terms of reform. The
agencies don’t have to submit to greater oversight, the oversight organizations
have an endless supply of "causes" to help fill their coffers, and
Congress need not make difficult decisions.
What makes this
perverted cycle of misery almost unbearable for me is that the "ill
children" these organizations pretend to treat are remarkable people. My
experience with the NSWBC has put me in contact with people who are
extraordinary patriots with keen senses of dignity and integrity. Our members
average nearly twenty years of government service; they are experienced,
skilled, and wise in the ways of government agencies. They stand up for truth,
for the citizens of our country, and for our democracy. Their reward is agency
retaliation, destroyed careers, loss of friends and family, and enormous
expense. Compounding these injuries are exploitation at the hands of the people
whistleblowers turn to for help.
The NSWBC is
unpopular with the organizations whistleblowers turn to. Some of this
unpopularity comes from tensions associated with a new organization plying an
area that has traditionally had few participants. But the real revulsion for
NSWBC is that it is run by, and exclusively comprised of, whistleblowers. It
gives an unmediated voice to those who have directly suffered the harm of
retaliation in the national security workplace. This is an affront to
traditional organizations in the area and threatens their conveyor-belt stream
of whistleblowers to be exploited and wrung out for all they can provide the
organization.
In the last
three decades, nothing has been done to protect national security
whistleblowers, yet these organizations claim they have been in the midst of a
great struggle on behalf of whistleblowers. The NSWBC has been around for
eighteen months, and in that short time it has certainly made a mark. For
example, recently a bill was unanimously reported out of the House Committee on
Government Reform that would give protection, substantive protection, to
national security whistleblowers. This milestone was accomplished by the NSWBC
working in concert with Committee Chairman Tom Davis and senior member of the
Committee Henry Waxman. The bill was also spurred on by a hearing before the
Subcommittee on National Security, chaired by Representative Christopher Shays.
The bill has many hurdles to clear, but this is an unprecedented event.
The bill was
reported out in great part because whistleblowers spoke to the Committee in
first person accounts, unmediated by "helpful" organizations. These
whistleblowers helped Representatives Davis, Waxman, and Shays see the damage
that is done to the nation and to the government by not protecting those who
report waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies. True to form, though, after
the bill was reported out of committee, the Government Accountability Project
distributed a press release implying that it had some major role in the
formulation of the bill. Again, an organization moved in to attempt to deprive
whistleblowers of their own voice, of any credit for defending themselves; the
sick children must be put back in their place.
The NSWBC
empowers its members by giving them a means to focus their voices through an
organization. Administrators rely on isolation of whistleblowers, on their
inability to hook up with each other and to be more than just scattered
"stories." The NSWBC helps members translate their voices into
policy, into workable reforms, into effective measures for countering
government malfeasance. While traditional oversight organizations are busy
looking for the next whistleblower to throw on the conveyor belt, we would be
happy if the reasons for NSWBC’s existence would disappear; in fact we strive
for that result.
William
G. Weaver, J.D., Ph.D.
Senior
Advisor-NSWBC