I would have wanted to know if you’ve
ever wanted to know corporation and
government secrets these are the
individuals you can thank welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’re counting
down our picks for the top ten
whistleblowers William Solomon said we
sat around a table plotting these things
and no one ever asked is it ethical is
it legal and of course they didn’t ask
is it working for this list we’ve looked
at people who revealed corrupt or
illegal behavior to the public we’ve
based our ranking on the importance of
the leaked information the individual’s
overall notoriety and the impact their
information had on the public I
eventually you realize that these things
need to be determined by the public not
by somebody who was simply hired by the
government
number 10 Coleen Rowley holy shit
terrorists broke following the September
11th 2001 terrorist attacks in New York
City many agencies took a hard look at
their policies and procedures as their
agents began to doubt the agency’s
recklessness would be criminal in the
things I know of are bordering on that
FBI agent Coleen Rowley was one of those
agents she quickly became known for
speaking out against the FBI due to
their mishandling of information
regarding the terrorist Zacarias
Moussaoui who was linked to the attacks
the man known as the 20th hijacker
Zacarias Moussaoui
is now serving six life sentences in the
supermax prison in Florence Colorado for
her actions Rowley was named one of Time
Magazine’s people of the year in 2002
and was awarded the first ever Sam Adams
Award for integrity in intelligence that
same year I also was probably one of the
last whistleblowers to get on a cover of
a magazine I mean and actually survived
she retired from service in 2004 do you
feel that lessons have been learned
oh I you know that’s a good question to
have the lessons been learned um
I don’t think so number nine Jeffrey
Wigand his testimony was a key to the
eventual 240
six billion dollar settlement with five
tobacco companies time to stand up to
the tobacco companies coming from the
research and development department of
tobacco company Brown & Williamson
Jeffrey Wigand had enough of hiding
secrets and I decided at the reading
those articles and authenticate him that
I would actually go to CBS 60 minutes
and violate the agreement I had signed
after receiving two death threats of my
children in 1996 Wiegand was interviewed
by 60 minutes and told the public that
his company had increased the amount of
nicotine in their cigarettes by
manipulating the tobacco blend we’re
gonna make a team delivery business and
that’s what cigarettes are for most
certainly it’s a delivery device for
nicotine causing increased harm to both
smokers and secondhand smokers when you
say you don’t have a safest cigarette
boom that now takes everything else that
you have available and say it’s unsafe
and that from a product liability point
of view gave the lawyers great concern
since then Wiegand has become an expert
witness in tobacco related cases and his
story got an even wider audience thanks
to the Hollywood film The Insider if you
asked me would I do it again do I think
it’s worth it
yeah I think it’s worth it number eight
mark Whitacre wearing a wire for three
years undercover I attempted suicide
twice oh it had a lot of serious aspects
to that case it doesn’t matter what
level of employment you’ve reached
anyone can be a whistleblower just ask
mark Whitacre if I’m on the phone with
any of the competitors I would record
that Whittaker worked at Archer Daniels
Midland where he was president of the
bio products division and he became the
highest level corporate executive to
ever blow the whistle when he revealed
that ADM had been involved in
price-fixing I and I I kind of started
writing my own savage started taking
money from that company the last write
to the last few months however the
company retaliated and slammed Whitaker
for embezzlement which resulted in 9.5
million dollars worth of fraud charges
and eight and a half years in a federal
prison they told me that I was a good
informant they told me and told a few
times one of the best informants they’ve
ever had following his release
Whitakers exploits were comically
dramatized in the 2009 Matt Damon led
film the informant you know we’d work it
we’d build the investigation get
everything we needed gather up all the
information then we went to DOJ briefed
those lawyers and you know before you
knew it we were hitting ADM raiding the
place taking it down
number seven Mordechai Vanunu this
reading here this is the district court
of Jerusalem the place who sentence me
as a spy traitor here is a controversial
choice Mordechai Vanunu was an Israeli
nuclear technician who was abducted by
Mossad agents after revealing the truth
about Israel’s nuclear testing program
to the public through a UK newspaper he
spent over 18 years in prison eleven of
them in solitary very cruel barbaric
treatment by Israel’s spy Mossad Masada
Shabaab since his release in 2004 he has
been an activist in freedom of speech
and movement although named a traitor
against Israel
Vanunu has been celebrated by the
international community including
numerous Nobel Peace Prize nominations
the Right Livelihood award and the Lenin
Ohno grant for peace I am a symbol
we love freedom that the human spirit is
free you cannot destroy the humans video
number 6 Sharon Watkins I felt like I
was the loyal employee but I have this
whistleblower light if there’s anything
that gets the whistleblowing
it’s shady finances I think leaders they
should bear not only the privilege of
office but also the responsibility a
vice president with Enron Sharon Watkins
became famous after alerting the
authorities of financial fraud within
the company
there were swindlers in the Emperor’s
New Clothes discussing the fine material
that they were weaving although she was
criticized for not bringing her reports
of financial anomalies to the public
sooner Watkins was named one of the
three people of the year in 2002 along
with fellow whistleblower Coleen Rowley
since leaving Enron she’s become an
advocate of proper business and
management and actively spreads her
ideals about the problems of the
corporate culture in the United States
when you have an ethical challenge your
life’s never the same you’re either
going to rise to it and try to stop the
bad behavior or you’re going to
rationalize why you know you’re staying
silent number five Daniel Ellsberg was a
well kept secret by thousands and
thousands of people including me like
other industries the military has no
shortage of whistleblowers one of these
is Daniel Ellsberg a former United
States military analyst who worked for
the RAND Corporation
I needed details of the atrocities for
the hit Con anywhere in Vietnam
above all I wanted gory details of any
injuries to American while employed
there
Ellsberg became disenchanted with the
Vietnam War and subsequently photocopied
and publicly released a number of
classified documents regarding
decision-making during the conflict
I met with reporter Neil Sheehan at the
New York Times and leaked information
about a secret CIA report on enemy troop
strength these documents now known as
the Pentagon Papers
revealed unreported bombings in Laos and
Cambodia raids in North Vietnam and the
full role of the United States in the
assassination of South Vietnamese
president Ngo Dinh xeam in 1963 we need
those whistleblowers right now we needed
another Edward Snowden and many more of
them and Chelsea Manning’s to inform
Congress as to what this country is
being asked number for Edward Snowden
over time that awareness of wrongdoing
sort of builds up and you feel compelled
to talk about it and the more you talk
about it the more you’re ignored the
more you’re told it’s not a problem
arguably the poster boy of
whistleblowing Edward Snowden is a
former systems analyst who leaked
classified government documents
regarding mass surveillance from the
National Security Agency I was trained
as a spy and sort of the traditional
sense of the word and that I lived and
worked undercover overseas pretending to
work in a job that I’m not the
information didn’t just affect the
United States as it disclosed
information about surveillance on many
different European countries including
some allies if I end up in Chains and
Guantanamo I can move with that
Snowden’s actions have sparked the
debate over government monitoring
individual privacy and even national
security and he’s been branded as both a
hero and a traitor the greatest fear
that I have regarding the outcome for
America of these disclosures is that
nothing will change number three Julian
Assange we accept material that is
political diplomatic or historical or
ethical significance that hasn’t been
published before and is I’m kind of some
some kind of censorship threat Asajj
rose to notoriety as the founder
website WikiLeaks in 2006 but didn’t
grab the world’s attention until 2010
when he began releasing classified
documents obtained by Bradley later
known as Chelsea Manning the site and
Asajj himself have been under fire ever
since with questions surrounding the
legality of the leaks so information
that organizations are spending economic
effort into concealing that’s a really
good signal that when the information
gets out there’s a hope of it doing so
good public reaction has been mixed as
some governments have named him a
criminal
while many groups have rewarded his
actions we don’t yet have a totalitarian
regime but we have a getting pretty
close in the practical limits is that
going to cross over into something else
in 2010
Asajj received the Sam Adams Award for
intelligence and ethics and in 2012 he
won the Sydney Peace Foundation gold
medal for peace with justice putting him
in a category that includes only Nelson
Mandela the Dalai Lama and Daisaku Ikeda
it’s my great great pleasure to present
you with the Sydney Peace Medal for your
conviction that truth matters and that
justice depends on it and for your
courage and leadership and tenacity in
journalism and publishing number two
mark felt for more than 30 years felt
denied he was the source who connected
the White House to the June 1972
break-in at the Democratic National
Committee headquarters mark felt is the
man we can thank for exposing corruption
in the White House and for taking down
the Nixon administration thanks to the
Watergate scandal therefore I shall
resign the presidency effective at noon
tomorrow known only as deep throat until
he went public in 2005 felt was the
Associate Director of the FBI the
agency’s second highest post when he
released sensitive information to
Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein he was insistent that
we not disclose and I think we wanted to
protect that principle deep throats
whistleblowing was made public in the
mid 70s with the release of the book and
later the film all the President’s Men
which only added to
deep throats mystique it involves the
entire US intelligence community FBI CIA
justice this incredible before we unveil
our top pick here are a few honorable
mentions this division plainclothes this
is actually an illegitimate arrest but
that happens all the time
heaven forbid you should expose you
should embarrass the administration with
your disclosures but if you expose your
illegality you’re really going to pay if
you’re in trouble first of all I’d like
to to say that I retired from NSA
because of the spying they started on US
citizens and the massive scale that they
did it since I designed a lot of the
programs that they’re using I want to I
want to express the magnitude of the
problem not just for the United States
but for world democracy as I discovered
that in the country where I was
ambassador we in the Americans were
shipping people in order for them to be
tortured and some of the would torture
to death
as you may imagine my worldview changed
number one Chelsea Manning was deeply
disturbed by what he was seen as an
intelligence analyst in Iraq at the
shooting of the Reuters reporters
civilians by helicopter formerly known
as Bradley Manning Chelsea is
responsible for the largest leak of
government documents in history via
WikiLeaks many of these documents
including 500,000 army reports describe
military operations and airstrikes
during the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars
and were obtained while Manning was
serving as an intelligence analyst
through the cell that he was in on the
floor and how he had to lay in the cell
and how the light was on him 24 hours
forced to sleep without cover conditions
far worse than soldiers who have been
convicted of cold-blooded murder as a
result of this leak Manning was charged
with 22 criminal offences under the
Espionage Act and was given a 35-year
prison sentence he was not convicted on
aiding the enemy the most serious charge
that would have landed in life in prison
like many on our list
Manning serves as an example of the
treatment of whistleblowers by
governments and the dangers they face
soldier will serve time at Leavenworth
maximum-security prison in Kansas the
prison has 515 beds and no female
prisoners do you agree with our list
which whistleblower intrigued you the
most for more investigative top 10s
published every day be sure to subscribe
to watchmojo.com of course they have a
lot of nuclear secrets I only work there
nine years
you
ever wanted to know corporation and
government secrets these are the
individuals you can thank welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’re counting
down our picks for the top ten
whistleblowers William Solomon said we
sat around a table plotting these things
and no one ever asked is it ethical is
it legal and of course they didn’t ask
is it working for this list we’ve looked
at people who revealed corrupt or
illegal behavior to the public we’ve
based our ranking on the importance of
the leaked information the individual’s
overall notoriety and the impact their
information had on the public I
eventually you realize that these things
need to be determined by the public not
by somebody who was simply hired by the
government
number 10 Coleen Rowley holy shit
terrorists broke following the September
11th 2001 terrorist attacks in New York
City many agencies took a hard look at
their policies and procedures as their
agents began to doubt the agency’s
recklessness would be criminal in the
things I know of are bordering on that
FBI agent Coleen Rowley was one of those
agents she quickly became known for
speaking out against the FBI due to
their mishandling of information
regarding the terrorist Zacarias
Moussaoui who was linked to the attacks
the man known as the 20th hijacker
Zacarias Moussaoui
is now serving six life sentences in the
supermax prison in Florence Colorado for
her actions Rowley was named one of Time
Magazine’s people of the year in 2002
and was awarded the first ever Sam Adams
Award for integrity in intelligence that
same year I also was probably one of the
last whistleblowers to get on a cover of
a magazine I mean and actually survived
she retired from service in 2004 do you
feel that lessons have been learned
oh I you know that’s a good question to
have the lessons been learned um
I don’t think so number nine Jeffrey
Wigand his testimony was a key to the
eventual 240
six billion dollar settlement with five
tobacco companies time to stand up to
the tobacco companies coming from the
research and development department of
tobacco company Brown & Williamson
Jeffrey Wigand had enough of hiding
secrets and I decided at the reading
those articles and authenticate him that
I would actually go to CBS 60 minutes
and violate the agreement I had signed
after receiving two death threats of my
children in 1996 Wiegand was interviewed
by 60 minutes and told the public that
his company had increased the amount of
nicotine in their cigarettes by
manipulating the tobacco blend we’re
gonna make a team delivery business and
that’s what cigarettes are for most
certainly it’s a delivery device for
nicotine causing increased harm to both
smokers and secondhand smokers when you
say you don’t have a safest cigarette
boom that now takes everything else that
you have available and say it’s unsafe
and that from a product liability point
of view gave the lawyers great concern
since then Wiegand has become an expert
witness in tobacco related cases and his
story got an even wider audience thanks
to the Hollywood film The Insider if you
asked me would I do it again do I think
it’s worth it
yeah I think it’s worth it number eight
mark Whitacre wearing a wire for three
years undercover I attempted suicide
twice oh it had a lot of serious aspects
to that case it doesn’t matter what
level of employment you’ve reached
anyone can be a whistleblower just ask
mark Whitacre if I’m on the phone with
any of the competitors I would record
that Whittaker worked at Archer Daniels
Midland where he was president of the
bio products division and he became the
highest level corporate executive to
ever blow the whistle when he revealed
that ADM had been involved in
price-fixing I and I I kind of started
writing my own savage started taking
money from that company the last write
to the last few months however the
company retaliated and slammed Whitaker
for embezzlement which resulted in 9.5
million dollars worth of fraud charges
and eight and a half years in a federal
prison they told me that I was a good
informant they told me and told a few
times one of the best informants they’ve
ever had following his release
Whitakers exploits were comically
dramatized in the 2009 Matt Damon led
film the informant you know we’d work it
we’d build the investigation get
everything we needed gather up all the
information then we went to DOJ briefed
those lawyers and you know before you
knew it we were hitting ADM raiding the
place taking it down
number seven Mordechai Vanunu this
reading here this is the district court
of Jerusalem the place who sentence me
as a spy traitor here is a controversial
choice Mordechai Vanunu was an Israeli
nuclear technician who was abducted by
Mossad agents after revealing the truth
about Israel’s nuclear testing program
to the public through a UK newspaper he
spent over 18 years in prison eleven of
them in solitary very cruel barbaric
treatment by Israel’s spy Mossad Masada
Shabaab since his release in 2004 he has
been an activist in freedom of speech
and movement although named a traitor
against Israel
Vanunu has been celebrated by the
international community including
numerous Nobel Peace Prize nominations
the Right Livelihood award and the Lenin
Ohno grant for peace I am a symbol
we love freedom that the human spirit is
free you cannot destroy the humans video
number 6 Sharon Watkins I felt like I
was the loyal employee but I have this
whistleblower light if there’s anything
that gets the whistleblowing
it’s shady finances I think leaders they
should bear not only the privilege of
office but also the responsibility a
vice president with Enron Sharon Watkins
became famous after alerting the
authorities of financial fraud within
the company
there were swindlers in the Emperor’s
New Clothes discussing the fine material
that they were weaving although she was
criticized for not bringing her reports
of financial anomalies to the public
sooner Watkins was named one of the
three people of the year in 2002 along
with fellow whistleblower Coleen Rowley
since leaving Enron she’s become an
advocate of proper business and
management and actively spreads her
ideals about the problems of the
corporate culture in the United States
when you have an ethical challenge your
life’s never the same you’re either
going to rise to it and try to stop the
bad behavior or you’re going to
rationalize why you know you’re staying
silent number five Daniel Ellsberg was a
well kept secret by thousands and
thousands of people including me like
other industries the military has no
shortage of whistleblowers one of these
is Daniel Ellsberg a former United
States military analyst who worked for
the RAND Corporation
I needed details of the atrocities for
the hit Con anywhere in Vietnam
above all I wanted gory details of any
injuries to American while employed
there
Ellsberg became disenchanted with the
Vietnam War and subsequently photocopied
and publicly released a number of
classified documents regarding
decision-making during the conflict
I met with reporter Neil Sheehan at the
New York Times and leaked information
about a secret CIA report on enemy troop
strength these documents now known as
the Pentagon Papers
revealed unreported bombings in Laos and
Cambodia raids in North Vietnam and the
full role of the United States in the
assassination of South Vietnamese
president Ngo Dinh xeam in 1963 we need
those whistleblowers right now we needed
another Edward Snowden and many more of
them and Chelsea Manning’s to inform
Congress as to what this country is
being asked number for Edward Snowden
over time that awareness of wrongdoing
sort of builds up and you feel compelled
to talk about it and the more you talk
about it the more you’re ignored the
more you’re told it’s not a problem
arguably the poster boy of
whistleblowing Edward Snowden is a
former systems analyst who leaked
classified government documents
regarding mass surveillance from the
National Security Agency I was trained
as a spy and sort of the traditional
sense of the word and that I lived and
worked undercover overseas pretending to
work in a job that I’m not the
information didn’t just affect the
United States as it disclosed
information about surveillance on many
different European countries including
some allies if I end up in Chains and
Guantanamo I can move with that
Snowden’s actions have sparked the
debate over government monitoring
individual privacy and even national
security and he’s been branded as both a
hero and a traitor the greatest fear
that I have regarding the outcome for
America of these disclosures is that
nothing will change number three Julian
Assange we accept material that is
political diplomatic or historical or
ethical significance that hasn’t been
published before and is I’m kind of some
some kind of censorship threat Asajj
rose to notoriety as the founder
website WikiLeaks in 2006 but didn’t
grab the world’s attention until 2010
when he began releasing classified
documents obtained by Bradley later
known as Chelsea Manning the site and
Asajj himself have been under fire ever
since with questions surrounding the
legality of the leaks so information
that organizations are spending economic
effort into concealing that’s a really
good signal that when the information
gets out there’s a hope of it doing so
good public reaction has been mixed as
some governments have named him a
criminal
while many groups have rewarded his
actions we don’t yet have a totalitarian
regime but we have a getting pretty
close in the practical limits is that
going to cross over into something else
in 2010
Asajj received the Sam Adams Award for
intelligence and ethics and in 2012 he
won the Sydney Peace Foundation gold
medal for peace with justice putting him
in a category that includes only Nelson
Mandela the Dalai Lama and Daisaku Ikeda
it’s my great great pleasure to present
you with the Sydney Peace Medal for your
conviction that truth matters and that
justice depends on it and for your
courage and leadership and tenacity in
journalism and publishing number two
mark felt for more than 30 years felt
denied he was the source who connected
the White House to the June 1972
break-in at the Democratic National
Committee headquarters mark felt is the
man we can thank for exposing corruption
in the White House and for taking down
the Nixon administration thanks to the
Watergate scandal therefore I shall
resign the presidency effective at noon
tomorrow known only as deep throat until
he went public in 2005 felt was the
Associate Director of the FBI the
agency’s second highest post when he
released sensitive information to
Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein he was insistent that
we not disclose and I think we wanted to
protect that principle deep throats
whistleblowing was made public in the
mid 70s with the release of the book and
later the film all the President’s Men
which only added to
deep throats mystique it involves the
entire US intelligence community FBI CIA
justice this incredible before we unveil
our top pick here are a few honorable
mentions this division plainclothes this
is actually an illegitimate arrest but
that happens all the time
heaven forbid you should expose you
should embarrass the administration with
your disclosures but if you expose your
illegality you’re really going to pay if
you’re in trouble first of all I’d like
to to say that I retired from NSA
because of the spying they started on US
citizens and the massive scale that they
did it since I designed a lot of the
programs that they’re using I want to I
want to express the magnitude of the
problem not just for the United States
but for world democracy as I discovered
that in the country where I was
ambassador we in the Americans were
shipping people in order for them to be
tortured and some of the would torture
to death
as you may imagine my worldview changed
number one Chelsea Manning was deeply
disturbed by what he was seen as an
intelligence analyst in Iraq at the
shooting of the Reuters reporters
civilians by helicopter formerly known
as Bradley Manning Chelsea is
responsible for the largest leak of
government documents in history via
WikiLeaks many of these documents
including 500,000 army reports describe
military operations and airstrikes
during the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars
and were obtained while Manning was
serving as an intelligence analyst
through the cell that he was in on the
floor and how he had to lay in the cell
and how the light was on him 24 hours
forced to sleep without cover conditions
far worse than soldiers who have been
convicted of cold-blooded murder as a
result of this leak Manning was charged
with 22 criminal offences under the
Espionage Act and was given a 35-year
prison sentence he was not convicted on
aiding the enemy the most serious charge
that would have landed in life in prison
like many on our list
Manning serves as an example of the
treatment of whistleblowers by
governments and the dangers they face
soldier will serve time at Leavenworth
maximum-security prison in Kansas the
prison has 515 beds and no female
prisoners do you agree with our list
which whistleblower intrigued you the
most for more investigative top 10s
published every day be sure to subscribe
to watchmojo.com of course they have a
lot of nuclear secrets I only work there
nine years
you
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