Whistleblowers According To The Early Americans - 2

The Founders Loved Whistleblowers

In this series, and others, we have been contemplating why good government eventually turns into bad government.

This viewpoint is engendered by our founders who informed us: “Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was telling us that "those entrusted with power", e.g. politicians, military NSA officials, and other government officials,  would slowly but surely convert good government into bad government.

The Dredd Blog System has developed one blog to specifically focus on that issue and the source of the corrupting influence that power has on people (About Toxins Of Power).

Some of the forefathers, way before the germ theory of physical disease became a fundamental medical understanding, had a germ theory of government:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

(The Germ Theory - of Government - 6). There was also, in the minds of early Americans, the notion of "nip it in the bud" concerning officials of government going bad:

On July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress created the first whistleblower protection law, stating “that it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”

(Whistleblowers According To The Early Americans, cf. legislation of July 30, 1778, reprinted in Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, ed. Government Printing Office (Washington, D.C., 1908), 11:732). We know that founding spirit is alive in patriotic Americans today too.

Especially when we remember or read about Ellsberg, Snowden, Drake, Benning, Tice, Kroft, or Manning for examples (ACLU vs. Clapper).

But there were five patriots in 1971 who are less well known, even though they did a great service to the nation:

More than 40 years ago, on the evening of March 8, 1971, a group of burglars carried out an audacious plan. They pried open the door of an FBI office in

The Golden Whistle

Pennsylvania and stole files about the bureau's surveillance of anti-war groups and civil rights organizations.

Hundreds of agents tried to identify the culprits, but the crime went unsolved. Until now.

For the first time, a new book reveals that the burglars were peace demonstrators who wanted to start a debate about the FBI's unchecked power to spy on Americans. And it's coming out at a time when the country is weighing the merits of surveillance all over again.

(NPR, "The Secret Burglary That Exposed J. Edgar Hoover's FBI"). That is a story about John Raines, Bonnie Raines, Keith Forsyth, and two others.

Government festers rather than healing itself, and the murderous, traitorous, criminal gangrene continues to get worse and worse, until it breaks out in full tyranny against the citizens of the nation.

Some in government, like antibodies that work against an infection, try to deal with the issue:

Washington, D.C. July 31, 2013. By a unanimous resolution the U.S. Senate declared July 30, 2013 as "National Whistleblower Appreciation Day." The National Whistleblowers Center strongly supports the Senate's historic action and calls on every American reflect upon the tremendous contributions whistleblowers have made to American democracy, as well as the struggles and sacrifices they have endured.

(Senate Establishes "National Whistleblower Appreciation Day"). But unless we have whistleblowers and appreciation for them, then we are animating the personality of organized crime:

A mafia informant who disappeared nearly a year ago was tortured and her body dissolved in acid by her former partner and other family members angry that she had cooperated with authorities, Italian police said Monday.

The woman, 35-year old Lea Garofalo, was forced onto a truck carrying 50 liters of acid, interrogated by her abductors and later killed in a field near Milan in the night between November 24 and November 25, 2009, investigators told reporters.

Four people were arrested and another two, including Garofalo's former partner, Carlo Cosco, were served arrest warrants while already in jail.

Investigators said Cosco, who fathered Garofalo's daughter, was behind the murder and that this was meant as revenge for the woman having provided information to anti-mafia prosecutors between 2002 and 2009.

(Reuters, "Mafia Informant Dissolved in Acid"). Unfortunately, we now have an administration that in attitude, upon closer analysis as to whistleblowers, is more like the Mafia than it is like the Americans who founded our nation.

Do everything you can to support The National Whistleblower Center.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.