By: Jane Turner
It is interesting that people think the whistleblowing ordeal is over once a whistleblower has been exonerated. It is never over. A whistleblower’s career is shattered, and the tag of “troublemaker”, “unpatriotic”, “snitch” or “whistleblower” follows you forever. Why? Because the organization that you blow the whistle on (in my case, the FBI), never forgets what they see as a betrayal. It is never about what is wrong or right, justice or injustice, but simply that the whistleblower is not following the party line. The organization itself cannot feel anger and betrayal, but those leading the bureaucratic department certainly can, and they do. A whistleblower threatens the internal machinery of an organization, which many times have been set up to benefit the individuals who are running the organization. That was certainly the case at the Minneapolis FBI Office. Managers collected big bonuses and big salaries by inflating the number and quality of cases in Indian Country (The Native American tribal lands, which I worked for years). They also used false and misleading data from Indian Country so they could get bigger titles, and more money. I loved the FBI, and tried to make it better. I wish I could have said the same about the managers I blew the whistle on. More on that later.