ABSTRACT
Whistleblowers have become indispensable agents of accountability by exposing huge cost overruns at the Pentagon, numerous environmental hazards and many other instances of government malfeasance. In particular, since Watergate, federal government employees have played a vitally important role in exposing fraud, waste, and abuse by blowing the whistle on wrongdoing in the government bureaucracy. Since 1986, amendments to the False Claims Act have returned $1.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury that would have been lost to fraud but for the actions of individual whistleblowers. Too often though, these bureaucracies have undermined and punished whistleblowers for focusing unfavorable publicity on their misdeeds.
