| WHISTLE BLOWING The Report of the Conference on Professional Responsibility Ralph Nader (ed.) Peter J. Petkas (ed.) Kate Blackwell (ed.) New York: Grossman Publishers, September 1972 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-670-76224-8 | ||||
| ISBN 0-670-76224-5 | 302pp. | HC | $? | |
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal. It translates as "Who will guard the guards themselves?" This question evokes the constant mistrust, inherent in human nature, of other people holding power greater than one's own. There is reason for that mistrust. But constant does not mean universal, for the question carries its own answer: The guards themselves.1
What I mean is that Lord Acton's dictum2 is not a law of nature. Some people are worthy of trust, even when given powers that most would consider awesome. Of course checks and balances and safeguards are important. But automatically assuming that the perceived opportunity for misbehavior means misbehavior must be taking place and must be curbed generally leads to worse abuses, unless curbed itself. Pyle and Stein uncovered one such example. In our own time, the initial version of the PATRIOT Act is another.
Here are the briefest possible summaries of accounts in which individuals proved themselves worthy of guardianship.
| Name(s) | Organization | Post(s) | Action | Date(s) | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Ernest Fitzgerald | Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management, the Pentagon | Deputy for cost control (Contractor, GS-17) | Disclosed cost overruns on weapons systems, the Lockheed C-5A Galaxy transport plane. | 1965-1972 | After testifying to Congress, had his job eliminated. Was ultimately reinstated. |
| Dr. John W. Gofman Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin |
Atomic Energy Commission's Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, CA | Physicians working on standards for population radiation exposure | Disagreed with the AEC's position on radiation effects and its proposed exposure limit. | 1969-1972 | Vilified, had staffs and funding cut, threatened with dismissal. |
| Edward Gregory | General Motors Chevrolet assembly plant, St. Louis, MO | Vehicle quality/safety inspector (a UAW position) | Identified faulty exhaust systems and improperly welded rear quarter panels in some models. Notified management of problems — persistently. | 1967-1969 | His reports ignored, he was transferred to a "safe" job. He went public and was harassed until, as he had warned, people began to die in Chevys from carbon monoxide poisoning. |
| Dr. Jacquelline Verrett | FDA Division of Pharmacology & Toxicology, Washington, DC | Biochemist testing food additives for safety | Warned of damage to chick embryos due to cyclamate artificial sweetener. | 1958-1969 | The FDA ignored her reports on this for over two years, while her findings were disclosed at conferences. Then, in September 1969, she gave an interview to NBC-TV. BAM! |
| William Stieglitz | National Highway Safety Bureau, Department of Transportation | Wrote auto safety standards document, using long industry experience in safe airplane and automobile design. | His standards were evidently too stiff, as the DOT rewrote them without his knowledge. | January/February, 1967 | Stieglitz got his copy of the official standards on 1 February 1967, along with the public. He spent until midnight reading it. Then he wrote out his resignation, which he presented the next morning. |
| Fumio Matsuda | Nissan Motor Corporation, Japan | Service engineer | Discovered defects in vehicles, tried to get the company to correct them. | 1957-1968 | Failing, he resigned from Nissan and formed the Japan Automobile Users Union. |
| Dr. A. Dale Console | E. R. Squib and Sons | Medical director | After resigning, testified in 1960 and 1969 about hard-sell tactics of drug industry. (Described Squib as one of the "more ethical.") | 1957-1969 | Since he had entered private practice, he suffered no retaliation. |
| Christopher Pyle Ralph Stein |
Army Intelligence School, Fort Holabird, MD | Both were Army intelligence officers (Pyle taught constitutional law at Ft. Holabird — an elective but popular class.) | Left the Army. Disclosed massive program of domestic surveillance: dossiers on 25 million individuals and 760,000 organizations. | August 1970 | Congressional hearings led to restrictions on surveillance. |
| Charles Pettis | Brown & Root Corporation | Working in Peru to monitor a road-building project by Morrison-Knudsen. | Refused to sign off on faulty designs. Notified Peruvian government of problems; it took over the project. | Feb. 1966-Dec. 1971 | Was first replaced by another engineer (who not only covered for M-K but got them to cut him a sweet side deal feeding the workers.) When Pettis stuck to his guns, Brown & Root fired him in December 1968. No one else would hire him. He moved his family to Spain to build a school. |
| The Colt workers | Colt Firearms Company, Hartford, CT | Seven Colt employees, various positions | Reported that Colt had a practice of fudging acceptance tests on the M-16 rifle. Also, some found they had high levels of lead in their blood due to working in one unventilated test station. | 1 Nov. 1971 | Their charges were ignored and, as of this book's publication, apparently whitewashed by the Army. But, after OSHA took notice, Colt installed a ventilation system to get the lead out. |
The nine cases I summarize above represent the five classes of abuse:
All four classes of abuse can be found in the present, often in the same companies. But, of these individual cases, the most relevant to today's world is the one involving Drs. Gofman and Tamplin and the AEC. The AEC is long gone, replaced by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Drs. Gofman & Tamplin have died. But the question of whether some low level of radiation is harmless, and what the safe limit for public exposure ought to be, still rages.
Chapter 15 presents twenty-one more cases, not always at a satisfactory level of detail. I summarize these below, even more sketchily.
| Name(s) | Organization | Post(s) | Action | Date(s) | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a) Carl W. Houston | Stone & Webster Engineering Company, Boston, MA | Welding supervisor (Journeyman with 24 years experience) | Urged company to fix bad welds he found on reactor cooling system pipes. Went public after company refused. | 1970-1971 | After testifying to Congress, was fired and apparently blackballed. |
| 15b) Henry M. Durham | Lockheed Aircraft Corporation | Assistant division manager, Lockheed-Georgia (19-year veteran) | Wrote memos charging that the company's wasteful methods of procuring and storing parts added substantially to cost overruns. Was demoted, left Lockheed in spring 1970. | 1969-1971 | Asked to come back, he did a few months later, taking a job at the Chattanooga plant 100 miles from home, at $80/week less. He continued to find and protest poor performance, leaving for good in May 1971 and going public. |
| 15c) George B. Geary | United States Steel Corporation | Sales executive with US Steel oil & gas division, Houston, TX (14-year veteran) | Concerned about the safety of a new type of pipe, urged more testing. Went to the top when mid-level managers pushed for sales. | 1967-1968 | Top execs ordered re-testing of the pipe. But Geary was fired 13 July 1967 for "insubordination" and on that basis denied unemployment compensation. A review board restored that in May 1968. |
| 15d) Warren Braren | National Association of Broadcasters | Manager, New York office of the NAB Code Authority | Became concerned that tobacco ads violated standards, and urged the NAB to crack down. (There was public pressure on govt. to regulate the ads; NAB's president felt it was doing OK.) | 1969 | Braren was fired. He took NAB reports to Congress showing NAB's laxity. Work in commercial TV being closed to him, he found a job with Consumers Union. |
| 15e) Kermit Vandivier | B. F. Goodrich Company | Scientific writer (6-year veteran) | In early 1968, he was assigned to write up test data on brakes for the Air Force A-7D, and to falsify data that were below specs. At first he complied, but went to the FBI in June 1968. They promised to check and told him to stay on the job. | 1968-1969 | Five months later he quit, having heard nothing more from the FBI. In August 1969 he and another former Goodrich employee, aeronautical engineer Searle Lawson, testified to Congress. The Air Force developed new brakes, but no action was taken against Goodrich. |
| 15f) Carl Thelin | General Motors Corporation | Suspension & steering engineer, and engineering liaison to GM's legal staff | Assigned to prepare technical support for GM's defense in suits by Corvair victims, he found gaps in records, was finally shown incriminating documents. | 1965-1971 | Several years later, Thelin had joined Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, NY. Contacted by a Nader associate, he said that GM had concealed documents from its own witnesses and promised to help get at the truth. |
| 15g) George Caramanna | General Motors Corporation | A member of the Corvair design team (13-year veteran) | Resigned in 1970 and moved to California for family reasons. Following Thelin's disclosures, he told his story to the LA Times: that GM withheld a stabilizer bar from the 1960-63 Corvairs despite knowing it made them unsafe. | 1970-1971 | Confirmed that the car in GM's public test films was a standard Corvair, but said his driving techniques prevented rollovers that a consumer would not know how to avoid. |
| 15h) Ronald Ostrander | Proctor & Gamble | Project engineer on the team which developed Tide in the 1940s | Wrote to Congressman Henry Reuss (D-WI) in December 1970 to say that housewives could get better result while cutting phosphate eutrophication by using 1/8th the detergent per load. | 1970-1971 | Ostrander left P&G in 1949; at publication, he was with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. His disclosure started an FTC probe, then in progress. |
| 15i) Patrolman Frank Serpico Sergeant David Durk |
The New York City Police Department | A police patrolman (11-year veteran) | Serpico found cops on the take from the time he joined the force in 1959. He never went along, steadily protesting to his superiors, to no avail. He went to the mayor without results. | 1959-1971 | Finally Serpico and Durk went to the New York Times. The day before the story came out, Mayor Lindsay appointed the Knapp Commission which uncovered the culture of corruption. |
| 15j) Gordon Rule | Naval Materiel Command | Civilian procurement official | Complained internally about Navy handling of F-111B contracts; later went to JEC. 24 May 71: revealed to JEC that Navy awarded $135M in claims w/o determining necessity. | 1970-1971 | No harm to Rule noted. |
| 15k) John McGee | The United States Navy | Civilian Navy employee in Thailand | Found inadequate protections for fuel stored in Navy depots in Thailand. Superiors uninterested. Contacted Sen. Proxmire Mar. 1968; GAO probe started. | 1967-1968 | The probe found 5.5 million gallons unaccounted for between Jan. and Oct. 1967. McGee threatened with discharge, but Proxmire blocked it. |
| 15l) Ronald Ridenhour | The United States Army | Army enlisted man in Viet Nam | Pieced together story of My Lai massacre, told DoD officials and Congressmen. | 1970-1971 | Army procedures extensively revised. Gen. Samuel Koster, unit's commander, among those demoted. |
| 15m) Oscar Hoffman | The United States Navy | Navy pipefitter at Todd Shipyards, Seattle | Submitted several reports on sub-par work by contractor. Superiors rejected them, later told him to destroy 50-odd reports. He refused, was transferred to Tacoma & his former job abolished. | 1970-1971 | Hoffman told Sen. Proxmire & JEC. Later, a Todd-built ship caught fire in Hawaii. A probe showed faulty welds. Hoffman was unable to get another job; he started legal action. |
| 15n) Kenneth S. Cook | The United States Air Force | Physicist & AF weapons analyst, Holloman AFB, NM | Complained that Lt. Col. Roderick W. Clarke, acting C/O, was distorting scientific reports on BMD testing. He wrote to Brig. Gen Ernest Pinson in confidence. | 1966 | Soon his C/O showed him the letter. His TS clearance revoked, he was denied legal counsel, declared mentally and physically unfit for duty. Legal remedies were pursued. |
| 15o) Peter Gall | The Department of Health, Education and Welfare | Special assistant to Leon Panetta for press relations | Troubled by Nixon administration waffling on civil rights, incensed by firing of Panetta. Joined 24 other HEW employees to sign protest letter on 17 Feb. 1970. | 1970 | But Gall decided to resign. He and Paul Rilling, an HEW regional director in Atlanta, resigned on 3 March, gave their letters to the press. |
| 15p) Certain dissenters | Department of the Interior | Employees of Bureau of Land Management | These dissenters judged the EIS for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline a whitewash. Jack Anderson rec'd a copy of BLM letter spelling out the risks to Alaska's environment. | 1970-1971 | Cong. Les Aspin (D-WI) published this letter in Congressional Record. Interior Dept. officials had earlier dismissed the concerns, but on exposure they rethought their position. |
| 15q) Health Employees for Change (HEC) | The Public Health Service | HEC was a pre-existing, ad hoc group within the PHS. | Nixon signed the Lead-Based Poison Prevention Act Dec. 1970 but requested no funds for it in subsequent budget message. HEC released a statement con 10 May 1971 criticizing Nixon and the PHS for foot-dragging on the issue. | 1970-1971 | Eventually, the administration allocated $2M. (New York City alone spent $2.4M on lead removal that year.) |
| 15r) Dr. Robert S. McCleery | The Food & Drug Administration | Special assistant for medical communication | The FDA commissioned a study by the National Academy of Sciences of 2,800 drugs on the market in the U.S. The study, out December 1968, found some harmful. The FDA then began stalling. To speed things up, Dr. McCleery resigned in February 1969 and spoke to Congress, which held hearings in 1969. | Dec. 1968-Jun. 1970 | Things did not change much after the hearings, so Dr. McCleery helped prepare a lawsuit to force drugs such as Parke-Davis's Panalba off the market. That was undecided when the book came out. |
| 15s) Dr. Harvey Minchew | The Food & Drug Administration | Acting director, FDA Bureau of Medicine | In March 1969, wrote a memo urging his superiors to act immediately on the NAS report. | 1969 | Resigned May 1969 when it became clear they would not. Helped reporters get the story to the public. |
| 15t) Philip I. Ryther | The Federal Aviation Administration | Evaluation Chief (a 26-year veteran) | Filed report "severely critical" of FAA regulations on charter planes. | 1970-1971 | His boss stalled the report. Ryther went around him, getting nowhere. Petty charges were made against him (being 2 hours late when caught in a 5-car pileup on the way to work.) Eventually he was forced into early retirement. The day that was approved, 2 Oct 1970, a charter-plane crash killed the Wichita State University football team. |
| 15u) Doctor X | The Department of Agriculture | Chief inspector at a poultry plant | Consistently reported shipments of contaminated poultry at this "problem plant." | 1970-1971 | His superior curtailed his authority. He wrote to Virginia Knauer, the president's consumer advisor. She forwarded his charges (but not his name) to the Dept's Consumer and Marketing Service. They asked him to respond to his own charges — and then transferred him, stating this solved the problem! |
You can see the commonalities. One very common pattern springs from our mammalian tendency to impose a "pecking order"3 on whatever local group we are members of. Thus, Oscar Hoffman's refusal to knuckle under brought steadily increasing pressure from above. He was punished for doing the right thing, while "The Navy lieutenant who had rejected Hoffman's reports and then improperly issued a reprimand was promoted to lieutenant commander." (page 168)
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