What It Means to be a Whistleblower
Daniel Ellsberg in 2002, photographed by Christopher Michel
In April, U.S. government and defense communities were roiled by a leak of classified material from a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman from Massachusetts. The scandal revealed a number of classified stances held by Americans that contravened the government’s public face held on matters pertaining to the war in Ukraine. Jack Teixeira, the man behind the leak, was caught by the FBI on charges of espionage, but his legacy of disruption to U.S. aims abroad will not be so easily apprehended. The controversy has revealed not only glaring chinks in the security of sensitive American interests, but for some, questions of what constitutes acts of loyalty to the greater mission of one’s nation. Double meanings of loyalty and conflicting hierarchies of duty permeate a deeply complicated and fierce debate.
Teixeira’s scandal marks a serious breach in the history of American intelligence. Dating back to January, the Guardsman had been posting classified information on a variety of social media channels, including the messaging platform Discord. The documents reveal the inner workings of various governments, including Russia’s, and the impressive depth U.S. feelers had penetrated in the world’s tightest circles of foreign advisors and secretive agencies. Much more startling, though, was the undiscovered reality of the American treatment towards allied governments and the true feelings of many members of the international community on the battle in Ukraine.
At home, the consequences of the leak ramified beyond security implications. For some, it has opened a dispute about what counts as true allegiance to the United States. Implying the status of a whistleblower and a confusing note of persecution, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) peculiarly implicated his identities of “white, male, christian, and antiwar,” while making a statement advocating for the “truth” of his leak in the face of a supposedly lying Biden Administration.
The Congresswoman’s comment, while imbued with political and other sentiments that prevent real debate, raises an interesting question on where exactly the line between traitor and whistleblower should be drawn. Texeira betrayed both an oath to maintain highly confidential national security material and a broader pledge to uphold American security interests. For some, that same argument could be made about Daniel Ellsberg, whose recent passing unleashed a wave of recollection on his infamous 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers.
Where Ellsberg made efforts to frame his informant status within the public good, Texeira’s case, for those who see it that way, can only be misconstrued as patriotic retroactively. A juvenile obsession with obstinance and an opportunity to boast about cachet seemed to be Texeira’s broader motivation—he expressed frustration when other users on his messaging platform seemed uninterested in his intelligence privileges. Still the question remains: where should true allegiance attach itself? Do national security interests excuse extralegal activity and override accepted channels of intelligence, or is an ideal of national honesty the surest standard? If Texeira’s leak had been done as an act of conscience, would the revealed information lift him to the legal and moral status of whistleblower? These questions have less to do with the content of leaks than the motives of the leaker, though the confidentiality of sensitive material is also important. If American lives are directly endangered by exposed documents, even if those people are engaged in less-than-legitimate acts on behalf of the government, arguments based on moral sense are harder to make.
Dubbing Texeira a patriot clings to something indistinct. He did not embody some ideal of the Constitution or, at least when committing this crime, serve his country in a selfless or meaningful way. The criminality of his act is not a vindication of the clandestine or extra-judicious operations, though. Those entrusted with the government’s interests carry a greater burden than just secrecy: they must consider on balance their individual ethical makeup and that of the government, at least when it claims to act on one.
Choosing to become a whistleblower is often dangerous and life-altering—revealing underground acts with substantive legal and moral breaches, however, can be worth it. But revelations that are more embarrassing than incriminating aren’t qualifying, especially when laid bare with ill intent. After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg turned himself in and was vindicated in court because the U.S. government attempted to disrupt his defense through illicit and corrupt means. Willing to face the music, Ellsberg’s sense of duty propelled him beyond self-concern and over potential consequences of punishment and prison.
The mark of a true whistleblower is a transcendent sense of duty and a patriotism to truth–even in the act of transparency, they treat the material with respect. Protecting whistleblowers and safeguarding a greater allegiance to the country means treating those who are flippant about secrecy with the ignominy they deserve.
Henry Wager (CC ‘25) is a staff writer for CPR with interests in foreign affairs, American government, and the law. A history major, he is also involved with the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review as an editor of the online division. He is from Upstate New York and hopes to bring rural America into conversations that span the globe.