Greetings!
While we’re all waiting for the sentence in the Bradley Manning trial, I’d like to tell you a story. It happened long ago, in a different country with radically different values than our own, but I think it still holds lessons for us today.
The story begins on a winter’s night, where the warship Warren lies at anchor. It sits in a port of a nation at war, a new, poor, and unstable nation with only the barest beginnings of a navy, facing the naval might of one of the most powerful nations on the planet. Deep in the hold, the Warren’s junior officers huddled around a dim lantern for a secret meeting. They weren’t there to discuss military strategy; they had other priorities on that cold night. Their captain, Esek Hopkins, had abused prisoners under his care and it was up to these men to decide what to do. They knew the abuse took place, but they also knew how critical military cohesion is with their nation’s very existence 
at stake. They knew that Hopkins, as captain, would likely retaliate if they came forward. They could face the end of their military careers or even jail. Even if Hopkins didn’t act personally against them he came from a rich and powerful family that could act in his place. They understood the risks to their country and to themselves. But they also knew the crime. They decided to report their captain, and Hopkins was removed from his post.
They quickly found their worries were well founded. Hopkins filed a criminal libel suit that landed two of these “whistleblowers”, Richard Marven and Samuel Shaw, in jail and a third in front of a national tribunal. Marven and Shaw argued that they were “arrested for doing what they then believed and still believe was nothing but their duty.”
With the benefit of hindsight we, today, understand how dangerous these whistleblowers were. It doesn’t matter whether criminal acts took place, nothing can justify reporting them. We know that revealing embarrassing facts about a country only empowers its enemies. But this was a new nation without the Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect us, so they reacted differently. The tribunal found “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.” The primitive and uneducated Continental Congress then made all records pertaining to Hopkins public and paid for the legal defense of Marven and Shaw, who went on to beat Hopkins in court. This was 1778, and the United States’ first whistleblower law.
Since Marven and Shaw, our country has relied on whistleblowers to expose criminality and embarrassing incompetence at every level… Peter Buxtun exposed the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Daniel Ellsberg exposed malfeasance in Vietnam, and Mark “Deep Throat” Felt exposed the Nixonian circus of criminality, just to name a few.
Despite our leader’s protestations, their actions betray our country’s modern values. Bradley Manning, whatever the outcome of his sentencing, was not even allowed to make a “whistleblower” defense! He’s in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation where the Army requires soldiers to report wrongdoing and prosecutes them if they don’t, but will also prosecute them if they do. Edward Snowden is now hiding in Russia (Russia, for gods sake!) to escape the wrath of his Big Brother. And Manning and Snowden join a long list of inconvenient truth-tellers as the Obama administration zealously sets new records for prosecuting whistleblowers.
The backwoods yahoos who founded our country felt that people who risk all to expose evil deserve protection more than the people who perpetrate evil. They naively believed that values were more than anesthetic platitudes; they believed that you couldn’t build a country on the ideas of courage, truth, and justice without practicing them. Today’s United States is indeed a different country with radically different values. Manning’s arrest, cruel and unusual detention, inability to access critical defense information, crippling judicial decisions, and secretive trial are eloquent testimony to what our new and sophisticated values are. His sentencing is the only marker left to see exactly how far we’ve fallen.
Take Care and Make a Great Day!
PS: Want to read more about Marven and Shaw, or whistleblowers in general? Check out these links…
Whistleblower’s Handbook Chapter describing history behind the 1778 law– National Whistleblowers Center
The Whistle-Blowers of 1777– Stephen Kohn, the New York Times
We’re in a Post-Constitutional America: Our Country Is Going Sideways in Plain Sight, and Nobody’s Saying Much About It– Peter Van Buren and Tom Engelhardt, Alternet
Testimony of John Grannis to Congress– Congressional record, reprinted on earlsalisbury.com
National Whistleblowers Center
…and with Marven and Shaw in mind, read this article on the new “National Whistleblower Day” and try to think of ANYTHING that could possibly be more cynical.
