Coleen Rowley: Moral Courage in Whistleblowers — Transcript

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1. 0:06and maybe after all the talks maybe I
2. 0:11can just say ditto and we can really be
3. 0:13short my talk is usually 45 minutes so
4. 0:16as ed said we're just face we face
5. 0:19challenges and it's going to be a
6. 0:20challenge to get some of this out but
7. 0:23Mark Twain was the jon stewart of his
8. 0:26day he was in you know he was an
9. 0:28outspoken opponent of the Spanish
10. 0:30Philippines war he actually was was
11. 0:34always telling really really sad harsh
12. 0:37truth but he tried to do it in a funny
13. 0:39way and these were a couple of his
14. 0:41quotes the last one nobody can answer
15. 0:44why is moral courage more rare than
16. 0:47physical courage we've heard a lot about
17. 0:51physical courage especially in the
18. 0:53military I was in law enforcement
19. 0:55rescues you know you know the perfect
20. 0:57storm where the Coast Guard drops into
21. 0:59the 20-foot wave to rescue the people on
22. 1:02the top of the boat who had disregarded
23. 1:04the Coast Guard's warnings I mean so I
24. 1:07think that in the FBI we had a an ethics
25. 1:11PowerPoint one week before nine eleven
26. 1:14if you could imagine I taught ethics one
27. 1:16week before and one of the things that
28. 1:19was in this PowerPoint was breaking it
29. 1:21up the process of coming up with the
30. 1:24right decision the right ethical
31. 1:26decision the first step and again I'll
32. 1:28go back to Ed she just said it was
33. 1:30thinking it's using your brain it's
34. 1:33discernment the big word for this in
35. 1:35many physical courage situations as many
36. 1:39of our speakers have said they have
37. 1:41practiced the Coast Guard doesn't have
38. 1:44to think when they drop into the 20-foot
39. 1:46wave because they have practiced that
40. 1:48and they have also signed on the dotted
41. 1:50line as military folks have that they're
42. 1:53willing to risk their lives so they've
43. 1:55actually don't have to the brain doesn't
44. 1:56have to think real hard in those
45. 1:58situations in most other situations you
46. 2:01do have to think that my co persons of
47. 2:05the year found themselves in fraudulent
48. 2:07corporations that were defrauding their
49. 2:09shareholders and their customers
50. 2:12and their employees now when you find
51. 2:13yourself in that situation you haven't
52. 2:15really practice for it the second thing
53. 2:18is then you do have to have this courage
54. 2:20to follow through and that's what a lot
55. 2:22of speakers have talked about how do you
56. 2:24summon the courage I put in a third step
57. 2:27here and I don't know if you can read
58. 2:29all of that but it says how acting
59. 2:31constructively and openly incorporating
60. 2:34well-established universal ethical and
61. 2:37legal principles and shared human wisdom
62. 2:39learn the hard way through history
63. 2:42instead of concocting ends justify the
64. 2:45means which is known as that
65. 2:48utilitarianism and some examples of that
66. 2:50are we have to torture in order to find
67. 2:53the time bomb to save New York City
68. 2:56we've heard this before Orwell's we you
69. 2:59know we have to bomb the village to save
70. 3:01it war is peace and so there are many
71. 3:03principles that humans have discovered
72. 3:05you don't have to be the first one to
73. 3:07discover these things because over
74. 3:10hundreds of years things like empathy
75. 3:13well we have the golden rule we have we
76. 3:16have many strong warnings about secrecy
77. 3:20you know these warnings are in the Bible
78. 3:22even there's a warning that says
79. 3:24everything secret will be made known
80. 3:26Jesus said it you know so these things
81. 3:29are not something that we have to debate
82. 3:30now is secrecy protect us if our
83. 3:34officials will keep these 92 million
84. 3:37secrets that are classified secrets many
85. 3:39of which are like the Daniel Ellsberg
86. 3:41ones that the community should know
87. 3:43about we shouldn't need to debate them
88. 3:45because these are universal fundamental
89. 3:47principles and when in doubt rely upon
90. 3:50those Con Thien always do right type
91. 3:54principles and if you do all of that you
92. 3:57will arrive at the end where if you
93. 3:59follow ethics and law adherence to the
94. 4:03rule of law you will you will actually
95. 4:06equals effectiveness many times when the
96. 4:11when they posit these ends justify the
97. 4:13means they tell you that they tell you
98. 4:18my next slide by the way comes from the
99. 4:20FBI's power point and this is a perfect
100. 4:22example of ends justify the means if
101. 4:24you're on the
102. 4:26stand and your evidence isn't quite so
103. 4:28good or your lab tests didn't come out
104. 4:32exactly right there's a strong tendency
105. 4:34because you want to put a bad guy in
106. 4:36jail right you have a good noble goal
107. 4:39and so you want to do that and there's a
108. 4:41strong tendency to puff shade Taylor
109. 4:44firm up stretch massage or tidy up
110. 4:46statements of fact this was actually a
111. 4:48warning we gave two FBI agents a week
112. 4:51before nine eleven now after nine eleven
113. 4:53people all forgot this and there was a
114. 4:56real cover-up of sorts about not telling
115. 5:00the truth about how many warnings had
116. 5:03come to officials in the months before
117. 5:05nine eleven why weren't the dots
118. 5:08connected and we were really stopped
119. 5:10from learning what happened what went
120. 5:12wrong why were they not able to find
121. 5:14these these terrorists I personally knew
122. 5:17of a couple of cases where a terrorist
123. 5:19that was involved was actually arrested
124. 5:21before in August the months before of
125. 5:24911 and so nobody in the public knew
126. 5:26this and it turns out there were many
127. 5:29ways of preventing 911 if people had
128. 5:32simply told the truth and I will just
129. 5:35say one more thing the 911 it's not me
130. 5:37saying this this is the 911 Commission
131. 5:40that found that 911 itself the terrorist
132. 5:44attacks were caused by the failure to
133. 5:47share information inside of agencies so
134. 5:51it didn't go up the chain to the bosses
135. 5:53with between agencies the CIA didn't
136. 5:56tell the FBI that two of the terrorist
137. 5:58suspects had come into California and
138. 6:00then the last one the failure to share
139. 6:03information with the public and if they
140. 6:05had just shared some pieces of the
141. 6:07information they already knew the 911
142. 6:10Commission said that it would have
143. 6:12happened the terrorists themselves if
144. 6:14they'd known these things would have
145. 6:16stood have stopped their attack so we
146. 6:18find out that it wasn't a lack of
147. 6:21torture Ernie or starting wars or
148. 6:24anything like that it was a lack of
149. 6:26sharing information public openness this
150. 6:29other thing also from the FBI's ethics
151. 6:33talk that I gave misplaced loyalties ok
152. 6:38so in whistleblowing
153. 6:39your top loyalty has to be to your
154. 6:43broadest they call it the public good it
155. 6:46can't beat yourself and it can't even
156. 6:49beat your boss somebody asked me this
157. 6:52morning what's the difference between
158. 6:53working for a man and working for the
159. 6:56law and of course it's really difficult
160. 6:58to be loyal to a principal or to the law
161. 7:01it's a lot easier to be loyal to a
162. 7:04person now i have here am i this isn't
163. 7:09my old boss but the old FBI director
164. 7:12you're going to have to be about 60 or
165. 7:13more to understand we had a really kind
166. 7:16of unusual FBI director for 47 years j
167. 7:21edgar hoover and the way he kept people
168. 7:24from telling the truth about what he was
169. 7:26doing and he did some good things he's
170. 7:29like a lot of you know people mixed bags
171. 7:31he did some good things he started FBI
172. 7:33fingerprints so that he could identify
173. 7:35he was the genius behind fingerprints
174. 7:37but he also had this loyalty quote
175. 7:40posted all over FB i-- headquarters and
176. 7:44i often ask people what's wrong with
177. 7:47this if you you maybe i put it in pink
178. 7:49in the first part maybe you can't read
179. 7:51it if you worked for a man in heaven's
180. 7:53name work for him speak well of him
181. 7:56stand by him and stand by the
182. 7:58institution he represents if put to a
183. 8:01pinch an ounce of loyalty is worth a
184. 8:04pound of cleverness if you must vilify
185. 8:06condemn and eternally complain then
186. 8:09resign your position and when you are on
187. 8:12the outside then damn to your heart's
188. 8:14delight but while you remain a part of
189. 8:16the institutions speak well of it
190. 8:18otherwise the first big wind that comes
191. 8:21along will blow you away and you may
192. 8:23never know why can you imagine this
193. 8:26warning all over inside your workplace
194. 8:29and of course if you really know
195. 8:31something that's going on wrong you're
196. 8:33going to be afraid you're going to be
197. 8:34blown away now the problem with this is
198. 8:37the first five words if you work for a
199. 8:41man you know people started to believe
200. 8:45they worked for j edgar hoover they work
201. 8:48for the taxpayers they were paid by the
202. 8:51government and the
203. 8:52highest loyalty is supposed to be to the
204. 8:55Constitution not to j edgar hoover j
205. 8:59edgar hoover at the end in the during
206. 9:02the Vietnam War ordered people to do
207. 9:05highly illegal things they planted they
208. 9:08called him black-bag jobs which meant
209. 9:10they broke in into offices they broke
210. 9:13into Martin Luther King's hotel rooms
211. 9:15planted recorders and then used the
212. 9:19information to try to blackmail are our
213. 9:22Martin Luther King probably one of the
214. 9:24main heroes the you know he has a
215. 9:25federal holiday was actually threatened
216. 9:28or i should say suggested that he
217. 9:31commits suicide by the FBI's anonymous
218. 9:34COINTELPRO and when it later came out in
219. 9:37the 70s that this had happened the the
220. 9:40guy that told about it the the
221. 9:42whistleblower at the time he said when
222. 9:44we SAT around the table and we devised
223. 9:47these plots to go after Martin Luther
224. 9:51King to go after the anti-war to go
225. 9:53after feminist when we devised those
226. 9:56plots he said no one asked is it legal
227. 9:58is it moral is it ethical and i would
228. 10:01suggest this might have been one of the
229. 10:03reasons no one no one piped up this is
230. 10:10another reason this is the ash test and
231. 10:12i know there are some social
232. 10:14psychologists you've heard from we're
233. 10:16not going to we're not going to do the
234. 10:18test but a and X match they're the exact
235. 10:22same length but what the social
236. 10:25psychologists ish found out is when he
237. 10:27brought three people in together and by
238. 10:30prior agreement the lap the first two
239. 10:34were his confederates and they picked
240. 10:36the shortest line be to matt jacks when
241. 10:39you are the third person and the other
242. 10:41two have picked the shortest line even
243. 10:43though your eyes tell you know it's
244. 10:45can't be be when you're the third person
245. 10:48two-thirds of the time or so you go with
246. 10:52the flow and that isn't even in a
247. 10:54workplace where you're going to lose
248. 10:55your job this was later confirmed and
249. 10:58many other different tests very similar
250. 11:01to this
251. 11:03this is a diagram of conflicting
252. 11:06loyalties and its really what I just
253. 11:08said most times when you're helping
254. 11:11yourself and you're helping your friends
255. 11:14and family in your workplace in your
256. 11:15state in your country and many many
257. 11:17speakers have talked about I mean we had
258. 11:19the young lady who has traveled the
259. 11:22world and what did she say our highest
260. 11:24loyalty should be to the earth to the
261. 11:27mankind to humanity and the problem is
262. 11:31we get caught up in these other you know
263. 11:33smaller loyalties I don't know if you
264. 11:36can read this but this is a prediction
265. 11:38or a warning that if mankind now that
266. 11:42has discovered the way to we can
267. 11:44actually destroy the world real easily
268. 11:46with all the nuclear bombs and yet the
269. 11:48big question is do we have the
270. 11:50intellectual and moral capacity to
271. 11:53control our worse things in stakes I'm
272. 11:56going to skip that one and this is what
273. 12:00I I said the three okay this is the time
274. 12:03that this is my favorite cartoon because
275. 12:05you know one of the ways of people are
276. 12:09reluctant to speak out is there going to
277. 12:11be called a name they're going to be
278. 12:13called tattletale at the very least that
279. 12:15be the nice one but snitch or traitor
280. 12:18because they don't see the broadest
281. 12:21loyalty and and she says I prefer
282. 12:24whistleblower and the whistleblower test
283. 12:32I have this on me so if you don't copy
284. 12:36it down quickly you can get some
285. 12:38handouts I have but it has to be
286. 12:41significant you don't tell the truth in
287. 12:44our environment unless it's very serious
288. 12:46you have it you cannot be personally
289. 12:49motivated you have to turn out to be
290. 12:51correct like you know many like Daniel
291. 12:54Ellsberg or Edward Snowden and then you
292. 12:57must pursue the most constructive way
293. 12:59for the situation so I really appreciate
294. 13:02your time and attention and good luck
295. 13:05everyone on being a hero I'm going to be
296. 13:07looking in the papers for some of you
297. 13:09people to say I remembered this from the
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