Whistleblowing, Moral Injury, And Healing

Truth telling shouldn’t cost you your career, your health, or your future. Yet too many people who report fraud, harassment, or ethical violations face a second wave of harm: quiet retaliation that isolates, undermines, and erodes trust. We sit down with Dr. Jackie Garrick—Army social worker, Pentagon policy leader, and founder of Whistleblowers of America—to unpack what moral injury looks like in everyday workplaces and how to navigate it without going alone.

Jackie breaks down the nine tactics organizations use to silence complaints—gaslighting, mobbing, shunning, double binds, blacklisting, and more—and shows why subtle moves in meetings or reassignments can be as damaging as formal discipline. We talk frankly about mixed messages from leadership, the risks tied to mental health labels and security clearances, and how “handle it privately” advice can make reporting unsafe when power is uneven. You’ll hear concrete strategies for employees thinking about speaking up: how to document evidence, when to seek legal or NGO help, how to use IGs for advice, and when anonymous or confidential routes make sense.

Leaders aren’t off the hook. We share a blueprint for responding after an IG complaint: partner with the reporter, ensure safety, use trained independent investigators, and communicate clearly to avoid turning concerns into open warfare. We also tackle the long timelines of investigations, why they stall, and how to protect your well‑being through the wait with peer support and realistic expectations. If you care about ethics, psychological safety, and real accountability—across government, healthcare, or tech—this conversation offers tools you can use today.

Subscribe for more candid, practical conversations on moral injury, whistleblowing, and culture change. Share this episode with a colleague who needs backup, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or question—we read every one. Go to https://www.whistleblowersofamerica.org/ for more information about Jackie's organization and to get help. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Dr. Jackie Garrick
• 3:04 Founding Whistleblowers Of America
• 6:19 Moral Injury In Hostile Workplaces
• 7:09 Retaliation Tactics And Their Signals
• 11:04 Industries Affected And Subtle Harms
• 15:04 Mixed Messages And Double Binds
• 19:44 Leadership Messaging And Culture
• 23:54 Fitness For Duty And Help Seeking Risks
• 28:14 Coaching Leaders After An IG Complaint
• 33:04 Evidence, Documentation, And HR Reality
• 40:04 Bystanders, Guilt, And Timing Your Disclosure
• 46:04 Why Investigations Take So Long
• 52:04 Anonymous Reporting And Safety
• 57:14 Resources, Donations, And How To Connect

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:36

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast. I am here with a great uh friend and uh colleague and uh really smart person, Dr. Jackie Garrick. She is a policy and program expert with 30 years of service to the military and veteran community. She is the founder of Whistleblowers of America. She was a political appointee at the Pentagon for eight years, setting up personal programs for wounded warriors in the Defense Suicide Prevention Office. She established a crisis hotline in Afghanistan and later investigated issues related to diversity and inclusion and no fear act violations. While working for the Defense Department, Dr. Garrick blew the whistle on fraud, waste, and abuse, and suffered retaliation. Before that, she worked for the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Disability Assistance, and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee, drafting legislation to assist disabled veterans and their families. Dr. Garrick is a former Army Social Worker Officer. She has used her clinical knowledge to inform her advocacy in intervention work with the American Legion as a Deputy Director for Healthcare and then with the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission. She has several prestigious awards, including the Lincoln Award and a Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. Dr. Garrick has published books and several articles and has appeared worldwide as a health and resilience expert. She founded the FAR Group after 9-11 and continues to offer consulting services. Her MSW is from Temple University, and her doctor uh doctorate is from Middlesex University in London. Welcome to the show, Jackie. How are you?

SPEAKER_01: 2:25

Thank you for having me on.

unknown: 2:28

Good.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

So whistleblowers of America, um, tell tell me, tell us a little bit about that organization, um, what you do and and how it how it got started.

SPEAKER_01: 2:40

Sure. So, as you mentioned in my bio, I have a lived experience that brought me from the military community to this employment-related issue. And what I found early on as I was going through my own journey, that there were a lot of similarities between a combat zone and a hostile work environment. The physicality may be different, but the moral injury had some very common features. People were saying things like, I was in a battle for my life, I was just trying to survive, I was being held prisoner. There were all of these um illustrations that just seemed to parallel what I had seen and heard for decades and decades working with combat vets. So I started to look at what were some of those commonalities, what made the workplace so psychologically injurious? And how could we do a better job of helping people connect? So when I was going through my own journey and I was trying to figure out, well, what do I do and who do I talk to? As a veteran, I would know I can contact the American Legion for assistance and have somebody help me do a claim. I can get advice by just going to a post and talking to other vets and finding out, oh, what was your experience with this and sharing my concerns? But with this, I couldn't find community. So I started to research some of the other organizations that were in the space, mostly law firms or journalists. I couldn't find that Peer Connect network. And then I had posted some things on social media and somebody reached out to me, turned out to be a federal law enforcement officer who had admitted to being suicidal and having a gun. And I thought, I know how to do this, right? This is this is very much like the military. So in 2017, we incorporated Whistleblowers of America as a trauma-informed peer support program. I thought it would be like a lean-in circle. Me and a couple of people would get together over coffee and talk about our cases. And it wasn't soon after that that the phone just started ringing, and I was getting all these emails, and people from all over the country and all over the world were reaching out looking for the same thing I was looking for. Just somebody to talk to to have that meaningful conversation with. Yeah, no, exactly. So there are acts of commission and acts of omission. The retaliation, and the way I look at the toxic tactics, is I have these nine domains, things like gaslighting, mobbing, marginalizing, shunning, double binding, blacklisting, bullying, counteracusing. Um, so when I look at these tactics, there are like indicators for those things. So when you're gaslighting somebody and you're causing them to ruminate, you're telling them, you know, you're making too much of this. Don't say those things because, you know, you can cause our whole hospital to close down.

SPEAKER_02: 7:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:13

Some of the same things uh, you know, I know women veterans, when they report sexual assault, they go through some of the same gaslighting. Oh, you're making too much of it, or you shouldn't be there. Why were you alone? Why were you wearing that? Right? So whistleblowers go through a lot of that same questioning, and then they get isolated. Same like when they take a military person and they like, oh, well, you know, the command we can't move the commander, but we can move you. And now all of a sudden your assignments have changed, you've been moved, maybe you've been even detailed to a whole other um job that isn't what your job is, it's not the job you loved, it wasn't what you signed up for. And and we see this happening over and over again with whistleblowers. So retaliation can come in many forms. Most people think about it in terms of being um terminated, fired, demoted, um, detailed, but there are so many other psychosocial factors that go into that, that we we really have tried to dive deep and explore those more so people can understand the full gamut of how that when you're betrayed by your organization and you go through this moral injurious event. So you were trying to do the right thing. You reported corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse, or sexual harassment, discrimination. Um, and we we see people from all kinds of sectors, not just the military, but like nurses, nurses who will see upbilling in Medicare or Medicaid claims, child welfare workers, people who see human trafficking. There, there's a gamut of things people will report. So depending upon the industry, where you're located, what you're what you're doing, retaliation can take many forms from the things like you were saying, the very subtle, you know, the the intimidation, and and and the those microaggressions that we sometimes talk about, the not letting you talk in a meeting, cutting you off, eye rolling when you do talk, watch checking. You know, I can do a lot with my body language to dismiss or diminish person standing in a community without ever even saying anything, or I can ignore their complaints completely. So I submit, I go to the OIG, I submit a grievance, and you know, it gets circular filed, you know, nobody does anything with it. And then that causes that in some ways can be a form of gaslighting because now, well, what happened and why didn't they respond? And what's going on, and why isn't anybody telling me anything?

SPEAKER_02: 9:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 9:59

All of that causes a lot of stress and anxiety for somebody. And then if they do get fired or demoted or detailed away, that marginalizing and shunning can can really lead to things like depression and and grief over that that loss of positionality in an organization.

SPEAKER_00: 10:22

Yeah, I I think um in many cases there's a there's a a definite like we've got to get this person for telling on us. Uh, but I also think you know, there's sort of like a few good men kind of thing, right? But there's also I I've seen it in the Chaplin Corps, and I'm sure there's a lot of other cores too. But this and I and I think the person who said this is a good person, well-meaning, just not even aware themselves that what they were doing was was sort of uh not retaliation because it hadn't happened, but preventing people from reporting by saying, you know, that that would put a black mark on our office, you know, that would make our office look bad and that kind of stuff. And I think um, I even I even saw I even heard it from a very senior chaplain, like one with stars on his chest, say, hey, what we need to do instead of telling on each other, you need to confront the person directly, and blah blah blah. And what he meant was well-meaning in a sense, like, hey, you know, you need to stand up for yourself instead of like airing our dirty laundry out, you need to talk to the person directly and all that. And it sounds good, except if you're the person who's being harmed and you're a lower rank, and therefore don't really have any power. If I'm a sergeant or a staff sergeant or a E3 or E4, and my chaplain is a captain or a major, and they're an a-hole, right? I really don't have the strength or authority to be able to confront them, unless they're if they're a nice guy and they've made a mistake, you might go, hey, sir, you know, that's one thing. But if we're talking about something worth going to the IG for, you I mean, confronting them is not going to do anything, but but the point is, is by saying that, that very senior chaplain um both sent the message of, hey, if you're being harmed by a chaplain, don't dare say anything because you make us all look bad, right? And he also empowered the bad actors to say, Hey, yeah, you heard it from the chief that we're not supposed to, and I actually confronted the chaplain and I said, Hey, sir, I know you didn't intend it by by saying that. Um, or or it was a serm or whoever I talked to somebody about it, and I said, You just told everybody that you just you just like um really made it you resisted people from actually reporting, and and some of these chaplains need to be reported on. And I've always told my soldiers, like, if you think you need to go to the IG or or whatever, you should go. That's what those services are for. Like, you need to use those offices, don't let them tell you, hey, you'll make us look bad, because in the chaplain corps, and I love chaplains, I love the chaplain core, but there was definitely a a lot of especially senior chaplains who were more concerned about the image of their office than what was actually going on inside their office, and that really made me angry.

SPEAKER_01: 14:01

Uh yeah, there's nobody's immune. So, I mean, you're talking about chaplains. I mean, we've seen nurses, doctors, social workers. I mean, every industry that has come to us has a professional code of ethics and conduct, but you're absolutely spot on that that this command climate or corporate culture, whatever you want to call it, um, really gets um, you know, the stage set by the messaging of the senior leaders. And when you and when you say things like, oh, you know, man up and go work it out and you know, just have a conversation and don't make us look bad, you're sending out this uh this very mixed message. And, you know, we were we were talking about that a little bit last night. We um Whistleblowers of America hosted a round table on suicide prevention during times of transition and stress. And we were talking about the military and federal employees and some of what they're going through right now. And the idea that you get these mixed messages, and one of our guest speakers, um, a veteran by the name of Mike Sobey, who's working on his PhD, he he talked about, you know, they tell you to go to mental health and that it's okay to, you know, ask for help. And we do all this help-seeking behavior, encouraging it. But when we get to the health offering side, there's a disconnect because we tell you to go, but then if you go, and all they have to do in mental health is say you have an adjustment disorder, and this is in the military context. If they say that you have an adjustment disorder, then it goes right back to the command to decide whether or not you're fit for duty. And if they find you not fit for duty, they can either send you to a medical board or um an admin separation process, and before you know it, your whole career is gone. You've lost a security clearance, you've lost your assignment, you you've lost your years of service. Um, and so the battlefield wasn't your moral injury, it was back in garrison. It was the um command climate that was your moral injury. And and that sense of betrayal. And when we talked about those mixed messages, I've called it double binding in in retaliation tactics because they they set you up to fail. So on one hand, they it it it may look like you know, your manager, your commander is giving you this new assignment. This is gonna be restorative, but in fact, it's just a setup. Um, they're trying to either get rid of you, demote you, move you, or find other ways to blame you for not doing what you do. And in the private sector, you know, we've seen that where, okay, here's your new assignment. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna be in charge of all these widgets, and it's your job to fix widgets. And we want you to fix 10,000 widgets in a week, and you think, well, okay, where's the whole team for that? No, we have faith in you. You can do it yourself, right? But then when you can't fix 10,000 widgets in a week, it's hard to say actually, um you're then demoted, or you're you get a bad performance evaluation, and then it's it's this constant setting you up. So either these mixed messages, these double binds are really tricky to navigate, especially if you're young and inexperienced and you don't have an attorney and you don't have the people who are walking you through. So it's it's one thing to say, you know, we're we're we have a transparent, caring culture. We want to do what's best for our troops, but that that needs follow-through. That needs an active ingredient that allows somebody to go to their command and and be protected, and we just don't do that enough in the military and in the private sector.

SPEAKER_00: 18:17

So uh I had a I want to say one thing and then ask a question. It's gonna take me a little bit to go through it all. Um, but I did have a person who lost her, just like you're saying, lost her clearance. She went to behavioral health one weekend because one of a fellow soldier told her to do that. It was a terrific experience for her because they they what she called locked her away for the weekend. So she was away from her kids, couldn't talk to anybody, whatever. Of course, all that was put on paper. Um, and then later um they kicked her out of the mid-military on a medical. She still had her clearance because they hadn't reviewed it. But when it came to and she got a job in the civilian sector in the tech field, clearance. When it came to review, they oh, you can't have a clearance because you actually sought help for mental, you sought mental health, and so then it became a battle um to keep her clearance. And I wrote a letter for her. I don't know, you know, I've been mean to get in touch with her, find out what the what the uh end result was. But I mean that that's a good example of get help, get help. She did all the right things. She found not only did she not get the help she needed, but it destroyed her career, um, and potentially her future career in the tech world. Um, but a question I have is so we have let's say, let's say I I'm on a staff and I'm uh I'm generally an honest leader. I try to be a good leader, whatever, but maybe I have some some blind spots in in the way I'm handling my staff. Somebody goes to IG on on my about me. Um it's gonna be very difficult for me to not be angry at that person, to not have a grudge or whatever. Um but you know, but I want to I want to genuinely like reintegrate this person back in the staff, even if the staff feels like like everybody in the staff is pissed off because of what she reported and now how people in the building are looking at our section and all this stuff. This didn't happen to me, but just speaking for somebody else, and so so the leader wants to say, Don't talk to her, don't you know. If if if she doesn't can't trust us, we can't trust her, we'll give her work to do, we'll just blah blah blah, you know. How how if I'm a if I'm an genuinely I try trying to be a good leader, I might be personally hurt because uh being told on and and whether or not the IG found things or not, just the fact that that she I say she because that's what the situation was, but that person didn't come to me and address it, but went to IG. What are some ways I can like manage my own emotions, manage my own staff? Because I'm human enough, I'm gonna be angry, I'm gonna feel betrayed. You know, how do I work through that and not get in trouble for retaliation or do some retaliating or make the person feel retaliated against? Because once somebody we should be able to say, hey, they went, they had a right to go, you know, we should be able to be objective about it, but we're human and we're not that good. So, so you know, we're not able to totally be objective. How how can you help coach someone or work through someone? Do you have some ways to help someone sort through that? Who's a leader? Yeah, so you know.

SPEAKER_01: 22:07

I I think no, I think that's a great question. Um so I think first of all, you know, from both sides, there is there is guidance. One, the whistleblower themselves needs to have kind of a perspective on one, what are the laws? I always say we have to start with what is legal and not legal. So what are you where where's your legal footing in this issue? And what are your rights and responsibilities and your obligations for moving an issue forward? And I think both parties have to be fairly and equally informed. Very often what I see is the employee isn't as knowledgeable as their bosses who have a bevy of resources at their disposals, right? They have HR, they have general counsels, they have managers, they have other leaders in the organization that they can go to and rely upon to get advice and information. The whistleblower is usually, again, this mixed message is usually told, shh, don't say anything, don't tell anybody about the complaint while the investigation is going on, and then they're in this dark hole, like you said, put in a room, locked away. Um they really don't know what's going on. So I think there needs to be more transparency in the discussion on both ends. The whistleblower has a right to that to know what what the law says and does in terms of what they're saying. So if they're making a disclosure about fraud, waste, and abuse, and instead of isolating and alienating that person, the the command should then, or the higher up, because sometimes they're making a disclosure about the command. So you you really have to create a partnership with that person and make sure that one, they're safe, that they're in a in a place where they're protected from the people being investigated, and that um that the investigations are going to be done by fair and impartial, properly trained investigators. I've seen way too many investigators where somebody just gets a letter detailing them, oh, hey, we need this investigation done. And, you know, oh, by the way, you know, when you're your V Delity, you realize, well, this is my boss you're asking me to write a report on. How likely am I, as another subordinate, going to investigate my boss? I and I've seen it, and I'm not trained to do it, I don't know the right terminology, I don't even maybe know the law. So, how are we forming a better partnership? How are we getting HR and general counsel to form a partnership and treat this like a continuous process improvement investigation? Because you could look at these paradigms. You can have everything from a good employee to a good disclosure, bad employee, bad disclosure, bad disclosure, good employee, good employee, bad disclosure. So, how are you sorting out that matrix? Because you could have a good employee who has made a bad disclosure. Like they they come to you and they say, Hey, I think this is broken, and you say, No, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you ignore them and treat them like they're crazy and they're stupid, they may take their complaint to somewhere else instead of saying, Okay, well, show me why you think it's broken because I'm not seeing what you're seeing. And then if you sit down and have a conversation, maybe the person will realize, oh yeah, I see it really isn't broken. It's it's it's not a finished product test, or it's just a beta test. So there are different ways to walk through these scenarios. But what happens is way too often they become adversarial. And as soon as something becomes adversarial, now you've got people in two different camps, and they're getting ready to fight with each other, and they're they're building alliances, and they're, you know, right, and then they're taking this outside of the organization. If I'm a whistleblower and my organization ignores me and I've gone up the chain of command, what do you think I'm gonna do next? I'm gonna go to a reporter, I'm gonna hire an attorney, I'm gonna go to my member of Congress, and I'm gonna escalate this. And it that's where it really, you know, some that's where the wheels come off the bus in some ways, because it just gets more and more um adversarial and more toxic.

SPEAKER_00: 26:43

In many cases, uh, I didn't learn this until I had been in the military for decades and was working at a very high level. And I I because IG is and EO were sort of treated like you don't want to go to that if if you have to go to that, that's a major. But I found out later and I talked to the IG, and I realized I can go to the IG and just ask questions, um, you know, without disclosing or without making a formal report, and just say, hey, if without names or anything, if something like this happened, what would you know, is this a violation, or you can you can have like a conversation with them before before whistleblowing, and that can help like what's the what's the exact thing, you know, and um lean on their experience, especially if they've been doing a long time. Uh just try to say, hey, what what are some ways like in the military in the army, for instance, the IG is there to advise commanders, but they really want commanders leaders to get involved at the lowest level if possible. That's what they try to facilitate, um, so that you can have, like you said, those kind of conversations. It doesn't necessarily have to be like blow the whistle or remain silent. It can be hey, let me talk to the people whose job is to watchdog this stuff and see is there something here? Is there a way? Can they talk to the person for me? Can I have a meeting, you know, all kinds of things? Um, and I think part of the reason why we don't understand that is because leaders have done a poor job of setting the tone and encouraging people to get advice from IG or EO or to to to it tends to be us against them, you know, all the time in many ways.

SPEAKER_01: 28:46

And and the chaplain, right? I mean, if I'm concerned about something, that should be, you know, I used to call the the chaplains the adult supervision of the military. So again, some of these are these young people that just need the the right person to talk to. A chaplain is is that safety net, I think, for so many other issues besides the pastoral and spiritual care and leading religious ceremonies. I mean, that's what we think of the chaplain. But I mean, the role of the chaplain is I think so much broader than that. I mean, what if what I'm what I'm disclosing is I think another service member is suicidal. Um, do I go to command about that? Is that am I gonna then cause both of us to be in trouble? Or am I gonna save his life? But I'm afraid that if I say anything, I'm gonna make his situation worse. So who can I go to that's that's safe and unbiased?

SPEAKER_02: 29:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:49

And you know, I remember years ago when we were asking service members, you know, who would you tell? And very rarely are they gonna go more than one up in rank. They may go one down in rank or two down in rank, depending on how high they are, to talk about a problem. But rarely do they want to go more than one up in rank.

SPEAKER_02: 30:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 30:11

So, you know, if I'm a lieutenant, I'll go to maybe a captain, but I'm certainly not going to a major. Um and and maybe I'll talk to my NCOIC and get a you know, a general feel for, you know, well, you know, what's it like over in the barracks? Is everything going all right over there? Because I know I've heard a you know, I won't. Say I heard a complaint, but I know somebody's in trouble over there. And maybe you're planting a seed. But the fear of retaliation, and when we looked at research studies, the fear of retaliation was brought up. I think we looked at a hundred and almost 130 different studies. Fear of retaliation is always brought up in relation to why people whistleblow or don't whistleblow. Um it's a big motivator. And whether it's a perceived or an actual threat, it feels like a threat. And you know, we put up posters and we say, go to mental health, call 988, call the crisis line, ask for help, talk to your chaplain. And yet we sit back and we we wait for the phone to ring when we're in these positions of authority. And we're not that proactive. We're not good at that reaching out and reaching, reaching down to the ranks and fully understanding what the problems are. Um you know, the government viewpoints survey always a good test for what's it really like across the government. And now we're going to do away with those surveys. So we're going to turn a blind eye to more of those issues. The more we collect information, I know people get survey fatigue sometimes, but I think the more we collect um uh data and information from people across an organization, the more you learn about the organization. Because if all you're doing is, you know, sitting at the top rung of the ladder and you're looking up and it's a bright sunny day, and you're seeing, you know, the sun and the trees and the leaves and the birds are flying, and it's beautiful, right? But if you're at the bottom of that ladder looking up, that's not what you see.

SPEAKER_00: 32:53

You might see the bird poop landing on you.

SPEAKER_01: 32:56

So yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 32:59

Um one of the things I I I agree with you completely, and I think relationship building at all levels is so important. Um, one the more you get to know a person, the more you tend to have some mercy for them, forgiveness for them. I've and I've seen it. I've I've been guilty of it. As a leader, if I don't know a person, let's say they're two echelons downs or what down or whatever, right? I don't know them, and I'm not getting a report from them I need, or some some behavior, it's very easy for me to assume they're a bad actor, they don't, they're laid, they're whatever it is, right? All these negative things about them, and and try to and want to immediately take some kind of action against them, whatever. But if I really know the person, I work with them regularly, I much more tend to say, Oh, okay, something's going on, maybe let me find out about it, you know, let me ask questions, give them grace and mercy. Hey, I need this report. You said, Oh, I forgot, hey, I really need it. Can you know, have those conversations? And so, so the the importance of developing you can have good relationship with your report subordinates and not be unprofessional, like this idea that you have to be this cold walled-off person to maintain professionality is dumb. And yeah, you know, it it really is unnecessary. I mean, there's one thing about drinking beer with them in the weekend at their house, that may be not something you need to do, but while you're at work, you can know about each other's families, you can ask about things, you know, you can you can be, you know, a friend on some level and still demand that accountability for them. That's what people really want in work, is both accountability and compassion and care. Those aren't um there there might be some tension at times, but they're not really in conflict in a serious way if you manage them.

SPEAKER_01: 35:07

I think there's so there's a difference between a bad day and a bad actor. And if you're dealing with somebody who's having a bad day and maybe isn't um the easiest person to deal with on a bad day, but you can give them the benefit of the doubt and know that on other days they make better decisions. But if you're working with a bad actor and you know they're corrupt, they're stealing millions of dollars, they're you know, they're in it for personal gain, they're steering contracts to friends and family, you know, they're doing something really illegal, or they or you know that they're sexually harassing subordinates, you you know that they're inappropriately touching coworkers. If you know that, and you know this is a bad actor, you're probably also dealing with like a narcissist, a bully, right, somebody who is potentially very dangerous, then you really need to think about your steps more carefully. And and and to really know who you're dealing with. Um, you know, I always say the the psychopath next door goes to work. So we we know how to recognize, or we've talked a lot about domestic violence and and abuse at home, but that same person goes to work and those same behaviors come to work. And they're usually smart and charming, and the go-getters, and and they're you know, they get promoted to be team leaders because they're very um outgoing, and and people like them, right? But don't get on, don't get in their crosshairs and and don't be manipulated by them, because that's where you're gonna get into trouble with them. So it's really learning how to recognize when your bad actor truly is a narcissist and dangerous, and how to maybe manage those conversations, and that's when you really do probably need more help. You know, I I heard a healthcare executive once give a talk, and she said, the person who gets to HR first is the person who will be believed. So make sure you're keeping your notes and your records and your, you know, I tell people, do you have a journal? Make sure you're you're keeping those uncontemporaneous notes because that becomes evidence. Make sure that if you've got other people that agree with you, that they do that in writing, that they provide an affidavit to, yep, I you weren't the only one who saw so-and-so inappropriately touching so-and-so at the Christmas party. We we need to make sure that all those ducks are lined up in a row so that when you do go to HR, you have real evidence, not just an opinion. And making sure that that evidence passes sort of a standard is is sort of important. I know I one time I had this guy called me and he's like, Oh, yeah, I have all the evidence in the world. And I was like, Really? And he was like, Yeah, I'm gonna show you all my emails. And he sent me all these emails, and I scrolled through hundreds of emails, and not one email was from somebody else saying what he was saying in his emails. So his evidence was really his only opinion, the only thing it did was it created maybe that um contemporaneous documentation of the timeline, but he had nobody on the end of any of those emails go, you know, it would be like, thanks for sharing, but not yes, you're absolutely right. There was no confirmation of any of that. Um so evidence and and what evidence is is a really important um level of understanding, knowing your rights. Sometimes that may mean stepping outside your comfort zone and having a conversation with an attorney, um, or at least a legal aid or somebody who can give you some guidance before you formally go to your organization. But like there's also other nonprofits like us. I mean, we can't give legal advice. Um, we're a peer support program, but I can I can give you sort of what I know were best practices, other organizations that are, you know, the environmental groups. If you think water is being contaminated, go go to another nonprofit if you think children are being abused. You can you can just make an anonymous report to child protective services. You can you can go to a journalist and say, hey, you know, I'm thinking this is what's going on, but I'm on background. Um, you don't have permission to use my name, but you might want to look at this and you know, see, is this a super fun site? Have they dumped chemicals? You know, what's really going on behind the scenes that another another group, um, another nonprofit, another a law firm, or somebody can really help you get to the bottom of what's going on and help you develop your evidence before you even make any kind of complaints or or make any noise about anything because you want to protect yourself. Um but unfortunately, most whistleblowers are good conscientious employees. And if I go, oh, this is broken and you're my boss, and I just walk into your office and say, hey, I'm concerned about this, I've made a disclosure without even knowing I've made a disclosure.

SPEAKER_00: 40:49

So it does do you find it's difficult? Do people find it difficult to get co-workers, even if they know, to like put it on paper because they're also afraid of retaliation and that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01: 41:04

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 41:06

Become common for you to be uh isolated alone because if you you talk to somebody, hey, would you I'm not putting anything on paper, dude? Because I'm you know, then that's right. Is that common?

SPEAKER_01: 41:18

Yeah, I've had one of the one whistleblower that I've worked with, she called it the two kids in a mortgage excuse. Hey, I would really love to help you, but I can't because right. You know, I have my own family, I have my own career, I'm uh, you know, I'm a month away from retirement. After I retire, maybe I'll I will. You know, there's always the reasons not to take that, um, you know, to stick your neck out. That's why I I always say our mascot is the giraffe, because what slowers do, we have to stand tall and stick our myself.

SPEAKER_02: 41:49

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01: 41:50

Um, the giraffe, yeah. Um it it's uh it's a hard decision to make, and everybody has to make it for themselves. You know, when I when I did my case, I was I think extremely blessed to have people who who did sign affidavits and who were witnesses to what I was saying. So that when I went in front of the judge, I had the two or three pieces of evidence that he considered important. I had an I had a couple of affidavits from people who were willing to, you know, swear to that this is what I said, this is what I did, when I said and did it. Um, I had emails from, you know, between other people that um demonstrated a level of animus. And and then um, you know, I had gone and I had gotten other outside opinions, and I had so I had, you know, one, two, three, here's the evidence that the judge needed to make a decision. So it's just making sure you know what those things are, and and I think stacking it in such a way that it didn't really take a lot. Like I didn't have a thousand pages of evidence. I had a couple of very key things that were were very telling to the judge.

SPEAKER_00: 43:12

Um I think uh when I I have counseled people before that um later thought they should have whistleblow or some level of I should have done more to help kind of thing, um, but didn't. And then they look later on, they have a lot of guilt and shame about that. But one of the things that I've talked to them about is that you know, how really empowered were you to do something? And I think there are times where you have a situation, you know something's going on, you're not gonna get the support you need. Are there times that it's like, and I've told people this, I didn't want to tell them. I I off, you know, I'd love to be able to say something else, but after kind of going by what they said, it's kind of it almost it was like, you know, I think you may just have to ride this one out. Um, you know, now these weren't like huge legal issues, but they were still like kind of a toxic environment thing, and they would be the only one to to go against this person, whatever. So, but have you found situations that were it it's really like you're probably right here, there's something wrong, but you have no support yourself. Maybe the smart thing is to write it out, let it go until you can get in a new situation, or what do you have you had those kind of things, and what did you advise to do?

SPEAKER_01: 44:43

Sure. I mean, I've definitely told people like, okay, your case is interesting, but do you but do you have that level of evidence? And can you, you know, can you take a breather, collect your thoughts, collect more evidence, and then make your disclosure? Or if that person says, yeah, I'm, you know, I don't I'm gonna lose my, you know, if I whistleblow, you might lose your pension, but can you can you work on this behind the scenes for the next year and then retire and then make a disclosure? You know, and what about your family? Have you had this conversation with your family? Because this is gonna impact them. Um, if you lose your job, you're gonna lose your socioeconomic status. You may lose your house. I mean, I've seen that happen to so many whistleblowers where they had to sell homes because now they're in it and their legal bills are piling up, they're either unemployed or underemployed, so they've lost that level of income that they once had. They're borrowing from you know their um savings accounts, the children's college fund. You know, they're they're burning through money because they're they're having to live on it, they're paying attorney fees, they're and it's not and the court fees are expensive, developing evidence can be expensive. If you have to hire subject matter experts, well, all of that becomes out-of-pocket expenses that make it a family decision. So I I have told a lot of people like take a pause, take a breath, and think. And I find lots of times, like you were saying, um, bystanders will feel the same level of guilt. Like, well, you know, I never did do anything, and now I feel really bad because I've seen other people being hurt. And we know that that's a facet with trauma survivors, you know, when we see the veteran community that, hey, you know, I went through a bad experience. You know, you could be an amputee, and now I want to start my own nonprofit, or I want to volunteer at a VA hospital because I want to give back and I want to prevent this from happening to somebody else. I hear that theme a lot as sort of an active ingredient for a propensity to be a whistleblower, is I didn't do it once before. I'm in a better position now, especially a lot of women will say, you know, when I was in my 20s and somebody was sexually harassing me, or I got fired when I told my boss I was pregnant and I didn't do anything about it. But you know, now I'm in my 40s and 50s, and I'm in a position in an organization or I hold a public office and I'm not gonna let this happen to other people. I'm gonna protect their rights, and I'm gonna speak out and I'm gonna assist them. And that's where again, knowing who else is in your community, some of these other NGOs can be very helpful or veteran service organizations that can be really helpful because they understand and care about the nature of your case.

SPEAKER_00: 47:54

Yeah, that makes sense. One of one of the things that I think is really difficult when you're talking IG, I know this in the military, probably true in the civilian world too, but um they take so doggone long to be investigated. So you do blow the whistle IG six months later, you're still don't know anything, and you're still in that same office or whatever, or you're the target of you know, whatever. It's is is in your advocacy or in your work, have you talked about the length of investigations, why they take so long, if there's a way to be shorter, or because if you're if you're a survivor of some kind, or you're the a whistleblower, and you you screw up your courage enough to actually say something, you do a formal report, you really want some justice, some protection, some relief pretty soon. But it often takes forever, really, for these cases to be investigated. Um, yeah, and you know, if you're waiting six, seven, eight months, and I've talked to IGs on behalf of a person, they really couldn't tell me anything, but just inquiring, like, hey, you know, it's like I can't tell you anything. But are you doing it? I just want you to know like, are you actually investigating this? Because this seems uh insane that six months after you report this, the person doesn't know anything, hasn't been as far as she even knows. People haven't even been interviewed, they probably have maybe. I don't know, but it's like that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 49:30

Yeah, no, you're you're you're right. I mean, I made my initial disclosure in um the spring of 2014, and my case settled in the spring of 2020.

SPEAKER_02: 49:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 49:45

So, and I thought, oh, this this is clearly somebody is easily gonna understand this, right? And and yet it took all of that time and all the things that I went through, and the not knowing, and the having to decide to sell my house and moving, and you know, thinking about how to retool my career and where else could I work um in the meantime, and what else can I do? It was it was a long, it was a long process, and these these things tend to be complicated and more complex than we think. And and everybody thinks their case is a slamp dog. Um, I've never talked to a slow lawyer who said, yeah, maybe if he, you know, they all come in fully committed, thinking, absolutely the best case ever. And anybody who doesn't understand that is a crooked judge. Well, again, as I'm as I mentioned, there is this understanding level of evidence, how evidence gets weighed, what kind of evidence is the is the organization going to have and be able to provide. And they get a lot of um um deference, you know, chevron deference or judicial deference, because they're the ones who wrote the rules and the policies. They own it. So now you're you're saying that what they're what they are doing is wrong, and and the person, the bad actor, has a level of anonymous immunity because they represent the organization, they're not acting in their own behalf. So these things really do have to get parsed out, and it is a complicated and it can be a long process. And to get things ready um for court cases, um, I was just reading the book by Lisa Prada, um, False Claims, took nine years before her case, which seemed so obvious from when you first start reading the book until you get 270 somewhat pages later. Why what why did it take so long? And where were the stalls? And where was the waiting? And who was investigating, and and what else are they investigating? And what becomes you know a hot topic or or maybe a more driving priority? So if you're if your case is about you know um money laundering, but there's other cases about wrongful patient death, that might get a higher level of priority than your case. And so your case ends up on a back burner, or the investigator leaves and they have to get a new investigator. Somebody goes on maternity leave, and now you've got a you know, you've got a six-month gap before they even come back and are working. So there are a lot of things that happen in the background on these cases that um can really make or break the political climate. We're right now seeing where the government is trying to remove due process rights from federal employees, trying to make them more like at-will employees, even though um uh a primary aspect for federal employees is a loyalty to the constitution, not to any individual leader or organizational structure. They're supposed to be there to carry out the mission of the government. If you take away their due process rights, you're you're taking away their ability to be loyal to the constitution as opposed to, you know, in it for themselves. So that that's right now a problem. Um and we're not fully funding and staffing those entities right now. There are there's not a full complement of MSPB, the Merit System Protection Board, the Office of Special Counsel, and even the lack of of judges in in the in when we get to the courts. Um if if all of those people are feeling threatened, not able to do their jobs, have their hands tied, the legal points are being contested, Congress isn't uh enforcing its oversight responsibilities, there's there's a a ripple effect that goes from the you know the highest of the high to the lowest of the low that impacts how well they're going to be able to stop corruption and human rights violations. So those are all I think really important factors that go into all of this.

SPEAKER_00: 54:35

Yeah, um, absolutely. Uh one more thing. So um are there ways, you know, in light of all that and um knowing that like this could be a very long process, are there ways for a person in most cases? I mean, it maybe dependent on the type of entity or the company or whatever, but are there ways for people to disclose things anonymously to sort of protect themselves and all that instead of and and have accountability happen without them being the target of or being known?

SPEAKER_01: 55:16

Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay, you should be able to go to the OIG and make an anonymous complaint where you don't even give them your name. You make your complaint, you wash your hands, and you walk away. Um, that gives them very little to go on, um, because as soon as you provide any evidence or name names, it does kind of come back to you, but you can be anonymous and you can be confidential. You can tell them, hey, this is who I am, but I don't want my name released to anybody. Um, the only time that it can become unsealed is like if you're going to the Security Exchange Commission and now the the case becomes part of a public record, then then your name may get known. Um, you won't be able to be an anonymous relater.

SPEAKER_00: 56:05

Right. Okay. Uh so Jackie, it's been great having you. I'm really proud of all the great work you're doing. I know it's just a few years ago, I remember when you were first getting things going. And so uh you've you know, you have a great board, a great lot of people helping you. You're doing stuff, connecting with people and agencies around the world. And so very excited about what you're doing. I'm I'm glad to have this time with you to do this and get this out to people. Um, the best way to for them to get in touch with your for people to get in touch with your organization is how?

SPEAKER_01: 56:42

Um, we have a great website, um, whistleblowersofamerica.org. We're on LinkedIn and Facebook as well, so you can follow us. We have a a YouTube channel where we post content. Um, we have an annual conference, the workplacepromisinstitute.org. That's another website. And our content from our conferences, we do a monthly round table. So we're always trying to put information out there and be as accessible as we can. So definitely look for us um on social media and check out our website. There's a lot of content on that as well.

SPEAKER_00: 57:26

And you're a 501c3, right? So people can donate and oh absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 57:30

Yes, we have a big donate to Whistleblowers of America. Okay, joined the CFC, the Combined Federal campaign this year. Right. Hoping now that federal employees are back at work, they'll be um donating to organizations. So we're we're definitely out there. Um and you know, if you find us and you need help, we have a um a page on our website where you can either join and become a member. Uh, you can support us that way, or if you're looking for peer support, you can subscribe and and send us um a request for assistance.

SPEAKER_00: 58:08

Okay, great. And we'll put your information on our on our web page and social media uh for this and the and the webpage that hosts the podcast and stuff, so people can find out. But um, okay, well, it's great having you, and uh, I hope as we're recording this, Thanksgiving is coming up in about a week. So I hope that goes really well for you. And you too. Yeah, thanks again. Uh, we'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_01: 58:34

All right, thank you.