October 3, 2019 • 19 mins
For years, public health officials have urged people to eat less red meat and processed meats because they have been linked to heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses. Now, a new analysis says that these dietary guidelines are not backed by good scientific evidence. There was immediate backlash and several public health organizations pushed back saying these new conclusions could harm the credibility of nutrition science. Claire Maldarelli, associate editor at Popular Science, joins us for what to know about the latest red meat controversy.
Next, the top story in Washington continues to be the whistleblower complaint against the President. And as Trump continues to cast doubt on the allegations, we are also learning that Rep. Adam Schiff learned the outlines of the whistleblower’s concerns days before he filed his complaint. Whistleblowing has been around since the beginning of the country and has always been a tool to prevent the abuse of power by those who hold it. Allison Stanger, author of Whistleblowers: Honesty in American from Washington to Trump, joins us to discuss what prompted the first whistleblower protection law to be enacted and how protecting them is more important than ever.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday, October three. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles,
and this is the daily dive. For years, public health
officials have urged people to eat less red meat and
process meats because they have been linked to heart disease, cancer,
and other illnesses. Now, a new analysis says that these
(00:22):
dietary guidelines are not backed by good scientific evidence. There
was immediate backlash and several public health organizations pushed back,
saying that these new conclusions could harm the credibility of
nutrition science. Claire Maldarelli, associate editor at Popular Science, joins
us for what to know about the latest red meat controversy. Next,
(00:43):
the top story in Washington continues to be the whistle
blower complaint against the president, and as Trump continues to
cast doubt on the allegations, we are also learning the
Representative Adam Schiff learned the outlines of the whistle blowers
concerns days before he filed his complaint. Whistle Blowing has
been around since the beginning of the country and has
always been a tool to prevent the abuse of power
(01:04):
by those who hold in Alison Stanger, author of Whistleblowers
Honesty in America, from Washington to Trump joins us to
discuss what prompted the first whistleblower protection law to be enacted,
and how protecting them is more important than ever. It's
news without the noise. Let's dive in. Based on the research,
(01:24):
we cannot say with any certainty that eating red or
processed meat causes cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. For vegetarians
and those who don't eat a lot of meat, they
often cite health concerns for these choices. However, the benefits
of abstaining from meat are on certain and if they
do exist, they're very small. Joining us now is Claire Mauldarelli,
(01:45):
Associate editor at Popular Science. Thanks for joining us, Claire, Yeah,
thanks for having me. Public health officials for years now
have urged Americans to limit their consumption of red meat
and processed meats. There's always been these concerns that these
foods are linked to heart disease, cancer, other ailments. But
earlier this week there was this international collaboration of researchers
(02:09):
that produced a new analysis. They were looking at other
studies involving red meat, and they basically say that some
of those studies are not backed by good scientific evidence
and if there are health benefits from eating less beefer pork,
they say those are small. Whenever some a story like
this comes out, it's always one of those things you
have to take with a grain of salt. There's always
(02:31):
backlash against these studies and there's always some type of
controversy behind it. So Claire, help us walk through this.
What do we know about these new studies and then
all the backlash that it's been getting. Overall, it sort
of shows where we're at with nutritional research. A lot
of the studies, including the ones that were included in
this new report, which is a meta analysis which kind
of takes many different studies and looks at them all
(02:53):
together and says that are all based on the same
topic and says we're going to make this recommendation or
we're going to come to this conclu lusion. And so
the studies that they looked at, and then a lot
of nutrition research does are based on observation rather than
these controlled trials. So with observation research, you sort of
ask questions to participants and say how much red meat
(03:17):
are you eating daily or weekly or monthly? And they
respond And so that's really hard because a lot of
people don't remember how often they eat red meat. And
then at the same time, there's also so many other
factors involved in our overall health that it's hard to
piece apart just one particular bit of our diet. And
(03:39):
so even though this study actually did find there is
a slight increased risk for these certain diseases, it wasn't
a stetifically significant risk, but it was a slight risk.
But overall, they said that there's no big difference between
the people that ate a lot of red meat versus
the people that ate less red meat. But it was
(03:59):
deemed quality, and low quality means that they're not very
sure of what they're telling us, and that's usually indicative
of these observational studies. Higher quality studies are usually based
on these often double blind, placebo control trials where they
give people specific things and they're able to sort of
(04:20):
barrow down what that is. That would be really hard
to get somebody to commit to doing something like that
for exactly the years that would it would take to
really find out any meaningful health effects that it would have,
you know, and going back to what you were saying,
you know, people forget what they eat, or they eat
a bunch of other stuff. Maybe I had a burger,
but did I eat some French fries and have a
(04:42):
shake with it? Was I eating a salad with it?
You know, all these other things could possibly contribute to
heart disease and all of these other things. So let's
talk about the backlash now, because a lot of public
health researchers and other associations, you know, the American Heart Association,
the American Cancer Society, they have a problem with this
new study coming out saying it's not so bad because
(05:04):
it throws people for a loop. Now they don't know
what to think about dietary guidelines and they're still sticking
with the original thing that they've had for a long time. Now,
you should still eat less red meat. I completely agree
with you were saying. And a lot of the researchers
that we spoke to for OURPS essentially said the same thing.
That they understand that nutrition research is frustrating and it's hard,
(05:24):
but doing it well and doing quality work needs to
be done. And so when we do meta analyzes on
these studies that are low quality and aren't very good,
it's not really telling us anything new or telling us
anything that will benefit the conversation, and so going forward,
a lot of researchers think we should move away from
(05:44):
these observational based nutrition studies and really just start to
do better studies. And then once those new better studies
come out, if we do do them, which are incredibly
hard to do, that's how we should base our recommendations on.
But can beave new ones out like this one that
just came out, It really does. It uses the public
(06:06):
because it's sort of the opposite of a lot of
really good research that has come out in the past
couple of years that says plant these diets are beneficial
to our health, you know, just anecdotally. I know, doctors
will take these lines and when you come in with
some type of problems, they'll recommend these things, you know,
maybe do eat less red beat and it nottally. You know,
the normal public at large sees these types of studies
(06:28):
and they're just like, ah, that's b s. I don't care.
I'm gonna keep eating what I want to eat. I think,
if anything, this new study kind of casting doubt on
this whole eat less red meat thing just still makes
the case for moderation, you know, just everything moderation, and
you'll be you're more likely to be okay. But I
mean that's kind of the sense that I would get
of this. You know, who knows what's to think? Like
(06:49):
like you've been saying, you know, there's more confusion about
nutrition as these things battle each other out. So just
moderate the red meat and you should be all right,
don't you don't say don't take yeah, I mean neither.
I think also just looking at your overall health. They
think a lot of times, like even in like big
(07:10):
media headlines, it always focuses on these one specific things
like sugar or fat or red meat, and instead of
focusing on small pieces of our diet, we should be
focused like on the entire thing. So yes, if you
are eating me, but what else are you eating in
addition to that with your whole meal? And if you
are taking out me, then what are you replacing it with?
(07:31):
And so looking at it more holistically could benefit both
an individual and like these population based studies as well.
Claire Maldarelli, Associate editor at Popular Science, thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks for having me. So I
(07:53):
think it's a scandal that he knew before I go
a step further, I think you probably helped write it. Okay,
that's what the word it is, and I think it's uh.
I give a lot of respect for the New York Times,
so putting it out. It just happened as I'm walking
up here. They ended it to me and I said
to Mike, I said, whoa, that's something. That's big stuff.
That's a big story. He knew long before and he
(08:16):
helped write it too. It's a scam. It's joining us
now is Alison Stanger, political and economics professor at Middlebury
College and author of the new book whistle Blowers, Honesty
in America From Washington to Trump. Thanks for joining us, Allison.
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. It's
a perfect time for the book to come out, considering
(08:37):
all of what's happening in Washington right now with the
current whistle blower complaint against President Trump. But in your book,
you really do a great job of framing whistle blowing
as this very important but unrecognized form of civil disobedience.
This has been going on since the beginning of our country,
since the beginning of America, and whistle blowers have this
(08:59):
history of holding people accountable, elite accountable, and to prevent
the abusive power of those that have it. This is
something that's kind of going on right now. As I
said in the book, you go through all sorts of stuff.
You start off with SA Hopkins, who was the first
commander of the Navy. You talk about Edwards Snowden and
a bunch of other examples. Let's start there, though, with SSA.
(09:20):
Hopkins and what his story was, because his story is
really what uh why we have the first whistleblower protection
law in the country. Start us off there. That's that's right,
SA Hopkins and the first whistle war protection law isn't
incredibly important to understand right now because whistle blowing, as
(09:40):
America's DNA, it is not a partisan issue. It's an
American issue. We passed the world's first whistle war Protection
Act in seventy eight, and that was in response to
a man by the name of Esse Hopkins, who was
first Commander in chief of the U. S. Navy. He
was removed from his office and it led to the
law basically because he abused his public office for private game.
(10:02):
He was not a savory character. He tortured British prisoners
of war, He used horrible rhetoric, and he hurled insults
at Congress, but his biggest transgression was he defied Congress
on multiple occasions General George Washington and Congress would tell
him to send the U. S. Navy to a certain
place to engage the British, and he would just take
(10:23):
the ships where he wanted to take them. I know,
it's some pretty blatant stuff that he was doing. Yeah,
because he was a Rhode Islander, his commercial interests for
at stake, and he wanted to make sure that his
economic interests reserved. Unfortunately they were bound up in the
slave trade. So it's a really interesting story that leads
to our first whistle or protection law, and very much
shows that whistle blowing is about making sure that public
(10:45):
officials are working for the United States, not for themselves.
And in the case of Hopkins, it was ten people
they got together and wrote a letter to Congress basically
laying out all this stuff. You know, he's not listening
to you guys, he's mistreating prisoners. Tell us how he
was spawned to that. I mean, it ended up going
so far that they removed him. But what did he
do to the whistle blowers once they found out who
(11:07):
they were? And then how did that lead to the
first whistle blower law. He actually retaliated against the whistle blowers.
He was Rhode Island, with high social standing in Rhode Island,
and there were ten sailors who filed the complaint, but
two of them had the misfortune of also residing in
Rhode Island, where he had enormous social power, So they
were thrown in jail. Congress insisted that they'd be relieved
(11:29):
from jail. They paid their bail and their legal fees,
and they also legislated that all the records of the
proceedings be made public. So that's the reason the story
can be told today. I mean, it's so interesting and
and you know, it proves the importance of why we
have to protect the whistleblowers. Obviously, I want to fast
forward to where we are currently right now, and this
(11:50):
is one of the discussions that we're having about the
protection of the current whistle blower against the President of
the United States. People are casting doubt over his account.
He might have heard things second hand, and the President
has said, you know, I want to see him, I
want to meet him. I want to know who this
person is. Right now, Congress is figuring out how to
keep his identity secrets still as it is already we
know he's a CIA officer. Talk about what whistle blowers
(12:12):
go through whence they go public with their allegations. This
is a pretty standard pattern because whistle blowers provide a
public service and they often wind up losing everything. So
that's why we're protection is extraordinarily important. What you need
to understand about the current case is that this involves
a case of national security with the blowing, which is
the most fraught because the intelligence community is very secretive.
(12:35):
In order to protect national security, they need to keep secrets.
But in order to blow the whistle, you've got to
reveal secrets. So for whistle blowers, I interviewed all the
n s A whistleblowers and also the senior leadership of
the n s A, so I have some familiarity with
the intelligence community, and that's why I think it's very
important to focus on the content of the complaint. There's
(12:56):
a lot of noise and things being swung back and
forth in a sense of White House is just throwing
things at the wall to see what sticks. But nobody
is defending the behavior and the complaint, which is really fascinating,
and that complaint indicates a cover up of both the
national security threat the shadow foreign policy being run out
of the White House through the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giulietti,
(13:17):
also through the Attorney General, William Barr And now it
seems perhaps Secretary of State Pompeo, that's a foreign policy
completely at odds with the official foreign policy of the
United States, which is administered by the State Department, for
which funds are appropriated by Congress. Congress has to approve
the military aid that was suppeled. That's the national security
through the shadow foreign policy. There's also a touch of
(13:37):
democracy from within that's pretty obvious. The president is celebrating
foreign electoral interference, and it seems pretty clear that we
want Americans to elect our officials, not foreigners. So the
content of the complaint is what should be focused on,
not all the name calling. And because this is taking
place within the intelligence community, they have a different set
(13:59):
of rules for whistleblowing. The country is kind of learning
this as we go, as the news is going so
fast with this. But in any other department of the government,
you know, you can go straight to a congressman or
somebody else. And just kind of throw the complaint out there.
But because there are secrets to be protected, because there
is national security at risk, you know, possibly at risk.
That's why we have this whole procedure of going to
(14:19):
the Inspector General. You have to understands a very rickety procedure.
In my view, it's a miracle that this complaint ever
saw the light of day, because it's much more common
for it just to be suppressed and it's somehow went forward.
It's a miracle because the law says explicitly that national
security employees are excluded from protection, that's the Whistle Lower
(14:41):
Protection Enhancement Act. But there's an executive order that's set
up this process to try to carve out a safe
space for national security whistleblowers through the intelligence community Inspector General,
and that's the way the complaint rose to the top.
But it's very rare for there to be intelligence community whistleblowers.
That's a barometer of how serious the situation is. There's
(15:02):
a real fear that democracy itself is threatened. And it's
not a partisan issuance, an American issue, but increasingly these
people in the intelligence community are stepping into the roles
of whistleblowers. I mean, they are privy to more of
the secrets. I guess that could be a reason why exactly.
But they are the ones that they are the ones
that are just kind of stepping into these roles. Now, yeah,
you've put your figure right on it. And that's something
(15:22):
I trace in my book that the intelligence community has
been blowing the whistle on titled Trump since his election.
They've been behaving in very atypical fashion. And they're doing
so not because they've suddenly turned partisan. It's not a
partisan community community. They are doing so because they think
the system itself, the rule of law system, and our
democracy are threatened by a president who is using his
(15:44):
office to advance the Trump brand ravenant to uphold the
rule of law, and his oath to preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States. So they've been
founding the alarm for the past few years and this
is just the latest most official man to station. And
since we love whistleblowers in this country because it's such
a longstanding tradition, the Republicans are somewhat stuck because Americans
(16:08):
aren't against whistle blowing. So that's the unusual situation we
sign ourselves in. One of the interesting things I noted
in your book, though, is how often whistleblowers are believed.
I think in the book you mentioned maybe five of
whistleblowers succeed in having their assertions believed. So while we
want to know the secrets and we want somebody to
tell us when something is going wrong, sometimes it's hard
(16:31):
to get behind them. You go through a bunch of
examples in the book, and Edwards Snowden is one of them,
and there was always this discussion whether he was a
whistle blower or not, even though he revealed a bunch
of secrets. Edward's known is a really interesting case because
he's someone who did not complain through the inspector general system.
The interesting thing about that, though, is everybody said he
(16:52):
should have done it. He instead shows to flee the
country and leak the information that way, and he was
perhaps right to do that because the man them in
the inspector general position in the n s A at
the time of the Stone Leagues, George Allard was actually
removed from his post as Inspector General in six for
guess what, whistleblower retaliation. So there's a real bias in
(17:16):
the intelligence community against whistleblowers for reasons that I've already
talked about. That's why one day Snowden maybe our first
trader patriot. He initiated a public discussion that would have
never taken place without his actions, And basically he revealed
that standard operating procedures in the n s A their
(17:36):
emergency measures taken after nine eleven that were completely justified
because the nation was at war. We've just been attacked.
But those emergency procedures became standard operating procedure without any
kind of public discussion or the American people knowing about it.
So he initiated a public discussion that led to changes
in the Patriot Act, and for that, I think he
did a public service. Obviously, what we're going through right
(17:59):
now in the country at this current whistleblower complaint, it's
all playing out very rapidly in the news, and we're
getting little snippets of details here and there. Do you
think there's going to be a lot more whistleblower actions
in the years to come, whether it's with this president
or with other presidents, as people start seeing things, do
you think people are gonna, you know, have the will
to speak out more, the fact that matter is the
(18:20):
complaint indicates misconduct at the highest levels to which many
people were witnesses. So there are other people who can
corroborate the whistleblowers complaint, and I think that's going to happen.
But you're also seeing the inspector general's starting to speak out.
Just today, the Inspector General of the State Department is
meeting with the Congress at his request, and that's very
interesting to me because he will know about any complaints
(18:43):
within the State Department about this behavior. In a sense,
the inspector generals are democracy's trip wire that there are
insurance policy that we keep democracy on the rails. And
the good thing is we're seeing the system working in
that regard. I suggest everybody check out the book. It
came out at the perfect time. I read in one
of these articles that you've been working on this book
for seven years, so it's not it's not like, uh,
(19:06):
you know, it came out because of what's going on
right now. So no, it's a great read and I
suggest everybody check it out. The book is called Whistleblowers.
Honestly in America, from Washington to Trump, Alison Stanger, political
and economics professor at Middlebury College. Thank you very much
for joining us. Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much.
(19:31):
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Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
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This episode of The Daily Dive was produced by Victor
Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez in
(19:54):
this was your Daily Dive
It's Thursday, October three. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles,
and this is the daily dive. For years, public health
officials have urged people to eat less red meat and
process meats because they have been linked to heart disease, cancer,
and other illnesses. Now, a new analysis says that these
(00:22):
dietary guidelines are not backed by good scientific evidence. There
was immediate backlash and several public health organizations pushed back,
saying that these new conclusions could harm the credibility of
nutrition science. Claire Maldarelli, associate editor at Popular Science, joins
us for what to know about the latest red meat controversy. Next,
(00:43):
the top story in Washington continues to be the whistle
blower complaint against the president, and as Trump continues to
cast doubt on the allegations, we are also learning the
Representative Adam Schiff learned the outlines of the whistle blowers
concerns days before he filed his complaint. Whistle Blowing has
been around since the beginning of the country and has
always been a tool to prevent the abuse of power
(01:04):
by those who hold in Alison Stanger, author of Whistleblowers
Honesty in America, from Washington to Trump joins us to
discuss what prompted the first whistleblower protection law to be enacted,
and how protecting them is more important than ever. It's
news without the noise. Let's dive in. Based on the research,
(01:24):
we cannot say with any certainty that eating red or
processed meat causes cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. For vegetarians
and those who don't eat a lot of meat, they
often cite health concerns for these choices. However, the benefits
of abstaining from meat are on certain and if they
do exist, they're very small. Joining us now is Claire Mauldarelli,
(01:45):
Associate editor at Popular Science. Thanks for joining us, Claire, Yeah,
thanks for having me. Public health officials for years now
have urged Americans to limit their consumption of red meat
and processed meats. There's always been these concerns that these
foods are linked to heart disease, cancer, other ailments. But
earlier this week there was this international collaboration of researchers
(02:09):
that produced a new analysis. They were looking at other
studies involving red meat, and they basically say that some
of those studies are not backed by good scientific evidence
and if there are health benefits from eating less beefer pork,
they say those are small. Whenever some a story like
this comes out, it's always one of those things you
have to take with a grain of salt. There's always
(02:31):
backlash against these studies and there's always some type of
controversy behind it. So Claire, help us walk through this.
What do we know about these new studies and then
all the backlash that it's been getting. Overall, it sort
of shows where we're at with nutritional research. A lot
of the studies, including the ones that were included in
this new report, which is a meta analysis which kind
of takes many different studies and looks at them all
(02:53):
together and says that are all based on the same
topic and says we're going to make this recommendation or
we're going to come to this conclu lusion. And so
the studies that they looked at, and then a lot
of nutrition research does are based on observation rather than
these controlled trials. So with observation research, you sort of
ask questions to participants and say how much red meat
(03:17):
are you eating daily or weekly or monthly? And they
respond And so that's really hard because a lot of
people don't remember how often they eat red meat. And
then at the same time, there's also so many other
factors involved in our overall health that it's hard to
piece apart just one particular bit of our diet. And
(03:39):
so even though this study actually did find there is
a slight increased risk for these certain diseases, it wasn't
a stetifically significant risk, but it was a slight risk.
But overall, they said that there's no big difference between
the people that ate a lot of red meat versus
the people that ate less red meat. But it was
(03:59):
deemed quality, and low quality means that they're not very
sure of what they're telling us, and that's usually indicative
of these observational studies. Higher quality studies are usually based
on these often double blind, placebo control trials where they
give people specific things and they're able to sort of
(04:20):
barrow down what that is. That would be really hard
to get somebody to commit to doing something like that
for exactly the years that would it would take to
really find out any meaningful health effects that it would have,
you know, and going back to what you were saying,
you know, people forget what they eat, or they eat
a bunch of other stuff. Maybe I had a burger,
but did I eat some French fries and have a
(04:42):
shake with it? Was I eating a salad with it?
You know, all these other things could possibly contribute to
heart disease and all of these other things. So let's
talk about the backlash now, because a lot of public
health researchers and other associations, you know, the American Heart Association,
the American Cancer Society, they have a problem with this
new study coming out saying it's not so bad because
(05:04):
it throws people for a loop. Now they don't know
what to think about dietary guidelines and they're still sticking
with the original thing that they've had for a long time. Now,
you should still eat less red meat. I completely agree
with you were saying. And a lot of the researchers
that we spoke to for OURPS essentially said the same thing.
That they understand that nutrition research is frustrating and it's hard,
(05:24):
but doing it well and doing quality work needs to
be done. And so when we do meta analyzes on
these studies that are low quality and aren't very good,
it's not really telling us anything new or telling us
anything that will benefit the conversation, and so going forward,
a lot of researchers think we should move away from
(05:44):
these observational based nutrition studies and really just start to
do better studies. And then once those new better studies
come out, if we do do them, which are incredibly
hard to do, that's how we should base our recommendations on.
But can beave new ones out like this one that
just came out, It really does. It uses the public
(06:06):
because it's sort of the opposite of a lot of
really good research that has come out in the past
couple of years that says plant these diets are beneficial
to our health, you know, just anecdotally. I know, doctors
will take these lines and when you come in with
some type of problems, they'll recommend these things, you know,
maybe do eat less red beat and it nottally. You know,
the normal public at large sees these types of studies
(06:28):
and they're just like, ah, that's b s. I don't care.
I'm gonna keep eating what I want to eat. I think,
if anything, this new study kind of casting doubt on
this whole eat less red meat thing just still makes
the case for moderation, you know, just everything moderation, and
you'll be you're more likely to be okay. But I
mean that's kind of the sense that I would get
of this. You know, who knows what's to think? Like
(06:49):
like you've been saying, you know, there's more confusion about
nutrition as these things battle each other out. So just
moderate the red meat and you should be all right,
don't you don't say don't take yeah, I mean neither.
I think also just looking at your overall health. They
think a lot of times, like even in like big
(07:10):
media headlines, it always focuses on these one specific things
like sugar or fat or red meat, and instead of
focusing on small pieces of our diet, we should be
focused like on the entire thing. So yes, if you
are eating me, but what else are you eating in
addition to that with your whole meal? And if you
are taking out me, then what are you replacing it with?
(07:31):
And so looking at it more holistically could benefit both
an individual and like these population based studies as well.
Claire Maldarelli, Associate editor at Popular Science, thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks for having me. So I
(07:53):
think it's a scandal that he knew before I go
a step further, I think you probably helped write it. Okay,
that's what the word it is, and I think it's uh.
I give a lot of respect for the New York Times,
so putting it out. It just happened as I'm walking
up here. They ended it to me and I said
to Mike, I said, whoa, that's something. That's big stuff.
That's a big story. He knew long before and he
(08:16):
helped write it too. It's a scam. It's joining us
now is Alison Stanger, political and economics professor at Middlebury
College and author of the new book whistle Blowers, Honesty
in America From Washington to Trump. Thanks for joining us, Allison.
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. It's
a perfect time for the book to come out, considering
(08:37):
all of what's happening in Washington right now with the
current whistle blower complaint against President Trump. But in your book,
you really do a great job of framing whistle blowing
as this very important but unrecognized form of civil disobedience.
This has been going on since the beginning of our country,
since the beginning of America, and whistle blowers have this
(08:59):
history of holding people accountable, elite accountable, and to prevent
the abusive power of those that have it. This is
something that's kind of going on right now. As I
said in the book, you go through all sorts of stuff.
You start off with SA Hopkins, who was the first
commander of the Navy. You talk about Edwards Snowden and
a bunch of other examples. Let's start there, though, with SSA.
(09:20):
Hopkins and what his story was, because his story is
really what uh why we have the first whistleblower protection
law in the country. Start us off there. That's that's right,
SA Hopkins and the first whistle war protection law isn't
incredibly important to understand right now because whistle blowing, as
(09:40):
America's DNA, it is not a partisan issue. It's an
American issue. We passed the world's first whistle war Protection
Act in seventy eight, and that was in response to
a man by the name of Esse Hopkins, who was
first Commander in chief of the U. S. Navy. He
was removed from his office and it led to the
law basically because he abused his public office for private game.
(10:02):
He was not a savory character. He tortured British prisoners
of war, He used horrible rhetoric, and he hurled insults
at Congress, but his biggest transgression was he defied Congress
on multiple occasions General George Washington and Congress would tell
him to send the U. S. Navy to a certain
place to engage the British, and he would just take
(10:23):
the ships where he wanted to take them. I know,
it's some pretty blatant stuff that he was doing. Yeah,
because he was a Rhode Islander, his commercial interests for
at stake, and he wanted to make sure that his
economic interests reserved. Unfortunately they were bound up in the
slave trade. So it's a really interesting story that leads
to our first whistle or protection law, and very much
shows that whistle blowing is about making sure that public
(10:45):
officials are working for the United States, not for themselves.
And in the case of Hopkins, it was ten people
they got together and wrote a letter to Congress basically
laying out all this stuff. You know, he's not listening
to you guys, he's mistreating prisoners. Tell us how he
was spawned to that. I mean, it ended up going
so far that they removed him. But what did he
do to the whistle blowers once they found out who
(11:07):
they were? And then how did that lead to the
first whistle blower law. He actually retaliated against the whistle blowers.
He was Rhode Island, with high social standing in Rhode Island,
and there were ten sailors who filed the complaint, but
two of them had the misfortune of also residing in
Rhode Island, where he had enormous social power, So they
were thrown in jail. Congress insisted that they'd be relieved
(11:29):
from jail. They paid their bail and their legal fees,
and they also legislated that all the records of the
proceedings be made public. So that's the reason the story
can be told today. I mean, it's so interesting and
and you know, it proves the importance of why we
have to protect the whistleblowers. Obviously, I want to fast
forward to where we are currently right now, and this
(11:50):
is one of the discussions that we're having about the
protection of the current whistle blower against the President of
the United States. People are casting doubt over his account.
He might have heard things second hand, and the President
has said, you know, I want to see him, I
want to meet him. I want to know who this
person is. Right now, Congress is figuring out how to
keep his identity secrets still as it is already we
know he's a CIA officer. Talk about what whistle blowers
(12:12):
go through whence they go public with their allegations. This
is a pretty standard pattern because whistle blowers provide a
public service and they often wind up losing everything. So
that's why we're protection is extraordinarily important. What you need
to understand about the current case is that this involves
a case of national security with the blowing, which is
the most fraught because the intelligence community is very secretive.
(12:35):
In order to protect national security, they need to keep secrets.
But in order to blow the whistle, you've got to
reveal secrets. So for whistle blowers, I interviewed all the
n s A whistleblowers and also the senior leadership of
the n s A, so I have some familiarity with
the intelligence community, and that's why I think it's very
important to focus on the content of the complaint. There's
(12:56):
a lot of noise and things being swung back and
forth in a sense of White House is just throwing
things at the wall to see what sticks. But nobody
is defending the behavior and the complaint, which is really fascinating,
and that complaint indicates a cover up of both the
national security threat the shadow foreign policy being run out
of the White House through the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giulietti,
(13:17):
also through the Attorney General, William Barr And now it
seems perhaps Secretary of State Pompeo, that's a foreign policy
completely at odds with the official foreign policy of the
United States, which is administered by the State Department, for
which funds are appropriated by Congress. Congress has to approve
the military aid that was suppeled. That's the national security
through the shadow foreign policy. There's also a touch of
(13:37):
democracy from within that's pretty obvious. The president is celebrating
foreign electoral interference, and it seems pretty clear that we
want Americans to elect our officials, not foreigners. So the
content of the complaint is what should be focused on,
not all the name calling. And because this is taking
place within the intelligence community, they have a different set
(13:59):
of rules for whistleblowing. The country is kind of learning
this as we go, as the news is going so
fast with this. But in any other department of the government,
you know, you can go straight to a congressman or
somebody else. And just kind of throw the complaint out there.
But because there are secrets to be protected, because there
is national security at risk, you know, possibly at risk.
That's why we have this whole procedure of going to
(14:19):
the Inspector General. You have to understands a very rickety procedure.
In my view, it's a miracle that this complaint ever
saw the light of day, because it's much more common
for it just to be suppressed and it's somehow went forward.
It's a miracle because the law says explicitly that national
security employees are excluded from protection, that's the Whistle Lower
(14:41):
Protection Enhancement Act. But there's an executive order that's set
up this process to try to carve out a safe
space for national security whistleblowers through the intelligence community Inspector General,
and that's the way the complaint rose to the top.
But it's very rare for there to be intelligence community whistleblowers.
That's a barometer of how serious the situation is. There's
(15:02):
a real fear that democracy itself is threatened. And it's
not a partisan issuance, an American issue, but increasingly these
people in the intelligence community are stepping into the roles
of whistleblowers. I mean, they are privy to more of
the secrets. I guess that could be a reason why exactly.
But they are the ones that they are the ones
that are just kind of stepping into these roles. Now, yeah,
you've put your figure right on it. And that's something
(15:22):
I trace in my book that the intelligence community has
been blowing the whistle on titled Trump since his election.
They've been behaving in very atypical fashion. And they're doing
so not because they've suddenly turned partisan. It's not a
partisan community community. They are doing so because they think
the system itself, the rule of law system, and our
democracy are threatened by a president who is using his
(15:44):
office to advance the Trump brand ravenant to uphold the
rule of law, and his oath to preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States. So they've been
founding the alarm for the past few years and this
is just the latest most official man to station. And
since we love whistleblowers in this country because it's such
a longstanding tradition, the Republicans are somewhat stuck because Americans
(16:08):
aren't against whistle blowing. So that's the unusual situation we
sign ourselves in. One of the interesting things I noted
in your book, though, is how often whistleblowers are believed.
I think in the book you mentioned maybe five of
whistleblowers succeed in having their assertions believed. So while we
want to know the secrets and we want somebody to
tell us when something is going wrong, sometimes it's hard
(16:31):
to get behind them. You go through a bunch of
examples in the book, and Edwards Snowden is one of them,
and there was always this discussion whether he was a
whistle blower or not, even though he revealed a bunch
of secrets. Edward's known is a really interesting case because
he's someone who did not complain through the inspector general system.
The interesting thing about that, though, is everybody said he
(16:52):
should have done it. He instead shows to flee the
country and leak the information that way, and he was
perhaps right to do that because the man them in
the inspector general position in the n s A at
the time of the Stone Leagues, George Allard was actually
removed from his post as Inspector General in six for
guess what, whistleblower retaliation. So there's a real bias in
(17:16):
the intelligence community against whistleblowers for reasons that I've already
talked about. That's why one day Snowden maybe our first
trader patriot. He initiated a public discussion that would have
never taken place without his actions, And basically he revealed
that standard operating procedures in the n s A their
(17:36):
emergency measures taken after nine eleven that were completely justified
because the nation was at war. We've just been attacked.
But those emergency procedures became standard operating procedure without any
kind of public discussion or the American people knowing about it.
So he initiated a public discussion that led to changes
in the Patriot Act, and for that, I think he
did a public service. Obviously, what we're going through right
(17:59):
now in the country at this current whistleblower complaint, it's
all playing out very rapidly in the news, and we're
getting little snippets of details here and there. Do you
think there's going to be a lot more whistleblower actions
in the years to come, whether it's with this president
or with other presidents, as people start seeing things, do
you think people are gonna, you know, have the will
to speak out more, the fact that matter is the
(18:20):
complaint indicates misconduct at the highest levels to which many
people were witnesses. So there are other people who can
corroborate the whistleblowers complaint, and I think that's going to happen.
But you're also seeing the inspector general's starting to speak out.
Just today, the Inspector General of the State Department is
meeting with the Congress at his request, and that's very
interesting to me because he will know about any complaints
(18:43):
within the State Department about this behavior. In a sense,
the inspector generals are democracy's trip wire that there are
insurance policy that we keep democracy on the rails. And
the good thing is we're seeing the system working in
that regard. I suggest everybody check out the book. It
came out at the perfect time. I read in one
of these articles that you've been working on this book
for seven years, so it's not it's not like, uh,
(19:06):
you know, it came out because of what's going on
right now. So no, it's a great read and I
suggest everybody check it out. The book is called Whistleblowers.
Honestly in America, from Washington to Trump, Alison Stanger, political
and economics professor at Middlebury College. Thank you very much
for joining us. Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much.
(19:31):
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
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This episode of The Daily Dive was produced by Victor
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(19:54):
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