Hi everybody, Cheryl Ackison here. Welcome to another edition of the Cheryl Ackison Podcast.

Today, what it takes to be an FBI whistleblower and why we aren't hearing from more of them.

I've interviewed so many whistleblowers over the decades as a journalist.

Some of them for federal government, state government, corporations, all kinds of whistleblowers.

In each story, of course, has its own features and uniqueness.

And yet there are some common patterns and common elements to each of these stories.

First of all, it takes a certain type of person to become a whistleblower, a legitimate whistleblower,

or not somebody who's just trying to get back at somebody or who has been assigned sort of a propaganda role to be a whistleblower for a different purpose.

I'm talking about the people that are working inside a company or a federal agency.

And they detect what they perceive to be some sort of wrongdoing, sometimes criminal wrongdoing.

Sometimes it's something that's simply unethical, maybe it doesn't violate a law, but it's not right.

And typically, the whistleblower will, follow this pattern, try to resolve the problem internally.

At least at first, they think to themselves, they notice something that's pretty bad,

and maybe they bring it to the attention of colleagues and a superior,

and are surprised to find that maybe the superior isn't going to solve the problem or flag the issue.

And they think to themselves as time goes by, well, if only the boss knew about it.

Certainly, the boss would put a stop to this, because nobody would want this horrible thing going on,

whether it's a crime or some kind of ethical violation or wrongdoing.

And they really wrestle with how to approach or go around the immediate supervisors so that they can let the real boss know what's going on,

so that this practice can be stopped.

And this often drags out over a period of days, weeks, months, sometimes even years,

as they navigate internally how to go about doing what they think is the right thing.

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