Ralph welcomes Tom Mueller, author of “Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowers in an Age of Fraud,” where they discuss the heroic stories of the brave men and women, who at great personal cost, have called to account corruption across government and industry. Plus, Ralph answers your questions.
Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud
Ralph Nader Radio Hour
Ralph Nader
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2019
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tom Mueller is a free-lance writer of non-fiction and fiction, whose work has appeared the New Yorker, National Geographic, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere. His first non-fiction book, Extra Virginity, is a New York Times best-selling account of olive oil culture, history, and crime. His latest is Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud.
“Bill Binney had the awful irony of having created this structure to surveil foreign targets and winnow out at top speed potential terrorists and seeing his own work… being used against Americans. It was a thing he had sworn every day of his working life not to do… So, he backed away from the agency (NSA) when he felt they were fundamentally violating their mission. And what would Edward Snowden take away from this message? If you follow protocol and you surface your concerns about mass, warrantless surveillance through channels, what happens to you? Well, all he had to do is look at Bill Binney and Tom Drake and see that his only hope of getting the word out was to take another route.”
Tom Mueller, author of Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud
“If you look at what Donald Trump is today and his coterie of bandits that he’s put in charge of our government, you can see the price that is paid when you do not pay attention to recidivist white-collar criminality over a generation or more. You get Donald Trump… Donald Trump didn’t come from Mars. He is the logical extension of the corruptions we’ve allowed to creep into our political and social system.”
Tom Mueller, author of Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. |
| 0:05.0 | Stand up, stand up. |
| 0:07.0 | You've been sitting way too long. |
| 0:10.0 | Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan along with my co-host David Feldman. |
| 0:19.0 | Hello David, how are you today? |
| 0:20.0 | Very good. How is the benefit for public citizen? |
| 0:23.5 | The benefit stand up for Main Street was just a raging success out here in Los Angeles. |
| 0:29.0 | For those of you don't know, we had Larry Miller and John Fugel-Sang, |
| 0:32.3 | Krista Alonzo and Rondel Sheridan. |
| 0:34.3 | And we had a great, it's comedy and inspiration |
| 0:36.8 | in a very easy to digest package. |
| 0:39.8 | So we're very happy with that. |
| 0:41.5 | So thanks for asking. what is public citizen public |
| 0:44.8 | citizen is as if you don't know is the group that Ralph founded back in 1971 |
| 0:50.5 | 48 years ago and it has served the public interest and fighting corporate power |
| 0:55.8 | and defending democracy for all those 48 years. So is that before or after |
| 1:00.4 | Ralph coined the phrase whistleblower? I don't know. Maybe we should ask the phrase whistleblower. |
| 1:03.0 | I don't know. |
| 1:03.9 | Maybe we should ask the man himself, the man of the hour, |
| 1:05.7 | Ralph Nader. |
| 1:07.1 | Yes, indeed. |
| 1:08.0 | Why don't we ask the author of the book, |
... |
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