On 16th of June, 2023, a few odd weeks ago Daniel Ellsberg, an American military analyst who, had caused a public uproar in 1971, by releasing what is known as the Pentagon Papers, breathed his last in his home, at the ripe old age of 92. He had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Not the worst ending for a man once called a traitor and sentenced to 115 years of life imprisonment. He wouldn’t have been overjoyed at the chain of events that took place on a quiet Thursday afternoon in a sleepy town in Massachusetts, in April, of this year when a group of heavily armed FBI officers arrested 21 year old Jack Teixeira, member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, for leaking classified documents containing data on the military status of the Ukrainian Government. These incidents have put global focus back on that unique element of our complicated socio-political fabric that is the whistleblower.
The term ‘whistleblower’ first associated itself with law enforcement in the 19th century, because people used to blow a whistle to officials or the public, and sports referees who blew the whistle to indicate irregular or foul play. Soon the ‘whistle’ began to be used in the metaphorical sense, as when someone ‘blows the whistle’ to call attention to some wrong doing that has been kept a secret.
“I am loath to believe that Mr Johnston ever blew the whistle on a trusting friend, but Tex believed it, and carried Johnston on the book for years.”- reported the San Francisco Chronicle on 10th February, 1929- a common example of how the catchphrase had begun to worm itself into mainstream news reporting. After this, it was a natural jump and a criminal indictment before we got to the modern day interpretation of the whistleblower.
