Part 23: How to Survive Whistleblower Retaliation – On Being Hung Out to Dry as an Informant
Published May 12, 2023
Photo of Black and White Flags from the Whistleblower Justice Network
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By Zachary Ellison
The definition of a whistleblower according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the following: “one who reveals something covert or who informs against another” and most “especially: an employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or by other employees to the attention of a government or law enforcement agency.” Bringing information intentionally to the sights of a law enforcement agency inevitably brings on the notion of an informant, and in the American judicial system there are essentially two types of informant, a citizen-informant, and a confidential-informant, and the distinction here is essentially the degree of directiveness.
According to the Department of Justice Confidential Informant Guidelines: “a confidential informant or "CI" is "any individual who provides useful and credible information to a Justice Law Enforcement Agency (JLEA) regarding felonious criminal activities and from whom the JLEA expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information regarding such activities in the future.” This is different than a “cooperating witness” pursuant to legal proceedings and from the notion of an “asset” who is engaged in international intelligence work or counter-terrorism. Now a citizen-informant is different in that they approach law enforcement on their own recognizance out of a desire versus a “good citizenship as distinguished from one seeking some gain (as payment or concessions from police),” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It would be mistaken to assume though that all informants are being compensated. In fact, there’s little incentive for this behavior.
So definitionally, once the lifespan of an informant ends, and especially one who has engaged in major whistleblowing of a sensitive nature versus simple cooperation in a tangible criminal case (like stealing), the inevitable outcome is retaliation. Colloquially, in whistleblower retaliation where law enforcement agencies are involved already, what happens is you get hung out to dry. Essentially due to the secretive nature of this work, there is little incentive for law enforcement agencies to take ownership of their informants, and especially those off the reservation. Covert activity involves a high-degree of discretion, and good informants gather intelligence, and quite often, as in my case, informants will collect evidence that even implicates their contact, or handler in misconduct when it occurs as well. The sword of justice can cut both ways.
In this situation, you’ll be hung out to dry from both ends after the end of a lifespan, usually at termination plus any pursuant workplace or criminal investigation that takes place, unless what you turn up is truly desired or sensitive enough to compel immediate, responsive emergency action. In short, there is little reason for most agency contacts or handlers, keep in mind you have to be informing to someone, to fully accept responsibility for what their informants do out in the field. The idea of plausible deniability, that something undesirable can be made to go away by denying knowledge of it or responsibility, becomes the most dominant paradigm; the goal being to suppress unwanted information or actions from spreading or being exposed.
The mystique of the informant as a subversive actor, as a saboteur, versus as an agent of good consumes modern imagination, along with a dread, or fear, even a hatred of snitches or rats. No one likes a tattle-tale, even as a government agencies and law enforcement depend on whistleblowers, and yes informants, citizen and confidential alike and the retaliation that follows discovery or exposure can be brutalizing. On top of living a double-life, those who engage in these activities inherently take exceptional risks to their physical health, mental health, and those of their family members as well. Making a choice such as this is a high-risk, low-reward proposition, and for most people there is a natural fear of seeking assistance from law enforcement, who often represent a fear-factor, and who engage in abuses against the citizens they are charged to protect at a sometimes shocking-level and number. Power corrupts, but the power of the informant isn’t just in direct action, it’s in their ability to surprise with action. Maintaining the element of surprise is paramount.
Informants are seen as disposable, and are often victims of crimes or abuse themselves, so it is that quite often agencies will work to discredit their own informants as well as those targeted by them for the reason of preventing the dreaded double-cross. In this move, the informant burns not just those they have targeted, but their handlers as well, bifurcating their mission into dual approaches to protect their own position and status. Generally speaking, the longer someone is engaged in whistleblowing or informing, the more problematic this becomes for handlers, and the greater the need to maintain plausible deniability that the person was never empowered in anyway. They are simply being advocates, or activists, troublemakers who did something impermissible that made unnecessary waves; who wrongfully rock the boat. When you rock the boat too much, they will take you out.
The essential idea of the whistleblower or informant as a disruptive figure, an agent of chaos, as well as even nobility of the endeavor punctuates public imagination. So often this depends on the perceived credibility of the individual and their status in society, those engaged in whistleblowing against Fortune 500 companies air lauded, but the person who informs on the drug dealer down the street is seen as unreasonable, as compromising an otherwise illicit activity, even when those illegal actions inflict exploitation or suffering as in prostitution or human trafficking. The difference between being a snitch, someone who is a threat, and someone who is a noble whistleblower so often depends on factors of race, politics and economics.
Whistleblowers at Facebook get their day before Congress, they get activist groups, but blow the whistle on the wrong people, a local criminal figure with a business front, and you just might get a beatdown or a bullet to the back of the head. So much depends on who if anyone is willing to help you, and it is always a battle to secure evidence and to have credible witnesses who can support a narrative, the story that comes with the person, that is the first thing an investigator or attorney will want to hear. What happened? How did you get involved with this? Your answers to those questions determines the viability of your case for further prosecution by authorities.
When you operate in secret, very few people know if anyone exactly what you’re up to, so one of the best practices for anyone engaged in such activities is to ensure that there is a paper trail or documentation to back the narrative up. It’s even better if this is done as part of a formal process or includes expert eyewitnesses, and so the ideal is to either produce significant physical or written evidence, or have an eyewitness that can’t be beat, and ideally a law enforcement officer or government regulatory agent. Catching-people in the act is the goal. Now simply stealing shit and putting it on the Internet is simply leaking, that’s not to say informants don’t do this, and whistleblowers don’t do this, but it’s not the same absent at least some-level of exposing serious misconduct or illegal behavior versus a simple act of sabotage.
The goal of a whistleblower or informant is never just simple sabotage, but ideally some degree of deliverance of justice. Moreover, the more paid an informant or given leniency is to simply engage in their action, the less credible it is in narrative, and the more subject to questioning it is to court. This is not to say though that a whistleblower, or moreover an informant, whether citizen or confidential wouldn’t use means of sabotage, but rather that it would serve some greater goal than just the simple creation of mayhem. Ideally, there is some degree of direction to these actions, but quite often given the secretive nature of this work, and the paramount importance of an element of surprise, this communication can be sporadic, and deceptive feeling.
The art of concealment, of misdirection versus the pure act of deception is what good whistleblowers, or informants do to survive, and that’s how you maintain a cover. Your cover is the second identity that you’ve assumed that creates your double-life, it is not simply a false identity but an alternate one, that remains unknown for an extended period of time for the purpose of delivering justice. The best thing you can do in these roles to assure your viability is when you think you’re getting close to something, check your cover with your contact, and get it in writing to assure that yes in fact, you did have contact with those you were seeking to blow the whistle on, or inform on, to final effect. Good covers develop over time, they are not simply assumed for the simple act of infiltration, and they are maintained with additional layers to bolster the value and the credibility of the individual, and to gain further access to sensitive and valuable information. A good informant moles their way into increasing relevance.
The best undercovers internalize this second identity, and motivate it from their core being, because such a life is a lonely promise. Very few people will know that you exist, and those that do will seek to deny you or discredit you should you become an inconvenience. Everyone in such a capacity, even those who are law enforcement officers themselves do this, and the fear of discovery, of failure you underwrites you. In essence, you are always gathering intelligence at all angels to determine your viability, and when or where you should strike. Ideally, highly-effective undercovers don’t compromise themselves with such actions, they simply tip-off others to inform them of necessary action, and then slip back into the background, to hopefully live a long-life. Inherently though, you will develop a target on your back, even if you have the best and ideal cover in any situation, that you were simply doing your job. That everything you have done is pursuant to your normal performance of duties, and you are simply being a fantastic employee. You need to be able to act as if all is normal.
It can be tremendously helpful to have at least some background in some type of law enforcement training or legal experience to do this effectively, in my case I was a park ranger (unarmed), and also a civil process server, think Pineapple Express, and my work involved extensive interaction with legal matters, business, and investigations. This can help to give you the basics of what it means to actually practice whistleblowing or being a citizen-informant, versus a confidential informant working in close coordination with law enforcement to get themselves out of a bad situation. The two are different, but also can be the same thing in practice, and so that’s why it helps to have the basics instilled into you so that when the moment comes, at least you have some idea what you should be doing, or should not in order to avoid violating anyone’s civil rights. The idea should never simply be to harm, but to restore, and to end the indignities and violations that such people in these roles in reality confront.
The retaliation will come, and this experience will help you to weather it, but no one is immune to the effects of such a lifestyle. The stress, the pressure, the fear, the difficult moments, and so as noted, inherently there is a lifespan, the goal, the dream becomes to expose the major wrongdoing, to make the bust on people engaged in misconduct, and to put an end to the very thing that was unacceptable that motivated you in the first place. The effects of retaliation are brutal, you will be ostracized, removed, and sent packing, and few people will stand by you, and it won’t even be safe for them to do so openly. Your family won’t understand, your friends won’t care, and you will live your life a prisoner; retaliation is a debilitating experience that sucks the life out of you and they’ll even think you’re crazy, that you must be out of your mind.
The truth is that when you learn something shockingly secret, no one will believe you, and with people’s limited attention spans even profound things they won’t understand or care about. The presumption is always that someone is not telling the truth, rarely are people just believed, and not without evidence. So your goal should always be to secure proof, to collect evidence, and to have good witnesses should you ever feel compelled to take any final action. There is no one script, and just about most of what you need you likely picked-up from television and movies. The most critical skill to have is assessment, which Merriam-Webster’s defines as: “the evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something.” This is your ability to gather and collect information, and also underwrites your ability to escape detection. Now this is not to say that you aren’t also an activist, and in fact, being an activist is the critical part to having any desire to wanting to ever participate in any of this, without that, you’re just being sucked into someone else’s trap. So if you’re going to bring something forward, have a plan, and make it good, otherwise you will fail, and there’s absolutely nothing worse than failing. Failure means you’re out of the game.
In the moment, the adrenaline rush of taking action as a whistleblower, informant, or undercover is massive, it is the release usually of a long-underway journey, of an investigation, a search for the truth, and a desire to end wrongdoing. Even without weapons involved, the tension is extraordinary, because what you are about to do is confront the will of somebody engaged in malfeasance, and the risk is going to be high, and so often the outcome inevitable. It's not that it will break you totally, it’s that the breaking debilitates you over time to lessen your resistance, so after the action is complete, the adrenaline wears off and you begin to crash. The effects of retaliation, and especially, of whistleblower retaliation, that received for simply telling the truth, or enforcing the law, accumulate over time, and manifest themselves surreptitiously through post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
This is an isolating experience, a lonely life, and so I never encourage anyone to follow-in my footsteps, and if I do, my advice is always to think very hard about what you’re going to first. There’s really nothing glamorous about this, and you will take risks, and lose everything just save your soul. There’s a common idea that people who do these things are sellouts, but the truth is that I’ve never viewed this a selling-out, but rather as clawing back. In my case, I never agreed fully with what happened at the University of Southern California (USC) after we learned about George Tyndall, even as the initial shock of finding yourself in the midst of a major sexual abuse scandal, and as things went on and it became more obvious that the truth of the matter would be hidden. The more intensive the mind becomes, there’s always a natural curiosity to this, and curiosity kills cats.
As I watched the cover-up begin to unfold, the anger that I had become repressed, the longer things went on the less most people cared or wanted to talk about it at USC even as it lingered in the press. Victims received a first settlement, and then a second, but the idea that full justice wasn’t being delivered, and more importantly that the people in charge of the University truly hadn’t done everything necessary intentionally to protect it for selfish reasons, sticks on the mind. When you say there’s a cover-up of sexual abuse at USC, people think you’re crazy, they don’t know that even Karen Bass and Gloria Allred have called on Rick Caruso to end the schtick, which Caruso of course denies has occurred. Perhaps there are simply divergent worldviews, but so much of what I personally encountered in taking even simple steps to make reporting and support resources available in communications to the USC community met resistance. Doing more than you should can be quite perilous.
I’m still not sure how far the cover-up of USC extends as legal suppression, as a media operation, or perhaps most alarmingly as the subversion of law enforcement, as some have questioned. From former LA County DA Jackie Lacey’s meeting with former Interim President Wanda Austin on January 7, 2019 to the undated cell phone call from an LAPD captain in Rick Caruso’s Tyndall civil lawsuit deposition, to the murky U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights Resolution Agreement; USC has just about managed to give the authorities the slip if there is anyone who should be held accountable beyond Dr. George Tyndall himself. Although Tyndall now faces 35 felony counts, he still yet has not proceeded to trial nearly 5 years after the Los Angeles Times broke the story and 4 years after his arrest by LAPD. Dr. Tyndall under D.A. George Gascon remains mired in preliminary hearings that have now stretched for years, and seemed to have gone on pause during the 2022 mayoral election. The DA’s spokesman although he has provided dates to me on an ongoing basis, has not addressed the stoppage. The next preliminary hearing date for George Tyndall will be on June 29, 2023. We can only hope for a trial to occur at some date.
So it’s no surprise that people who often fall into these roles don’t totally trust the agencies that they inform to protect them, and seek to put in place some form of strategic exit plan and insurance policy for cushioning in the event that they are hung out to dry. The essential elements of tradecraft vary based on the situation, I never took any steps to conceal my paper trail always using my official University email to show that I was acting at least in some good intention capacity. Nor did I even religiously offload all emails to protect myself, after a while this becomes tedious. Perhaps the most effective way of gathering information in a white collar environment an official capacity is through a complaint process, that documents misconduct and allows for that information to be verified. There’s nothing more than an employer fears than their own damaging report produced by the very investigator that they have hired, and should you face gaslighting and blackmail the best strategy is simply to sometimes take the bait for collection, and then other times reject it completely by discrediting it on a factual basis so that the holder of the compromised self-produced incriminating evidence becomes spooked by the prospect of release of their own possession. There are many other ways to trip people up, and to force them on the record, and always send an email after phone calls to document what was said, you’ll show that you’ve heard the person, responded, and create your own track for collection into a preservation file for your own legal protection should you be compromised.
No one ever said whistleblowing was easy, and the idea of rewards is in fact in most case totally illusive, outside of the monetary rewards from catching defrauding of the government in qui tam cases there’s literally no return other than direct payments by some law enforcement agencies to informants, the value of a hard fought lawsuit, or the gain from sharing the story should you accept the risk of doing so, in which case you will likely further be ostracized. California thankfully has a strong labor statute to protect whistleblowers, and in certain contexts Federal statutes may apply as well, as well as internal policies or local government policies, but these should never be counted on entirely as they take a significant amount of time. Additionally, once a workplace investigation has begun, most agencies can’t intervene even if the process itself becomes corrupted, so don’t count on the regulatory agency to rescue you, indeed the first instinct normally is to hang you out to dry. So for those who choose a path such as this, I wish you good luck in reporting, resilience in retaliation, and with any luck some allies by your side. Do not count on getting an attorney to protect you.
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Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.