Quotes About Whistleblowing

I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

T]hey don't care about realpolitik or the big picture. They only care about monkey-wrenching and whistle blowing.

There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year.

These megaleaks... They're an important phenomenon, and they're only going to increase.

The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us.

Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.

I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end.

He [Edward Snowden] has been careful with his info, doling it out to responsible news organizations — The Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, etc. — and not tossing it up in the air, WikiLeaks style, and echoing the silly mantra "Information wants to be free." (No. Information, like most of us, wants a home in the Hamptons.)" – Richard Cohen, Washington Post (10/22/2013)

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

career prospects of employees who report corporate malfeasance are so dismal that it is surprising that people whistleblow at all.

Giving evidence against one's employers was the first step to unemployment.

The moment I decided to blow the whistle on a lot of the corruption going on in the White House, there are protections that are afforded to me.

I knew I had to cover my back and document what I saw as an opportunity to kind of blow the whistle on a lot of the corruption going on in the White House, and I knew that I needed to document that corruption; otherwise, people would not take it seriously.

There are many people, including me, who admire the original mission of WikiLeaks.

So far, we have a perfect record of WikiLeaks having never revealed information that exposed a source over 10 years.

If there is one currency that helped Wikileaks take on the might of the U.S. Government, it was Bitcoins.

WikiLeaks exposed the most dangerous lies of all, which are those that are told to us by elected governments.

WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.

Whether you agree with Julian Assange or what he's doing, there's no question of the impact and scale of WikiLeaks. It's a whole different level.

If I had some information, the last thing I would ever do with it is send it to Wikileaks.

Most other documents leaked to WikiLeaks do not carry the same explosive potential as candid cables written by American diplomats.

When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting.

I've had people say, 'Oh you've made whistleblowing cool.' But it's really not. It's a good thing to do. And it's the right thing to do. But it's arduous and difficult, particularly if you are going up against something that's really powerful and political.