[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> jim popkin who worked mostly through nbc nightly news where he worked extensively with workers and whistleblowers. i've represented whistleblowers since 1984 and i've been working with the press ever since, when it is my turn to speak, many

whistleblower cases are either one in the press where the employer or the government agency backs down or at least the whistleblower can get a sense of vindication by having their issues resolved and call public attention. whistleblowers have worked with news media from the beginning of the republic and hope will continue to work with the news media and that the association is as successful as it can be. >> our first speaker is rich, a producer with "60 minutes." for 22 years he has been a producer of the show. that show needs no introduction. he has won awards for journalism including five emmy awards. he has covered a wide range of stories on terrorism, the middle east, and exposeas about government and corporate misconduct. he did an extensive show on an

investigation on the anthrax debauched f.b.i. anthrax investigation concerning steven hatfield. he worked on the case showing how the f.b.i. pursued the wrong man in the robert hanson espionage case. he did extensive interviews and worked with richard clark, the former top counterterrorism aide in blowing the whistle on failures in the counterterrorism program. he has worked with corporate whistleblowers including chuck hammel and campaign to silence him as he was blowing from whistle on oil companies. he is currently working on a book about mr. chalaby from iraq which is expected to be published next year by doubleday. it is an honor to have mr. bonner here and i can tell you

straight up that many, many whistleblowers that we have worked with have worked successfully with "60 minutes" and a premiere program and we are truly honored to have him her. >> thank you for having me. [applause] the two things i've learned or seen most consistently about whistleblowers in all my years is that one, there is sometimes often difficult, rough, persnikety-type personalities. that's what makes them whistleblowers. they are not willing to get along to go along. they are willing to buck the trend and speak out. the other thing i have learned

about whistleblowers is that almost always they are motivated by altruism. they want to do -- they want to act in a way that they see as in the public good or in the interest of national security or to honor some higher principle that may be the country stands for. and as i said, almost always that has been the personality trait that i've encountered. one of the best examples of that is dick hart. he was president bush's top counterterrorism advisor before, during and after the 9/11 attacks. as you know, he was the guy telling everybody that bin laden and al qaeda was targeting the u.s. and meanwhile in bush administration wasn't taking its seriously. nobody was heeding his or george

tenet's calls to action, so to speak. and then -- you know, dick and i were talking about it as it was all unfolding and it was all off the record and couldn't report it but there came a time when he wanted to go public. he was -- you know, the dilemma for him was when you work for the president of the united states, your loyalty is to the president. you are there to represent his interests. that's something that dick, like all executives, office workers take very seriously, but he felt this higher calling. that the administration was trying to blame iraq for the 9/11 attacks in order to justify invading iraq. he didn't believe that and he had to choose between his loyalty to the president and his

sense of duty to the country. and i know he was motivated by a sense of duty because i saw a high school yearbook that he wrote when he was a teenager and he said may the seventh ring of hell be reserved for those who remain silent when it is their time to come forward. this was something central to dick's character. and you know, the other thing he had to weigh is when you take on the president and you take on the government, you are going to be dealing with a proshese countera-- ferocious counterattack. it is a real tough decision. also in my experiences, it is almost always, if you're motivated by this higher calling, it is almost always

better to run into the spotlight in the glare of the news media than remain in the shadows and just complaining about it internally because by going public, it inoculates you in many ways to retaliation. if it doesn't inoculate you from being fired, it can inoculate you and often does in terms of holding up your credibility and the quality of your character in the counterattacks that are going to come. dick had already made the decision to quit the white house so he wasn't worried about losing his job but credibility was a big issue. so he came to us with, you know, unbelievable information and dick is a highly credible source. as my colleagues will tell you,

you never go to broadcast or print with just one source. you have to verify things, especially when you're taking on the president. so one of the things dick told us was that right after 9/11 the president pulled him into a little room on the side -- outside the oval office and you know, dick was already saying this is a signature al qaeda attack and the president told dick, no, saddam. i want saddam. give me saddam. dick felt like the president was pressuring him to gerryrig the evidence to pin it on saddam. this is dick in a private meeting with the president. do you take dick's word? fortunately there were several other people in the room and we were able to get them to verify off camera dick's version of

events. so when we then interviewed steven hadley for the piece, he didn't exactly deny it. it was a classic non-denial denial. he said there is no record of such a meeting. that's not saying the meeting didn't occur. leslie stall, the correspondent that i work with, she in all honestly ate him alive on that and number of other things and for the next week, condoleeza rice was saying publicly there is no record of such a meeting and attempting to attack dick's credibility. i think five weeks later some of our confidential sources decided to come forward and say yep, dick was telling the truth. right after our piece, which was a two-parter, right about 30

minutes, which is unusual in itself but right after our piece, the 9/11 hearings occurred and dick followed up our piece with his testimony and what he did is frame the debate. what he did was establish his credibility. one thing that tv news can often do very well is, you know, let the viewers look you in the eyes. you can get a feel if this person is correct or not. you were defining yourself before those whom you were attacking or criticizing are going to come out and attack you with all sorts of leaks and innuendo and what have you. i know for a fact that dick did not regret for a minute going on "60 minutes" and that was a really smart move. so to me that anecdote

illustrates both the virtue of going public if you're a whistleblower. it is a very personal decision and it is never going to be easy. but there are benefits to going public. it also demonstrates the values that the whistleblower weighs in him or herself. duty to president. duty to truth. to getting -- to a higher calling, you know, about the cause of what was behind 9/11. you know, in many ways, the networks also face that same dilemma. our sister broadcast, "60 minutes 2" which is no longer on the air when abu ghraib came to them, the pentagon lobbied very heavily against that story being

broadcast and made it an argument that everyone in the news business and at cbs news and "60 minutes" cares about and that is that that piece would flame anti-american sentencements among the iraqis and al qaeda and iraq characters and that it could jeopardize soldiers and that was a very compelling concern. and i think, you know, the broadcast mulled it over for a couple of weeks and in the end you have to weigh it against another duty, which is, i mean, here "60 minutes 2" had documented evidence that some of our people were doing things that were so awful that even in times of war they are prohibited by the rules of war. and so what do you do?

it is a very tough decision that you weigh and obviously in the end, for competitive reasons and for that reason, they went with the piece. i mean, there are instances where we have had really good stories that we haven't run because in the end, the government argument may out-- it may not be a abu ghraib situation. it is a nifty story but running it may compromise something that the story in and of itself isn't worth doing and that's happened to me and we don't one are it. anyway, those are the, you know, to me the crux of the issues that whistleblowers and reporters alike have to grapple with. and i guess finally, i would say, you know, in terms of what

we're looking for, you know, our -- our stories of consequence, you know, go to the heart of what we stand for as a country. will go to the heart of what an administration stands for and whether, you know, there is an important level of hypocrisy or deceit that needs to be exposed. so that would be the extent of my remarks and i hand it over to you. >> thank you, very much. our next speaker and again we're going to be opening remarks and then questions and answers and i have a number of questions already. it is mr. jim popkin, former producer for "nbc nightly news" and the founder of seven oaks

media group where he is now executive. before i read his formal bio, we have worked with him more many years and he did some very, very important breaking news items through "nightly news" of whistleblowers and always did credible, effective and balanced job and it was just good to know that there were producers who were interested not only in the story but also in protecting the whistleblower and getting hard, sometimes controversial news out there. jim worked at several senior positions for nbc news over a 14-year period. he was a senior investigative producer and oversaw a team of correspondents and producers that broke major stories for nbc news and politics and wall street scandals, defense scandals. he was an on-air correspondent

and his stories appeared on nbc "today show." cnbs. msnbc. mr. popkin has won four national emmy wayards for outstanding journalism and was a finalist for the national magazine award. the american joumplism review profiled him as one of one of weeshes most enterprising journal -- washington's most enterprising journalists. he is now founder of a media group known as seven oaks media group. i'm happy to have jim here and i'm looking forward to his remarks. [applause] >> thank you, steve.

i was a journalist for 25 years. during that time i probably produced about 25 stories that involved whistleblowers. in the same period i interviewed and talked to and ultimately declined to do stories on probably two or three times the number of people who i ultimately did report on. so why was i selective? despite being in this hallowed area, the national whistleblower center, the truth is, as rich alluded to, whistleblowers can be difficult people. they can be a huge pain in the neck. i'm not saying that lightly. there are a lot of reasons why that enter into the calculation whether you should or could go ahead with the story. first of all, they all have, by

their very nature, an axe to grind. they are trying to get their own story out. many of them have an inflated sense of what they want to rate or their own value to the organization that they are now reporting on. so today i thought i would talk about kind of the good, the bad and the ugly of whistleblowers and with a couple of war stories. whistleblowers are not truly sources, per se. generally, they are people who work inside a government agency or a corporation and they are desperate to tell their stories and go on the record and on camera and in my case, to often defy their bosses, disappoint and in some cases betray their colleagues to tell the world about some alleged wrongdoing. you know, i obviously appreciate what they do and the risks that they take and i'm proud of the stories that i've worked on

regarding them. but it is -- as a journalist, it is often a very difficult process. rich and john and i were talking before we got here. rich made a good point, which is that when you first approach a whistleblower, you end up spending almost all your time trying to discredit and disprove what this person is bringing to you. and that's for the ultimate purpose of then, if you believe in them and they are credible, of them trying to prove and push out their story. but you need to spend that time upfront in trying to almost knock down, almost in the way that a lawyer would in a deputy decision what they are about to say because you -- in a deputy decision what they have to anticipate. you need to be very conscious going in about the negative

aspects of their story. just on personalities, for a second, and this is not entirely a trivial concern. whistleblowers, as i said, are often difficult people. first of all, when generally when i would meet them, they feel persecuted, hated or ignored by their own organization and there is a certain therapy element to dealing with them and i'm sure steve can talk about that because he had to deal with it day after day, sometimes for years. they are often not used to feeling like outcasts in their own organizations and the pressure on them can be really intense. some of them start to imagine conspiracies and threats and it leads to a difficult, often a difficult situation upfront. in addition, many of these folks often are kind of perfectionists

by nature and i -- in my experience, some of them almost obsessively follow the rules and then they are just so disappointed when people around them don't treat the rules in the same fashion. so it's the job of the reporter to determine how big of a deal their grievances are. because you know in some cases they might be petty and they may be right. someone may have violated a rule but it may not be that consequence rble. that is part of the process of whether you want to move forward. secondly, as i mentioned, you have to deal with the issue of possible skeletons in the closet. so you can anticipate that an organization in rich's case, a white house is going to push back and push back hard and they are going to look for any negative thing that they can

find to discredit that whistleblower and they have all the resources imaginable because they have the employee records. in many cases, a corporation or an organization or a government agency is not supposed to reveal that information. a lot of types it is covered turned privacy act, but trust me, they manage -- they will manage to find a way to get the information out. it may not be done overtly, but the information will get out and consequently, you have to start and do this forensic work on your own almost immediately as you begin hearing the story. it is just so important upfront. you don't want to be surprised later to learn about something that may not even really be connected to the main issue but for instance if, there is an old lawsuit or bankruptcy or something that is embarrassing, it may have a bearing on what you're reporting and to some

degree, you are taking on, by airing their story or doing a report, to some degree, you're taking on their own account. you are kind of owning it. and you have to be comfortable with that and all the aspects of a person's background and personality. finally, kind of the three big buckets here, big picture items. there is the not so little issue of the truth. whistleblowers, their stories need to be evaluated carefully, obviously because just think about it. their jobs are on the line. their reputations and they also have, in many cases, have a possible financial gain at stake. and i'm hoping that steve will talk about that in the litigation. i wasn't really ever aware of that. i wouldn't really pursue that but i had to be mindful that there was some financial benefit

for these people coming forward. all that means is in the same way any reporter always has to assess the credibility of a source or the person they are intering, you just have to be that much more onguard for all of those reasons. the other issue that the intrinsic with all of this is that oftentimes the alleged bad behavior that the whistleblower is talking about has taken place behind closed doors. obviously there might be an audit trail. there might be documents, but many times they are talking about information that maybe only one or two other people know about. and you know, that just -- accuracy situation where you need to be doubly, tripoli cognizant of this and just try to do an even better job in

reporting. those are kind of some of the pitfalls if you will of dealing with whistleblowers. now just for the good part, i guess. as rich has said, i consider whistleblowers, many of them to be real heroes, in some cases patriots who help expose evil and wrong doing in our country and i'm thinking that with "60 minutes," dick clark, jeffrey wygan, the tobacco case, the pentagon papers and so many more. in my own career, i haven't had any of those big ticket items but i have worked on some stories that i still think are important. steve mentioned bunny greenhouse. those of you who don't know bunny, she is -- she was a procurement official at the pentagon who came to nbc news and worked primarily with lisa

myers at nbc and told us that her colleagues, other federal contracting officials had bent the rules regarding handing out contracts to halliburton. and, wow, i don't know if you remember. bunny was so nervous during that interview. our first take, we rolled a 20-minute data tape. we never used one sentence from it. she just was so nervous and she was -- had never been in this position before. of, you know, essentially talking out of school regarding what had happened with her former employers. but she warmed up and she did a great interview but she suffered as a result. it was very, very hard for her. another former government employee we interviewed is a woman named jane turner. jane was an f.b.i. agents. she came to us and told us that during the clean-up at 9/11, at

ground zero, f.b.i. agents had repeatedly removed rubble and artifacts that they then handed out as souvenirs to their friends and family. on its face, it doesn't sound like that terrible of a crime but we went and talked to 9/11 families and they were just so stunned. they consider ground zero, you know, really to be a gravesite and they were horrified by this behavior. jane pointed it out and she was vilified within the f.b.i. they came against her very hard and really tried to smear her despite a really good track record as an employee. a federal court ultimately rewarded her with $1.4 million for the retaliation that she

suffered and also back pay. finally we sper viewed bassam yusuf. the highest ranking arab-american f.b.i. agent. he had never done a tv interview. he went on camera to tell us in his estimation the f.b.i. was very poorly educated about radical islam and this is someone who had worked on prior to 9/11 all the major terrorism cases and was really considered an expert. after 9/11, for a variety of reasons, he wasn't used in that capacity and in the interview, he said that the f.b.i. wasn't doing everything that it could do to combat terrorism and that when it was involved, and obviously, the f.b.i. is involved, it was doing it in a kind of haphazard and ignorant

fashion and then he also talked about how he had been personally discriminated against after 9/11. i just want to read -- as part of this story, steve was allowed to pose a number of senior f.b.i. officials. we ended up doing this story using the interview with bassam but as a kind of side benefit to doing this story, we were given access to video taped depositions of senior f.b.i. officials talking about their knowledge of terrorism and steve was able to depose dale watson, who was the top f.b.i. counterterrorism official both before and then after 9/11 and i've known dale for years and always held him in high regard as a counterterrorism official but i'll just read you this exchange because it sure surprised