there are lots of lots of lower organizations out there, especially in the united states, west or europe in australia. but many of them are very parochial. they focus on narrow subjects or issues rather than focusing on the mental wellbeing of the whistle blow. becoming a whistle blower is a decision not to be taken lightly. i promise you that it often results in almost immediate social and professional ostracism in isolation. so how does a whistleblower deal with that? well, here she associates with the rape organization. i'm john to reaku. welcome to the whistle blowers the . 2 2 2 we've already told you the personal story of pentagon whistleblower jackie garrick. jackie grew up like many americans who came from the immigrant families intensely patriotic and wanting to give something back to the country that had given them so much in the 1980s. she did an internship at the veterans

administration medical center in new york and developed an interest in post traumatic stress disorder, or p t. s. d. in veterans who had returned from service in vietnam. in 1992, she joined the army as a captain and as a social worker. following the adage, if you want to work with veterans b one. after leaving the military, she worked as the deputy director of health care at the american legion, and then went onto a position on the veterans disability benefits commission in the department of veterans affairs. and after a few years on capitol hill, the obama administration asked her to organize the defense suicide prevention office, which oversaw disability policies impacting wounded warriors, mental health care, accessability, suicide prevention and diversity and inclusion. jackie survived a period of great turmoil at the pentagon, serving under 10 under secretaries and 12 supervisors in only years. in

2014 jackie began working for a politically appointed supervisor who seemed to be hostile to her after she made legally protected disclosures regarding possible conflicts of interest and possible contract fraud. she was moved to another chain of command and soon after found that her performance ratings were being lowered and job openings were being close to her . she filed whistleblower complaints with both the office of the special counsel and with the defense department's office of inspector general. for purely bureaucratic reasons, jackie never received any satisfaction from her whistle blowing, and indeed, in the end, she lost her job and was deemed in eligible for federal retirement. it was only after a freedom of information act request and an appeal beyond the office of personnel management that she was finally able to retire. and once she did, she created the group whistle blowers of america, where she provides peer support for other whistle blowers who have suffered retaliation after having identified harm to individuals or to the public. that's

what we want to tell you about today. jackie, thanks for joining us. we're so glad to have you back. thank you for having me back . it's an honor and privilege to be able to speak to twice of the. the pleasure is all mine. believe me, jackie, the last time we had you on the show, we talked about your own whistle blowing, but we didn't have time to get into what you've done since then. and actually the work you've done has been very important. you created whistleblowers of america, which is one of the leading whistleblower advocacy groups in the country. tell us about why you did that. there were certainly other whistleblower groups already in existence. what were they missing that you wanted to accomplish? the store? so i, i think the idea for whistle blowers of america was born out of this conversation that i had with a complete stranger. we were um, connecting through linkedin and gotten on a phone call and she endorsed having

a gun and was actively thinking about suicide. and it just reminded me of all the conversations i've ever had with combat the sun. i thought we, we cannot go through this alone. one of the things i saw that work with veterans so well was to bring a peer support approach and to have people connect. so that's what am i felt like we needed to create was the lawyers of america to really address these psycho social mental health sense of safety issues. we needed to make people feel more resilient and to really come about the trauma piece. um, do you notice i'm in a hotel or in san diego this week for the institute done violence of do some trauma and we just present to, to probably a 100 or so clement go. staff that comes out of the federal government, the state, private sector. this issue resonates with people. they understand that workplace

trauma, workplace, bullying means something and that we have to start addressing these issues. a meant to that, to me, one of the most important things that you or anybody else could do is to provide disappear support to whistle blowers. i can't stress how stress enough really, how important this is not just for me as a whistleblower, but for many other whistle blowers that i'm in touch with was the blower once asked me what i thought i needed the most. when i blew the whistle and the see eyes towards your program, i said money, a press spokesman and a psychiatrist. and i was only half joking. every whistle blowers most isolated after going public and he or she needs someone to talk to even if it's just event. so tell us about that. and about the peer to peer mentoring program. yeah, so i think you're a 100 percent spot on with that observation. it's the and it's easy to find the

attorneys because they're yes, you know there's, there's lots of organizations, bar associations. there's ways to look up the attorneys. but most list of loans don't even fully understand that what's happening to them is trauma. as a mental health community where i think it would be the beginning of understanding teach yesterday and whistle blower retaliation quite the way we were in the 1980s when pj yesterday was a new diagnosis. and vietnam vets were, you know, listed as having more neurosis or lingering and lazy. we had all these negative stereotypes associated with, with them in that generation. and then it wasn't until other areas of veterans, other types of survivors, accident victims, crime victims, disaster. the victims were starting to come forward and saying, hey wait, this is me to, i have these symptoms too. and i think we're going to do the same thing with

whistle blowers and we're gonna start to see retaliation, or at least i'm hoping we'll see retaliation and the mental health impact that it has without having it also be a weaponized diagnosis and then gets used against them so i think we see this catch 22. we know we need more mental health. and yet, because of the legal system and the ramifications to come and changing cases to court for damages for pain and suffering. where we're still at a place where we're arguing not just like the va argue peaches di, and combat trauma with vietnam, that's for decades. until, you know, we sort of got that presumption that if you were in a combat. so, and you were exposed to trauma. if you're in a hostile work environment, you are exposed to trauma and we have to have a trauma important perspective. i think that's absolutely right. whistle blowers of america has a wonderful website, w w, w dot whistle blowers of america dot org. is that right board?

or yes, i encourage all of our viewers to go and take a look at it. it is so straightforward and plain spoken, that it makes this complicated issue of whistle blowing. actually easy to get through. many whistleblowers fear becoming known as a rat, or a snitch. this is something you address on the website. somebody who, who tells on others years ago i help the greek government write a new whistle blower protection law. this was in 2015. it was eventually passed and it became the basis for the european union's whistleblower protection law. but a great deal of the work was getting past the idea that whistle blowing with snitching. tell us how you've dealt with that. yes, so i think what you're talking about on our website is we've written letters to the american webster dictionary hospital to change the definition because, and they told us that the reason microsoft because we wrote to microsoft office and

they told us that the reason that when you type the word was the lower, then you hit send and then you get read stage, tattletale to pigeon. all those negative thanks to the description is very positive, you know, preventing wrong, doing addressing corruption. it's all very positive things. and then you come to the stand and, and then you know, the rails come off. and so we started this campaign by writing to microsoft who came back and told us we, we just pull it from marietta webster. so we've written to marian webster and they say, well it's all about common language use. so they've encouraged us to address common language use issues. and that when people are defining what's the lowers, that they're using the words, the heroes of integrity, truth tyler, emphasis, protect or 1st relate or disclose, or we've gotten lamplighter l ring or there's so many other for positive words

to describe what was the lawyers are actually doing the negative ones, and, you know, if we don't reduce the stigma, then we don't want to make these employees feel safe in the workplace. and that's really what a lot of this is about. is psychological st. james in veteran had a bad consultation. right. and nobody would want me to claim to be a veteran. we just have to get past the negative connotation of the word and make people proud to be a whistle blower and make organizations to be proud to have them. and then maybe we can get away from the web, the nice thing diagnoses. jackie, talk a little bit about founding the group about pulling together resources and the work that you've done. what kinds of whistle blowers have reached out to you for help? is it specific to the military or the government, or do you accept all variety of whistle blowers?

yes. when we did our articles of incorporation and attorney asked me, so what's our scope? and i said, i don't know. how can i help everybody? um, i think right now you've, we've had this vision of it being like a lien and circle, you know, 12 of us. so we're gonna get together have some coffee and talk about our cases while we're closing in on almost a 1000 people who have contacted us to in our 5 years. and they are in 17 countries . wow. and that just keeps re affirming to me that this is a trauma based risk response to these toxic tactics just like the toxicity of a combat. so just like a current, any crime victim, we are seeing the same kind of effects universally. and it doesn't matter what uniform a combat that we're going to get serve in greece in the us. in the u. k. holland, finland, france, you pick a country, they all can have p t s d,

no matter the structure of the military because of the exposure. and so that's where i believe that these hostile work environments, there's almost like a presumption that we need for that because of the universal nature. so when you attack someone, we need the same them when you bully them. hayes them, when you marginalize them, guess like them. those are those tactics that we look at very specifically and have outlined i think i've mentioned we did a dr. martina buck and i did a book on the psycho social impacts. it was a retaliation. it was so that we could set up a whistle blower, retaliation checklist because you know, we like checklists in this world. we have to have a way of documenting and measuring. and so we can hold you accountable. then there's this is not going to end on the way to hold people accountable is to make them pay for it. and if you harm someone, you know, i break,

i lose my arm and the wind shipper. we know how to accommodate me in the air and compensate me in a disability construct. we need the same thing for mental health and for with the low retaliation. you make a very important point on the website that i'd like to reiterate here. and that is that was the blower, retaliation is bullying. now we're finally getting smart all around the world, about bullying. and what bullying leads to it can lead to terrible things, not just social ostracism, but things like suicide or alcoholism or drug abuse. you know, self medication to try to get through the bullying. we have to keep repeating over and over that retaliation against whistle blowers is a form of bullying. and another thing that we need to keep repeating over and over again is the fact that there is a legal definition of whistle blowing. and that is bringing to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety. that's not snitching or reading

or being a tattletale. it's in the public service. so it's up to us. i agree with you completely. it's up to us to make sure that the general public, who maybe otherwise wouldn't give much thought to an issue like this. gets our side of the story because this is going to sound arrogant. but we're right and they're wrong. and we have to make sure that they understand that right and even when we are wrong, we don't deserve to be harmed. yeah, i agree, and the services restored? absolutely correct. we're going to cut to a short break, so please stay with us. when we get back, we'll ask jackie garrick about the role of whistle blowers and of america in the constellation of whistle blower groups and about an important upcoming event. we'll be right back. 2 2 2 2 the,

[000:00:00;00] the, i look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except we're so shorter is that conflict with the 1st law show alignment of the patient. we should be very careful about our personal intelligence. the point obviously, is to create a trust, rather than to the various mean with the artificial intelligence. we have so many of the payment

the robot must protect this phone existence with alexis. the nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities. another comes from united states of america is different wherever people long to be free. they will find a friend in the united states, the, to be of the automated body bolts and a very, very easy to sort of city and teach all the look at what the in service of each skid 18 color revolutions is. one among several means to reach the

goal of conquering foreign lands and bringing them onto the help of us. the western economic interest people been cited, adding that to the, to it as well by the democrats, the portal acted so no, the best, se, little this of to buy whatever you can, the final goal of these theme or of allusions to ensure that there are no independent players in the world anymore. the the welcome back to the list of lawyers. i'm john kerry, onto we're speaking with jackie derrick, a pentagon with the blower and the founder of whistle blowers of america. jackie, good to have you with us. to be back, jackie, whistle blowers of america is hosting an event here in washington dc during the 1st week of september. tell us about that event and about what the organization is doing for it. a yeah,

so we started the workplace promise institute into our 3rd year. it was the beginning of the pandemic. so we began by having our 1st um conference virtually because we do what we call a whistleblower protection advocate, certification. and we came up with this um idea that a minimum of 10 hours of training was when somebody should have so that they understood what we did in our network and appears according the skills we 1st lunch that again 3 years ago. and now this year we're going to be doing our event live and live streaming from washington dc. had at 614th street in uh downtown right by metro center. and the goal would be, is to remove the requirements for the hours, for the training, as well as provide people the opportunity to connect. we have

a host of attorneys joining us. we have an international panel, so people are logging in from all over the world. we're going to be talking to journalists like yourself and some publishers, some of the craters, and talking some health staffers, so that we can talk about the different things that was the lowest needed to know, then how we can help mentor and support each other through the process i'm on the 1st day we do what we call the draft boards. we started those because whistle blowers stand tall and stick their next out. everywhere i go, i find a draft and i just found this little guy here in san diego. so i'm taking them home with me because we need to be mindful that we, we have to embrace this idea that this is who we are and this is what we've done and we need to recognize each other. we're also going to do a rose garden march to the white house from our conference location. because uh,

sending grossly has asked every president since ronald reagan, for hostile, what was the lower them in the rose garden and none ever has. so we are just, i did that, you know what? we don't need to wait for any president where we've got our own roses. they're plastic, but we have our own roses and we're going to take them with us. and we're going to stand outside the white house and we're going to host our own ceremony. we have children joining us this year. of the whistle blowers because we have spent some time this year focusing on was the boeing is a family issue. um, as you probably know, especially when they're minor children in the house, their, their home, when the home is rated, they're watching their parents struggle. they're, they're learning how to be afraid. they're being told don't answer the phone, don't answer the door, don't go out. we always need to know where each other is. and so we, we see this intergenerational transmission of trauma. they might not fully

understand what they're experiencing, but um, you know, you have done yearly who's the founder of the intergenerational legacy of trauma project in new york. that's probably not the full title. but we had her on one of our round tables and we talked about children who are survivors because they lives through the experience. and then children who grow up with parents who have been traumatized. they don't understand the trauma, but they understand or taught. the hyper vigilance and their responses, the trauma survivors go through. so we're incorporating them this here, and they're actually making these water water color paper roses that we're going to take up to senator grassley. and that we're going to take to the white house with us. very exciting. that is join us the sierra. that's right. to yeah, to do these kinds of projects and bring community together is really important. it isn't a here for, for

a 2nd. i thought maybe i was missing out on something because no president is ever invited me to the white house to celebrate whistle blower protection day. so i guess i'm not. i'm not sure if that's right. does was a pollution america ourselves. that's right, we'll just do it ourselves. does was of lawyers of america partner with other organizations i'm thinking about, for example, the national width of lower center, which is here in washington, the government accountability project. and the like. i'm also interested in hearing about your areas of real expertise and specialties. what does whistle blowers of america do best in your estimation? so we believe you. i think that's what we do best. yeah. you don't need to prove anything to us. there's a love and acceptance for you as a wish to lower. we're going to try to help you as best we can. we are a very small non profit, so it's a, we're all volunteers, there's no paid staff. so we,

we do our best to connect and to listen and to share and give advice and, and sometimes just to offer that moral support. so, we have worked with the other other groups, nonprofit's law firms. well, you know, i take help and assistance from anybody who's offering it of the march to the white house, a gap and the food integrity campaign project led to the virtual rose garden event . i think on linkedin and on social media platforms, they're helping us this year with getting the word out about the march to the white house. and we have attended events, but the national was the lower center has put on the national list of lower summit in soon festival, as well as some international partners. we've worked a lot with we suppose u. k. it in the u. k. was the lower house in south africa with the boeing canada and,

and the blueprints for free speech. you've mentioned greece and we've worked on the chapter there. so we've got. a a large group of people coming from the global imperative panel that are working in several different countries. i wish we can have all 17 on one panel, but obviously we can't do that. and so we've got some really great speakers coming in. and again, i have found there's just as to international groups and we're, we're really trying to build coalitions because i think, you know, we're strong together is we need an army, we need to raise our own army and we can't splinter and fight because we need each other to carry home a consistent message. 100 percent. right. i'm curious also about whether the private sector whistle blowers reach out to you here in washington. it's so easy to focus on government and government whistle blowers and especially military and

national security whistle blowers. but what about people who work in private industry do they approach you? i know we've, we've had every, every type of story, a mention of all that, this fine, lots of government, lots of department of veterans affairs and employees are probably 40 percent actually of the people who reach out to us. we get a lot of law enforcement. but we've had some, you know, money laundering and banking again, part of the international is corporate with the lawyers from all over the world. reach out to us because they're just looking for that level of support discrimination cases, races, racism, disability discrimination. if you've made a disclosure of any kind of nature, as long as you do it as an employee, that's kind of the limit of our sco we, we will do our best to help you match you with somebody who's had

a similar story to yours. find the resources that you maybe need um, teach you how to find an attorney teacher, how to find a therapist work with you if you're really wanting to talk to a journalist. i think you've interviewed a couple of people. we've st. you're right. yes indeed, jackie, thank you so much for being with us. thank you for having me back and i look forward to seeing you that the workplace promise institute september 7th. i think we're gonna have a good time september 7th. we have right here in washington dc. 614th street northwest. i want to thank our viewers, also for joining us on the whistle blowers of america website. there is a quote by president john f kennedy. that is, that so perfectly encapsulates the mind of the whistleblower that i have to convey it to you. it's this quote without belittling the courage with which men have died . we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived. the courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of

a final moments. but it is no less than magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy . a man does what he must, in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures. and that is the basis of all human morality. in whatever reason of life, 1 may needs the challenge of courage. whatever may be the sacrifice as he faces. if he follows his conscience, the loss of his friends as fortune is contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men. each man must decide for yourself of course that he will follow the stories of past courage can find that ingredients they can teach . they can offer hope they can provide inspiration, but they cannot supply courage itself. for this, each man must look into his own soul. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers, i'm john kerry all through and we will see you next time. 2 2

the voltage to search as well as the line. so see what, what was that was of the, this is just so basically of course we need the last name was needed. read those can, will be used to be too much and we have some more more than i wish someone was this. we weren't sure i knew people to the,

the acceptance and i'm here to plan with you. whatever you do. do not watch my new show seriously . why watch something that's so different little opinions that he won't get anywhere else. welcome to please or do they have the state department, the c i a weapons makers, multi 1000000000 dollar corporations. choose your fax for you. go ahead, change and whatever you do. don't want marshall state main street because i'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. my show is called stretching time, but again, we don't wanna watch it because it might just change the way you the, the main body of the people of marcus on the ball, raises images. i'm due for an insurance on our policy. and they have focused on the us key because the us is a major pause, but it also has played

a critical role at different points in parks on the street, the place and the interference needs. just some statements by the french president to the back sanctions are the possible intervention in the country or the french and us defense when just as i get the plastic solution to the car, the thousands of protesters floods nation as capital demanding their phones. removing the story of the powers refuses to remove that and boy own recognize the new military governments. we have some low pools and good 5 friends policy