Whistle-blowers form a breed apart
By Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — When people think of corporate whistle-blowers, Enron's Sherron Watkins probably comes to mind. Confident and well-coiffed in testimony before Congress, she was the picture of corporate responsibility.

Pfizer scientist David Franklin won a $27M settlement in a case accusing Pfizer ofmarketing a drug for unapproved uses.

By Steven Senne, AP

Time    magazine named her one of its "People of the Year" in 2002. Watkins went on to become a consultant and high-profile public speaker. Several former Enron executives have been charged or convicted since her revelations about Enron's accounting.

Things rarely turn out that well for whistle-blowers, who speak out against corporate misdeeds and cast themselves as company pariahs. Whistle-blowers might be heroes to people tired of the scandals that have swept Corporate America, but they often find themselves near-penniless, their home lives and emotional well-being in shambles, and followed by private investigators.



AP file
Watkins

Whistle-blowers persist because that's the way they are — a breed apart, driven by a desire to expose dirty executives, protect consumers or avenge wrongs they feel have been done to them.

Two years ago Friday, President Bush signed an Enron-inspired law that gave whistle-blowers at public companies the right to sue for anything that could affect shareholders. Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed, corporate whistle-blowers have filed 97 cases under the law against companies from Home Depot to Hewlett-Packard.

With or without the backing of the federal government, some people can't imagine keeping quiet when they witness what they believe is wrongdoing. For some, it seems, whistle-blowing becomes almost a way of life.

"They are very ethical people who follow through on what they were taught as children," says Donald Soeken, a Laurel, Md.-based psychotherapist and an expert witness who specializes in psychological issues in whistle-blowers. "But if someone came to me beforehand, I'd tell them, 'If you can't do it anonymously, don't do it, because you'll be sacrificing yourself.' "

Enron's Watkins once read a description of whistle-blowers that suggested they can be "high-maintenance, because they're so forceful." She thought it fit her to T. "Sometimes I make a mountain out of a molehill," she said.

Ed Bricker, one of the first nuclear industry whistle-blowers, has nearly made a career out of whistle-blowing. Bricker, 49, says he has faced retaliation since he went undercover for Congress in the 1980s to expose health hazards at a nuclear plant in Hanford, Wash. His crusade has had unwelcome consequences.

Bricker's daughter Debbie Deerwester, now 25, remembers when she and fellow sixth-graders were asked to explain their parents' careers. She said her father was a whistle-blower at Hanford.

"One boy interrupted and said, 'Whistle-blowers are tattletales!' " she said. "I was devastated, because I was proud of what my dad stood for and thought that everyone else saw it the same way."

Bricker, balding and chatty, left his federal job in 1991, after he says co-workers at Hanford assaulted him and made life-threatening calls to his wife. In 1994, he settled a whistle-blower lawsuit for $200,000 against Westinghouse and Rockwell, which had contracts with the Energy Department to run the nuclear site. The companies did not acknowledge wrongdoing.

The fight took its toll on Bricker, who is Mormon. "I'd look myself in the mirror and think, 'Is your job worth it that you can't live with yourself and pollute the air your relatives breathe?' " he said.

Now working at Washington state's health department in a role unrelated to nuclear safety, Bricker continues to speak out about possible safety problems — including, one time, a terrorism hotline he says didn't work. Co-workers once put up a mock death-threat poster that he says was directed at him, and he was told to see a psychologist when he complained.

He's suing the state for damages from the harassment and stress. He says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and "stupidity - for sticking with it."

Of the toll on his family, Bricker said, "They're tired of it, and it's sad because they went through this once before."

Gary Larson, a spokesman for the Washington attorney general, says the state denies Bricker's allegations. "This state is protective of whistle-blowers and has a long-standing policy of encouraging people to come forward and to see they are protected when they do," he said.

Protecting the public good

Whistle-blowers often feel it's their responsibility to speak up for those who can't.

Last fall, Mark Livingston filed a federal lawsuit under Sarbanes-Oxley. In it, he alleges he lost his job as a quality control manager at Wyeth because he complained repeatedly about manufacturing practices for a vaccine that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is given to about 60% of infants. The soft-spoken and slightly built Livingston, 46, says he saw the drug company take shortcuts in the manufacture of Prevnar, a vaccine for meningitis and pneumonia, endangering babies.

Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus denies Livingston's allegations. "The safety of this vaccine is not in question," Petkus said.

George Holmes, a former training manager for Livingston, says Livingston faced resistance from the time he arrived at Wyeth to institute a training program required under a Justice Department consent decree. The 2000 decree, which also required Wyeth to pay the government $30 million, addressed deviations in manufacturing practices at two plants and other quality control problems.

Holmes says he witnessed "repercussions" against Livingston after a deadline from the decree was not met because the plant wasn't documenting or emphasizing training enough. He says the human resources director showed up uninvited at training sessions and at a work-related 2002 Christmas party Livingston was hosting at a local restaurant.

Livingston says he warned the H.R. director he would ask the police to escort him from the party if he didn't leave. Six days later, Livingston lost his job. Petkus says Livingston was fired for "unruly and unprofessional behavior toward a co-worker." Livingston's case is in deposition and discovery in federal district court in North Carolina.

Companies often suggest that whistle-blowers have mental health or addiction issues. Whistle-blowers say any problems they have come from the stress associated with taking on a company.

Livingston says he still wakes up in the night, shaking and sweating uncontrollably, which he believes is attributable to post-traumatic stress disorder. He has been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with anxiety and depression. Not long ago, the North Carolinian didn't want to leave his house.

'Utter loneliness'

Jim Torgerson was a senior manager at American Express until, he says, he went on medical leave to get away from harassment that followed his complaints about a faulty technology contract. He says it became so bad he was "dry-heaving on the way to work."

Torgerson complained about a contract AmEx had signed with an Internet-related company that specialized in procurement management and that he says was owned by a friend of American Express Chairman Kenneth Chenault. In August 2001, the Internet firm's computers malfunctioned — allowing hundreds of vendors and suppliers to see one another's confidential data — and Torgerson says AmEx tried to cover it up. He reported the problem to the general counsel's office.

He says retaliation, including negative personnel memos and constant criticism, soon began. Torgerson, who has strong Lutheran beliefs, says his manager once called him "Christian boy." After Torgerson, 50, had been on medical leave about two months, he says, the company fired him in December 2001.

"There's a sense of utter loneliness even when you have family supporting you and you know you're right," he said. Torgerson, who worked for AmEx in Arizona, has a 12-count lawsuit pending against the company in federal court there. American Express said Torgerson resigned, and spokesman Tony Mitchell said Torgerson's "whistle-blower claim is without merit."

Retaliation often follows

Whistle-blowers say that once their complaints become public, the workplace often becomes hostile and threatening.

"You know your intentions were good, and it's kind of surprising to see people think otherwise," said Enron's Watkins.

Sandra Moore, one of a handful of female electricians at General Motors, says the atmosphere at the Pontiac, Mich., truck plant where she worked was worse than she'd ever imagined. She says graphic pornography was stacked a foot high on tables and viewed on computer screens. She thinks that allowed her supervisors to feel it was almost acceptable to proposition and harass her, as she says they often did.

Moore, 47, says her complaints to managers and to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and a subsequent lawsuit, led to death threats. She also says she was dumped with water from a bucket with electrical wires in it.

Moore wants to keep her job because of pay and benefits she says could total $160,000 a year. "I earned the right," she said.

GM spokesman Kerry Christopher says the company takes "discrimination and harassment issues very seriously," but he says Moore's allegations have no merit. He says Moore has filed charges against GM three times, and each time the EEOC ruled against her.

Moore is on sick leave because she says the environment was too stressful. She's suing GM in state court in Michigan. Christopher says GM hasn't "taken any adverse action against her employment." The automaker also says Moore never mentioned the pornography or assault when deposed by company lawyers, so it would not comment on specifics.

Some payoffs in the end

Despite the frustration, some whistle-blowers see results. David Franklin, a scientist at Pfizer, recently won a $27 million settlement in a lawsuit accusing the company of defrauding Medicaid by encouraging doctors to prescribe a drug for unapproved uses.

In Watkins' case, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay was indicted July 7 on 11 counts of conspiracy and fraud after an array of charges against other former executives and guilty pleas by several.

Peter Scannell, a former employee at Boston-based Putnam Investments, told state securities officials about irregular stock trading by union members and helped expose the mutual fund scandal last year. He says that made his efforts worth it, though he says he was hit over the head by a brick-wielding assailant in a union sweatshirt and is still occasionally followed. He hopes to return to work in financial services and maybe to write a book.

Longtime whistle-blower Bricker, whose lawsuit is pending, isn't as confident of his prospects: "Where am I going to go? Who's going to hire me?"

Contributing: Greg Farrell