The Lone Star Watchdog This sounds like history repeating itself. The first whistle blower protection law was passed after sailors with the continental Navy was concerned about the commander using the tactics of torture and other inhumane means to coarse British Prisoners of war. To the shock of a few sailors committed mutiny to stop the immoral acts by relieving the officer of duty.
Even though the Captain arrested and criminally charged the sailors for doing their duty exposing torture. This is why Congress passed the first whistle blower protection law with no one objecting. I wish these whistle blower laws were taken just as serious when Abu Grab was exposed that not only low level people by Lindy England went to jail. The chain of command should have shared a prison block with her..
Here is an excerpt form above all places the New York Times publishing this story. I encourage all people read this.
In the winter of 1777, months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American warship Warren was anchored outside of Providence, R.I. On board, 10 revolutionary sailors and marines met in secret — not to plot against the king’s armies, but to discuss their concerns about the commander of the Continental Navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins. They knew the risks: Hopkins came from a powerful family; his brother was a former governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the declaration.
Hopkins had participated in the torture of captured British sailors; he “treated prisoners in the most inhuman and barbarous manner,” his subordinates wrote in a petition.
One whistle-blower, a Marine captain named John Grannis, was selected to present the petition to the Continental Congress, which voted on March 26, 1777, to suspend Hopkins from his post.
The case did not end there. Hopkins, infuriated, immediately retaliated. He filed a criminal libel suit in Rhode Island against the whistle-blowers. Two of them who happened to be in Rhode Island — Samuel Shaw, a midshipman, and Richard Marven, a third lieutenant — were jailed. In a petition read to Congress on July 23, 1778, they pleaded that they had been “arrested for doing what they then believed and still believe was nothing but their duty.”