Famous secret leakers
![Famous whistle-blowers: Aug. 30, 1976, file photo Mark Felt on CBS' 'Face the Nation']({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/17/4a92673cc9773494a9f61fe72c680/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Aug. 30, 1976, file photo Mark Felt on CBS' 'Face the Nation' (AP Photo: File)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Bradley Manning being escorted out of escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on June 5, the third day of his court-martial hearing]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/9b/9c192c77f782a07297f89afd4ba534/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Bradley Manning being escorted out of escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on June 5, the third day of his court-martial hearing (AP Photo: Patrick Semansky)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Daniel Ellsberg during an interview in Los Angeles in September 2009]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/ff/1381f83337225584fc593ab43071ce/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Daniel Ellsberg during an interview in Los Angeles in September 2009 (AP Photo: Nick Ut)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Enron Vice President for Corporate Development Sherron Watkins testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., before the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Enron in February 2002.]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/78/7ab1363853e5acb35848b65c614c6/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Enron Vice President for Corporate Development Sherron Watkins testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., before the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Enron in February 2002. (AP Photo: Kenneth Lambert)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Linda Tripp speaking to reporters outside the US Courthouse in Washington, D.C., in July 1998]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/01/81868aca0d2124456555231b86eb/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Linda Tripp speaking to reporters outside the US Courthouse in Washington, D.C., in July 1998 (Reuters: Mark Wilson, File)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Peter Buxtun]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/55/bcf9daea4a3abb5de3d8345e5a964/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Peter Buxtun (Wikimedia)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Undated photo of Karen Silkwood, an employee at Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corp.]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/c4/52af8875e739b930627948fa83934/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Undated photo of Karen Silkwood, an employee at Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corp. (AP Photo)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Former General Motors CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. during a press conference in April 2010 near Kansas City, Kan.]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/fe/05bfad97b613df645ddd65960f6a0/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Former General Motors CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. during a press conference in April 2010 near Kansas City, Kan. (AP Photo: Orlin Wagner)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Former New York City Detective Frank Serpico testifying at a City Council hearing in New York in September 1997]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/1b/bea160541fac25341ab05493a9d83/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Former New York City Detective Frank Serpico testifying at a City Council hearing in New York in September 1997 (AP Photo: Kathy Willens, File)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Swiss Olympic official Marc Hodler at an International Olympic Committee press conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in December 1998]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/36/352f5c2abf9f25d4c984c1ab46f9/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Swiss Olympic official Marc Hodler at an International Olympic Committee press conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in December 1998 (AP Photo: Donald Stampfli)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: FBI special agent Coleen Rowley testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2002]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/c3/a05b4b1c5c512a1728b07bee916e9a/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: FBI special agent Coleen Rowley testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2002 (Newscom: RTR: Kevin LaMarque)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Jeffrey S. Wigand speaking with reporters outside of a federal court in Washington, D.C., in January 2005]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/46/859cd42b53a3d8d46804bca456e49/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Jeffrey S. Wigand speaking with reporters outside of a federal court in Washington, D.C., in January 2005 (AP Photo: Lawrence Jackson)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Thomas Drake speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in April 2011]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/40/9911a3e9ffd0dfe2e441756934c80/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Thomas Drake speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in April 2011 (AP Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, File)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Harry Markopolos testifying before a House Financial Services Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., in February 2009]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/84/7f1faf5e15b477e521022063e9e/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Harry Markopolos testifying before a House Financial Services Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., in February 2009 (Reuters: Molly Riley)")
![Famous whistle-blowers: Joe Darby in August 2006]({"default":{"load":"wait","src":"http://newsbcpcol.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/65/46411d2080ca5d14db835fe39e87/_h353_w628_m6_ofalse_lfalse.jpg"}} "Famous whistle-blowers: Joe Darby in August 2006 (AP Photo: Mark Lennihan)")
These people exposed secret doings
As self-claimed NSA document leaker Edward Snowden contemplates his future as a wanted man, we take a look at some of the most famous leakers in history. See gallery
Edward Snowden takes credit for NSA spying leak
Edward Snowden is a former contractor at the National Security Agency, who last week revealed a top-secret court order allowing the government to collect the phone and Internet data records of millions of Americans. After initially remaining anonymous, Snowden revealed himself from a hotel in Hong Kong, which he claims to have left out of fear of government reprisals. As Snowden plots his next move, he continues to speak out, saying that he revealed the information because of moral outrage over what he calls a privacy invasion that's an "existential threat to democracy."
Get the latest on Snowden's status
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Mark Felt, aka 'Deep Throat,' exposes Watergate scandal
For decades known only as "Deep Throat," former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt revealed himself in 2005 as the source behind Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's explosive stories on the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974. Felt had given a steady stream of information to the reporters that pointed to Nixon's involvement in the scandal. He had been passed over for a promotion to head the FBI before his leaking to the Post, and many have accused him of outing the administration as payback, though Felt has strongly denied such motivations.
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Bradley Manning allegedly gives millions of secrets to WikiLeaks
Accused of giving away the largest cache of classified information in U.S. history, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning allegedly gave the website WikiLeaks more than 700,000 military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010. Since the leak, Manning has been held up as a hero of government transparency by supporters and pilloried as a traitor to his country by opponents. He faces 22 criminal charges in military court and could receive life in prison if convicted.
Get the latest on Manning's trial
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Daniel Ellsberg leaks the Pentagon Papers
In 1971, RAND Corp. analyst Daniel Ellsberg ignited a national controversy when he leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. The Pentagon Papers outlined a huge, top-secret study of the decision-making involved with the Vietnam War and exposed several mischaracterizations and outright lies of several presidential administrations when it came to justifying the war. Ellsberg's leak of classified information and The New York Times' publishing of it led to the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. United States, which further established the press's right to publish information deemed secret by the government.
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Sherron Watkins takes down Enron
Sherron Watkins was a vice president at Houston-based energy company Enron Corp. in 2001 when she sent an anonymous letter to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay informing him of major accounting irregularities in financial reports to stockholders. More than six months later, Watkins testified before Congress about Enron's complex scheme, which she had uncovered, of hiding enormous debt and artificially boosting profits to mislead investors. Eventually, Lay and others went to prison, Enron went bankrupt, and Watkins was named one of three "People of the Year" by Time magazine.
Find a timeline of the Enron scandal
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Linda Tripp records Monica Lewinsky conversations
President Bill Clinton's sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky might never have been known if not for the controversial actions of a former Pentagon employee named Linda Tripp. Tripp was a close friend of Lewinsky and had heard her friend talk about the ongoing affair she was having with the president. On the advice of a book agent, Tripp secretly recorded Lewinsky talking about the affair and eventually turned over the tapes to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, which led to the 1998 impeachment of Clinton by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Video: Clinton explains Lewinski scandal
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Peter Buxtun informs public of Tuskegee syphilis experiments
For more than 40 years, the U.S. Public Health Service ran an infamous study on the disease syphilis that focused on impoverished — and mostly black — Alabama sharecroppers. Unbeknownst to the patients, many were often never informed of their diagnosis and left purposefully untreated so the deadly disease could be better studied. The "Tuskegee Experiments" became national news in 1972, when PHS epidemiologist Peter Buxtun leaked information on experiments to The Washington Star. Buxtun had filed internal moral objections to the experiments twice before his leak, but his concerns had been overruled. The experiments were shut down soon after they became known, which led to the passage of the National Research Act and, years later, a formal apology by President Bill Clinton.
Video: President Bill Clinton apologizes for Tuskegee Experiments
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Karen Silkwood exposes radiation concerns, winds up dead
Immortalized by actress Meryl Streep in the 1983 film "Silkwood," Karen Silkwood was a worker at a plutonium fuel-rod plant and a union activist who exposed serious health concerns at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant near Crescent, Okla. She was later killed under suspicious circumstances. Radiation contamination was found in Silkwood's body and in her home, and in 1974 she testified to the Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns. But while driving to meet with a New York Times journalist, she died in a one-car wreck. Silkwood drove off the road headfirst into a culvert, but many have said evidence shows that she was rammed off the road.
Video: Watch the trailer for "Silkwood"
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Mark Whitacre turns whistle-blower, gets whistle blown on him
Mark Whitacre was different from most other whistle-blowers in that he, too, had something to hide. Whitacre was the president of the BioProducts Division at Archer Daniels Midland from 1992 to 1995 when he agreed to be a confidential informant for the FBI, which was investigating his company for price fixing. Whitacre's information helped lead to charges and a huge settlement relating to ADM's price fixing. But at the same time as the price-fixing investigation, ADM was investigating Whitacre for embezzlement, and after it turned over what it found to the FBI, he was charged and convicted, spending nearly nine years in prison. Actor Matt Damon portrayed Whitacre in the 2009 dark comedy "The Informant!"
Video: Watch the trailer for "The Informant!"
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Frank Serpico exposes dirty NYPD cops
By the time New York City Police Department officer Frank Serpico had made it to the plainclothes squad in the 1960s, he had stumbled upon a massive ring of police corruption. When he reported what he found to superior officers, however, nothing happened. So in 1967 Serpico took his findings to the press, and The New York Times published an explosive exposé on corruption throughout the department. Serpico stayed in the force for some time and testified against crooked cops. He was even once shot in the face in an incident many people have alleged was an attempted murder by his fellow officers. Serpico was famously portrayed by Al Pacino in the 1973 film "Serpico."
Video: Watch the trailer for "Serpico"
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Marc Hodler unearths Olympic bribery scandal
In 1998, after Salt Lake City successfully landed its bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics, Swiss ski coach and International Olympic Committee member Marc Hodler accused others on the IOC of accepting numerous bribes from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Hodler's accusations led to the expulsion of several IOC members and the adoption of new rules for the organization. The Department of Justice mounted an ultimately unsuccessful prosecution of several SLOC members, but other investigations showed bribes were accepted for both the 2002 Winter Olympics and the 2000 Summer Olympics.
Video: News report details Olympic bribery scandal
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Coleen Rowley finds 9/11 failures
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, FBI agent Coleen Rowley penned a memo for FBI Director Robert Mueller that exposed numerous intelligence and performance failures in the agency, which contributed to the attack's devastating effects. Her memo and testimony before the congressional 9/11 Commission led to a lengthy internal FBI investigation and a large-scale reorganization of the agency. Rowley was named Time's Person of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.
Video: Rowley testifies before Senate 9/11 commission
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Jeffrey Wigand blows the lid off Big Tobacco
Jeffrey Wigand shook up the world of Big Tobacco in 1996 when he appeared on "60 Minutes" to explain how the Brown & Williamson tobacco company was chemically enhancing cigarettes to make them more addictive. Wigand's claims were exceptionally compelling because he was the vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson. Years after Wigand revealed his company's use of chemicals like ammonia to speed delivery of nicotine, 46 states filed Medicaid suits against the tobacco industry, which ended in an epic $206 billion settlement by major tobacco companies.
Video: Wigand interviewed by journalist Charlie Rose
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Thomas Drake leaks secret NSA spying program
Eight years before Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong to reveal top-secret, government-run domestic surveillance programs, the National Security Agency had another headache in the form of former NSA executive Thomas Drake. Drake had opposed the NSA's use of the controversial "Trailblazer Project" that analyzed enormous amounts of data on citizens' online habits and was plagued with fraud, abuse and questions of constitutionality. Drake shared information on the project with a Baltimore Sun reporter and was eventually charged with several felonies relating to the Espionage Act. In the end, Drake beat all the charges other than a minor misdemeanor, and the Trailblazer Project was canceled.
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Harry Markopolos warns of Bernie Madoff scheme
In 2000, private fraud investigator Harry Markopolos sent the first of several warnings to the Securities and Exchange Commission about what he said was a massive Ponzi scheme being run by a stockbroker named Bernard Madoff. But it wasn't until eight years later, when Madoff's sons informed the FBI of the scheme, that Madoff's $65 billion con — the largest financial fraud in U.S. history — was discovered and Madoff was arrested and charged with his crimes. Once Markopolos' warnings became known, the SEC faced heavy criticism for failing to investigate and stop Madoff, despite ample evidence that he was bilking his clients.
Video: Watch Markopolos on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"
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Joe Darby exposes Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse
The infamous photographs showing U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to the attention of the military, and later the public, thanks to Sgt. Joe Darby. He was serving as a military police officer in 2004 when he turned over two compact discs' worth of images showing brutal abuse of prisoners to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. The photographs shocked the world and led to numerous charges against soldiers and a scandal that rocked the George W. Bush administration. Though Darby had been promised anonymity by the military, his identity was revealed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who dropped his name in congressional testimony.
Video: Watch trailer for "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" documentary
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