Whistle-blowers tell of cost of conscience

0 Comments | USA TODAY, November, 2006 | by Catherine Rampell

Number of complaints rises from government workers who say they confronted bosses over wrongdoing and then faced retaliation for it He knew there were problems. He didn't think he was one of them. In 2002, decorated FBI Special Agent Mike German was investigating meetings between terrorism suspects.

When he discovered other officers had jeopardized the investigation by violating wiretapping regulations, he reported what he found to his supervisors, in accordance with FBI policy. At the time, Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who had raised concerns about how the pre-9/11 arrest of al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was handled, was being hailed as a national hero. German says he had also just received a mass e-mail from FBI Director Robert Mueller, urging other...