Personally, I have learnt I do not have a moral compass strong enough to outweigh the consequences that come with being a whistleblower. I'm very grateful such people exist, though.
Vindman is a perfect recent example of how easily this protections are skirted. He was a “key witness” in Trump’s first impeachment.
His career was largely derailed, and his post-retirement second career options are most likely severely limited.
To be specific (and iirc):
- He was not kicked out of the military. He retired due to “bullying” and a big congressional kerfuffle that was about to happen because of his delayed promotion to full bird.
- Iirc, he was told that he could remain in his career, but he would have to move from a hot shot track he was in to something like being commandant of a nowhere base in Alaska so he could lay low. Note that moves like this happen when being promoted to full bird, but I got the sense that this was not his trajectory pre-testimony.
- His post-retirement options probably exclude working at any organization that is pro-Trump and most that are pro-Republican, which is a not small number of DoD contractors (common landing spot for retired military).
- Note that his lawsuits were dismissed. This type of discrimination is fairly easy to do in such a way that makes it difficult to sue successfully, usually due to something like “documented personal opinion or discretion” that the discriminator had. Note that I have personally seen this knowingly done several times —- it was super creepy to see in action.
2OEH8eoCRo0|2 years ago
https://www.dodig.mil/Resources/FAQs/#whistleblowerFAQs
csa|2 years ago
His career was largely derailed, and his post-retirement second career options are most likely severely limited.
To be specific (and iirc):
- He was not kicked out of the military. He retired due to “bullying” and a big congressional kerfuffle that was about to happen because of his delayed promotion to full bird.
- Iirc, he was told that he could remain in his career, but he would have to move from a hot shot track he was in to something like being commandant of a nowhere base in Alaska so he could lay low. Note that moves like this happen when being promoted to full bird, but I got the sense that this was not his trajectory pre-testimony.
- His post-retirement options probably exclude working at any organization that is pro-Trump and most that are pro-Republican, which is a not small number of DoD contractors (common landing spot for retired military).
- Note that his lawsuits were dismissed. This type of discrimination is fairly easy to do in such a way that makes it difficult to sue successfully, usually due to something like “documented personal opinion or discretion” that the discriminator had. Note that I have personally seen this knowingly done several times —- it was super creepy to see in action.
Wikipedia does a decent job of summarizing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vindman
Some of his interviews were enlightening if you search for the links.
sigzero|2 years ago
sigzero|2 years ago
2OEH8eoCRo0|2 years ago
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