CASE 5.

1 Two Whistle-Blowers

Chuck Atchinson

At the age of forty, Charles (Chuck) Atchinson had achieved a measure of success. His
job was a quality control inspector for Brown & Root, a construction company building a
nuclear power plant for the Texas Utilities Electric Company, paid more than $1,000 a week.
This was enough to provide a comfortable house for his wife and thirteen-year-old daughter,
along with new cars, vacation trips, and a bounty of other luxuries. Four years later, the family
was six months behind on the rent on a trailer home on a gravel street in Azle, Texas, near Fort
Worth, Chuck Atchinson had been fired by Brown & Root and was unable to find work. The
house was repossessed, and most of the family’s furniture and other possessions had been sold
to cover living expenses and mounting legal bills.
The source of Chuck Atchinson’s misfortune was his inability to get his superiors at
Brown & Root to observe safety regulations in the construction of the Comanche Peak nuclear
power plant being built in Glen Rose, Texas, and to correct a number of potentially dangerous
flaws.
 When his repeated complaints to the company got no response, he brought the
situation to the attention of government regulators.
 Soon after that he was dismissed from his job.
 Brown & Root justified the dismissal on the grounds of poor performance as a safety
inspector, and the company attempted to downplay the credibility of his charges.
 Around the time that he was testifying to government regulators, he received
anonymous threatening telephone calls warning him to keep quiet, and he suspected
that he was being followed and his telephone monitored.
Finding a new job was not easy. He worked for a while driving a wrecker, ands out of
desperation he even gathered cans along the highway for sale as scrap aluminum. After finally
landing a job as an inspector at a plant in New Orleans, Chuck Atchinson was on the jib for only
a week before he was subpoenaed to give further testimony about the Comanche Peak plant.
According to his own account, “When I got back, my boss called me in and fired me. He said I
was a troublemaker.” He was not even given the chance to assume a new job at a power plant
in Clinton, Illinois. “Two days before I was to leave,” he said, “they called and said they wouldn’t
take me because I was a troublemaker. I tried other plants and I found that I was blacklisted.”
Chuck Atchinson eventually found stable employment doing quality control work for the
aerospace division of the LTV Corporation, and he is finally getting back on his feet financially.
But the psychic scars still remain. Especially disturbing to the family was the loss of friends.
“The whistle-blower has about the same image as the snitch does,” he said. “Everyone thinks
you’re slime.” Still he expresses few regrets for blowing the whistle and asserts that he dould
do it again if he had to. “I’ve got absolutely nothing in my hand to show as a physical effect of
what I’ve done, except the losses I’ve had. But I know I was cutting edge of the knife that
prevented them from getting their license and sent them back to do repairs. I know I did right.
And I know I’ll always sleep right. I’ll sleep like a baby.”

Joseph Rose

In the course of his work as an in-house attorney for the Associated Milk Producers
Incorporated (AMPI), Joseph Rose became aware of illegal political contributions to the Nixon
reelection campaign. He knew that the confidentiality of the attorney-client relation barred him
from voluntarily releasing information about past contributions, even if they constituted a
criminal conspiracy. At the same time, his legal training told him that his present activity –
helping to cover up illegal activity – made him a co-conspirator in a crime. He first contacted the
president of AMPI, a Wisconsin dairy farmer, and told him that he would not approve certain
payments. Warned that he was now guilty as anyone else, he concluded that there was no
point in going to the other executives of AMPI, who were all deeply implicated in the illegal
scheme. So he decided that he had to collect the incriminating evidence and present it to the
board of directors. In his own words:

I was never allowed to do that. My attempt [to talk to the board] happened on a weekend during their
convention in Minneapolis. Labor Day followed, and then Tuesday I went to work. I found a guard posted
 at my door; locks had been changed. The general manager demanded to see me. My services had become
very, very unsatisfactory. After I was fired, I felt virtually a sense of relief. I was glad to be out of it, and I
planned to keep my mouth shut. Then I had a call from one of the lawyers involved in an antitrust case
against AMPI. He said, “They are really slandering you – making some very vicious attacks on you.” I had
indicated to AMPI executives that if the board would not listen to me, I would go right to the dairy
farmers and they obviously felt my career and credibility had to be completely destroyed to protect their
own tails.

In the end, AMPI was fined $35,000 and forced to pay $2.9 million in back taxes. Two
executives were convicted, and one received a prison sentence. (The other executive died while
waiting to be sentenced.) Joseph Rose also paid a price in terms of the disruption of his career.
Despite the fact that he had been compelled by law to testify before Congress and to the grand
jury led by the Watergate special prosecutor, Joseph Rose was regarded by potential employers
as someone who had been disloyal and was unreliable as an employee.
Joseph Rose was able to put his life back together. He has been able to establish a
successful practice in San Antonio, Texas, and some of his clients come to him because of his
reputation for integrity and toughness in the face of adversity. However, the experience has left
with a cynical view of American business.

… All of the public utterances of corporations and indeed of our government concerning “courage,
integrity, loyalty, honesty, and duty” are nothing but the sheerest hogwash that disappear very rapidly
when it comes to the practical application of these concepts by strict definition. The reason that there are
very few… [whistle-blowers] is that the message is too clearly out in this society that white-collar crime, or
nonviolent crime, should be tolerated by the public at large, so long as the conduct brings a profit or a
profitable result to the institution committing it….