When Whistleblowers Become Traitors: Approaching Internal Relations in the Intelligence Community from a Psychological Perspective

The tension between secrecy and transparency is not a new dichotomy in either US politics or popular conversation. However, in 2013, when Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to the media about an extensive surveillance program known as PRISM, the views held by many Americans regarding security and accountability reached new extremes. This study takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining one of the most central elements of this issue — the Whistleblower’s Dilemma. Referring to a situation of internal ethical conflict in which an individual must compromise one core value to uphold another, the Whistleblower’s Dilemma has no higher stakes scenario than the United States’ Intelligence Community (IC). This quantitative and qualitative content analysis examines interviews with IC whistleblowers who reported on classified information in order to identify motivations and deterrents to their behavior. Four psychological variables were examined (valuation of fairness, loyalty, public service motivation and perceived personal cost) in order to identify potential similarities and differences between internal and external IC whistleblowers. Findings demonstrated that all whistleblowers expressed being disturbed by wrongdoing (fairness), a sense of responsibility (PSM) and values-consistent behavior (PSM). Internal whistleblowers expressed higher PPC, valuation of practical fairness and specific loyalty to the government, while external whistleblowers demonstrated higher PSM, valuation of “big picture” fairness and higher levels of loyalty in general. The results of these findings were applied to the development of internal relations strategies to increase internal reporting, decrease external reporting and contribute knowledge to current insider threat programs.Bachelor of Art