The legal definition of whistleblowing is the point John Kiriakou makes at the opening of his own programme whenever the subject arises, and he makes it because he believes the term is generally used as a mood rather than a category.
The claim of ignorance
“The life of a whistleblower is hard,” Kiriakou says. “What most Americans don’t understand is that there’s actually a legal definition of whistleblowing.”[1]
The definition
The definition he gives is a list of five things. Whistleblowing is “bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety.”[1]
The scope he attaches is deliberately broad. “You can blow the whistle on pretty much anything at any level of government.” The definition is not confined to national security, to federal employment, or to classified material — the categories with which Kiriakou’s own case is associated.[1]
Why he insists on it
The distinction matters to Kiriakou because it separates the whistleblower from the leaker, and because it makes the act a described legal category rather than a matter of temperament. His own pride in the label is stated plainly: “there are a lot of things in life that I’m proud of. We all have things in life that we’re proud of. We’re all proud of our children, for example. But, I’m most proud, really, of being a whistleblower.”[1]
The application to policing
Having given the definition, Kiriakou applies it to the field he was introducing that day. “Well, law enforcement is someplace where we really need whistleblowers. We really need the honest people to rise up to the top.”[1][2]
The institution he had in mind was the New York Police Department, which he describes as “arguably the largest police department in the world. It’s actually bigger than most countries’ militaries.” His argument is one of scale rather than of malice: “And it has problems, like any big bureaucracy. Because it has problems, it needs whistleblowers.”[2]