This list of major whistleblowers from various countries. The individuals below brought attention to abuses by the government or large corporations. Many of these whistleblowers were fired from their jobs or prosecuted in the process of shining light on their issue of concern. This lists whistleblowers associated with events that were sufficiently notable to merit a Wikipedia article about the whistleblower or the event, and "Year" is the year of the event. This list is not exhaustive.
Before 1960 YearImageNameOrganizationAction1515–52Bartolomé de las CasasSpanish slave plantations in the New WorldIn 1515, he advocated, before King Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, on behalf of rights for the natives. In his early writings, he advocated the use of African slaves instead of natives in the West-Indian colonies. Later in life, he came to see all forms of slavery as equally wrong.Hanke, Lewis (1951). Bartolomé de Las Casas: An interpretation of his life and writings. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1777Samuel ShawUnited States Continental NavyAlong with Third Lieutenant Richard Marven, midshipman Shaw was a key figure in the passage of the first whistleblower law passed in the United States by the Continental Congress. During the Revolutionary War, the two naval officers blew the whistle on the torturing of British POWs by Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy. The Continental Congress enacted the whistleblower protection law on July 30, 1778, by a unanimous vote. In addition, it declared that the United States would defend the two against a libel suit filed against them by Hopkins.1864 Silas Soule United States Army A Captain in the U.S. Army, Soule was in command of Company D, 1st Colorado Cavalry, which was present at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864, when he refused an order for his men to join the Sand Creek massacre in slaughtering Indian women, children, and elderly men. Soule quickly reported the facts of the massacre to another officer, who alerted the federal government. During the subsequent Congressional inquiry, Soule testified against the massacre's commanding officer, John Chivington. Soon afterward, Soule was murdered, possibly in retaliation. Dying at age 26, Soule is remembered as having led a life of "moral courage" at great personal risk.1893Edmund Dene MorelCongo Free StateEnglish shipping clerk turned journalist who reported on the atrocities in the Congo Free State in Africa and became an anti-slavery campaigner. His revelations led to a strong campaign against Belgian King Leopold II's autocratic regime in his African territory, where the rubber plantations brutally exploited slave labor.1930Boris BazhanovCPSU SecretariatStalin's secretary, who fled abroad in 1928, and while living in the Western countries, exposed many secrets concerning Stalin's rise to power and the Stalin regime. The first book of his memoirs was published in Paris in 1930.1931Herbert YardleyUnited States Cipher BureauCryptologist and Head of the Cipher Bureau, the first U.S. SIGINT agency better known as "The Black Chamber", who exposed the inner workings of the organization and its surveillance policies in his eponymous 1931 book, The American Black Chamber, after the United States Department of State withdrew funding from the organization's activities in 1929, citing ethical concerns. However, while "The Black Chamber" ceased operations following the withdrawal of funding, the publication of Yardley's book two years later and its resultant controversy in government circles caused the amendment of the Espionage Act of 1917 to prohibit the disclosure of foreign code or any communication transmitted through code. Though Yardley remains a controversial figure in the intelligence community, he was honored by the National Security Agency in 1999.1933Smedley ButlerUnited States Marine CorpsRetired U.S. Marines Corps Major General, a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, who alleged to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives that business leaders had plotted a fascist coup d'état against the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in what became known as the Business Plot. In his book War Is a Racket, Butler listed well-known U.S. military operations that he alleged were not about protecting democracy as was told to the public but in furthering the business interests of U.S. banks and corporations. 1933/ 1934 Herbert von BoseSchutzstaffel Press Chief of Adolf Hitler's conservative Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen. He used his position inside the government apparatus to pass on information about secret atrocities and wrongdoings committed by the Nazi Government and Part organizations (especially the SA and SS) to the foreign press - especially to Claud Cockburn, editor of the London-based muckraking journal The Week - to alarm the world public about those goings-on. On June 30, 1934 during Night of the Long Knives he was murdered by a squad of SS men dispatched to his office by Heinrich Himmler, who shot him in the back of the head. Jessica Mitford dubbed him "Deep Throat of the Third Reich"Jessica Mitford: A Fine Old Conflict, New York 1977, p. 121.1942Jan KarskiPolish Home ArmyPolish resistance fighter, who during World War II twice visited the Warsaw ghetto, and met with United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with the UK Foreign Secretary, and with the Polish shadow government in London, to report what he had witnessed concerning conditions for Jewish people, and the extermination camps. His report was not taken seriously by any authority.
1960s–1970s