I had—and still have—dedicated congressional and non-government organizations in my corner helping to find an investigating authority to review the alleged reprisal against me by former DNI Dan Coats and his senior leadership. But many of the civil servants, activists and congressional staff predicted to be at the forefront of that fight shrank from protecting whistleblowers when they considered the mortgages to be paid, the orthodontist and day school fees to be paid, and the general cost of doing business inside the Beltway.

After blowing the whistle in 1990 on the Iowa investigation, a fellow naval officer told me in a Newport, Rhode Island parking lot: “I was so proud of how you stood up for the sailors during the investigation; many of us wanted to, but we couldn’t, with kids and wives and all.” When supervisors and managers go after a whistleblower, they can hurt the family too—it is a powerful means of controlling the federal workforce.

As events tumble forward, there will also be anonymized leaks from unnamed “intelligence community officials.” Some of these leaks will be unauthorized disclosures; some will be authorized comments to the press; some will be unacknowledged-but-expected comments to the press to ensure “plausible deniability” for the senior-most officials, to use a Watergate-era term.