The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "whistle-blower" ...
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The Great Mortgage Cover-Up
These stories reveal one of the hidden causes of the financial crisis- how corporate codes of silence helped lenders to flood the nation with toxic mortgages. They document evidence that major banks and lenders systematically muzzled whistle blowers who tried to fight against forged documents, falsified appraisals, and other frauds in the mortgage industry.
Tags: financial crisis; mortgages; forged documents; crisis
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40mm Grenade Production Problem
A "whistle blower" tip lends the I-Team to investigative whether production problems at a Florida company making 40mm grenades for the U.S. military is resulting in defective parts getting into grenades.
Tags: grenades; military; Defense Department
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Follow the Money
This is an extensive series conducted to examine questionable earmarks on many levels. The story covers money trails from the Presidential election to wasted medical drugs that are (literally) being flushed down the toilet.
Tags: lobbying; public waste; banking bailout; Presidential election; whistle blower; Qui Tam; Medicaid; NASA
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Meet the Robinsons
The investigation found just 1 percent of commercial airlines carry armed federal air marshals, and cities most vulnerable include New York City and Washington, D.C. Air marshals who are critical of the Transportation Security Administration agreed to go on camera only in silhouette because of past retaliation by the agency - a fact well-documented in government whistle-blower reports.
Tags: Transportation Security Administration; air marshal; airline industry; Sept. 11; whistle-blower; watch list
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Demoted to Private: America's Military Housing Disaster
Political patronage, the zeal to privatize and a failure at background checks led to a disaster for taxpayers and military families in Pentagon housing programs in six states. All three branches of the service gave 8,000 military houses and billion-dollar contracts to a company headed by a politically-connected Texan involved in a messy bankruptcy and a Connecticut property management firm that had been previously suspended from HUD housing projects because it diverted millions to its own uses.
Tags: military; housing; privatization; Pentagon; government contracts; corporate abuse; whistle-blower
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Kwame Kilpatrick: A Mayor in Crisis
The Free Press's investigation into Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick exposed "public corruption at the highest levels of government in America's 11th largest city. Schaefer and Elrick's reporting revealed that Kilpatrick and his top aide lied under oath during a police whistle-blower trial and sought to cover up those lies by brokering a secret $8.4 million settlement paid for with the taxpayers dollars."
Tags: FOIA; tax corruption; fraud; Philip Meyer Award; 2009 Pulitzer Prize: Local Reporting
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Airport Insecurity
With the help of a whistle blower, KOMO-TV showed that airport security was lax when it came to maintaining security among airport staff. Outfitting the "whistle blower with a hidden camera and on different days and times of days, [the] whistle blower went into every secure area of the airport without once being checked, or questioned." As a result of this report, TSA announced that it would screen all employees.
Tags: airport; security; whistle blower; hidden camera; Transportation Security Administration; Port Authority; TSA; employees
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The War on Whistle-blowers
The American whistleblower courts was set up to protect whistleblowers from retaliation has instead been used to punish them. An examination of 3,600 court cases since 1994 showed that 97 percent of federal whistleblowers lost their cases
Tags: Teresa Chambers; Salon; salon.com; Bogdan Dzakovic; Federal Aviation Administration;
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Whistle Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
In San Francisco, a "secret Internet switching room packed with surveillance gear and wired to AT&T's backbone network" was interconnected to other major Internet providers. The documents detailing this setup had been sealed due to a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, in which a civil liberties group "charged that the company had helped the government eavesdrop on Americans' domestic and international Internet traffic without a warrant."
Tags: Internet; national security; government eavesdropping; Web surveillance; AT&T; NSA
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Blowing In The Wind
Two whistle blowers share the story of how State Farm Insurance "was systematically defrauding its loyal customers" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Sisters Cori and Sherri Rigsby are State Farm insurance adjusters who told ABC News about how State Farm employees "were instructed to fraudulently alter customers' claim forms and even shred documents so the famous insurance company could avoid paying benefits to families who lost everything in the hurricane."
Tags: Hurricane Katrina; State Farm insurance; Cori Rigsby; Sherri Rigsby; whistle blowers