Ambiguity and risk are par for the course with whistleblowing. The space between people’s rights to government transparency and the government’s need to keep certain secrets can seem nebulous. But whatever a potential whistleblower decides, one thing is clear: whistleblowing stories are most often tragedies. 

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The WikiLeaks releases in 2010 came almost entirely from a single source: Chelsea Manning. While deployed in Iraq, the struggling U.S. Army private was also fighting a private war with her identity. When she was given access to classified information, Manning finally found an opportunity to assert her true beliefs to the world.

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Hacker and transparency activist Julian Assange founded the website WikiLeaks in early 2006. In 2010, he garnered worldwide attention for several massive information drops that exposed some of the darkest aspects of U.S. foreign relations — and set himself up as one of the most compelling figures of contemporary whistleblowing.

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The modern origins of whistleblowing reach all the way back to a surprising source: Benjamin Franklin. The act has developed significantly into the 20th century — and so have the legal consequences.

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Investigating the blast and compiling evidence was a huge undertaking. And in the 25 years since the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh was turned into something of a folk hero, with his rhetoric inspiring copycats and seeping into mainstream politics.

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On the morning of the attack, McVeigh parked a rental truck below the Murrah building’s daycare center. At 9am, he ignited the bomb’s two-minute fuse and fled. The explosion was catastrophic, and the day thereafter was filled with tragic deaths, miraculous survivals — and the hunt for the person at the center of it all.

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After coming of age in the early ‘90s, Timothy McVeigh became increasingly radicalized against the U.S. government. Witnessing tragic events at Ruby Ridge and Waco motivated him to plan and execute the most devastating incident of domestic terrorism in American history.

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On April 19, 1995, U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.

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The world looked on in shock when an assassin shot Pope John Paul II in May 1981. The official story was that a crazed lone gunman was to blame, but some theories suggest the attack may have been part of one of the biggest international coverups of all time… 

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In 1917, three children in Fatima, Portugal received a series of prophetic messages that were kept secret for decades — first at the behest of the heavenly message-giver, and then by the Vatican itself. When all three secrets were finally revealed, they made for an apocalyptic story of war, destruction… and redemption. 

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