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It's not hard to think of moments when history was changed by someone who blew the whistle on government missteps. Daniel Ellsburg, for instance, leaked the Pentagon's secret history of its involvement in Vietnam to the New York Times and hastened public disillusion with that war.
很难想起因有人揭发政府的失误而改变历史轨迹的事件。例如，Daniel Ellsburg 向纽约时报泄露了五角大楼在越战时期的秘密历史，加速毁灭了公众对战争的幻想。
FBI official Mark Felt, known to the world as Deep Throat, helped bring down the Nixon administration after the Watergate scandal. Most “whistleblowers,” though, never get much fame or public notice. As a result, they're vulnerable to being fired or silenced.
以“深喉”闻名于世的联邦调查局的官员 Mark Felt 在水门事件后，帮助扳倒了尼克松政府。然而大多数的“弊端揭发人”却从未得到应有的名声或引起公众的注意。因而，他们很容易遭到解雇或被迫保持沉默。
As far back as 1912, Congress recognized that in our democracy, public knowledge of government wrongdoing—or waste—is vital to society's welfare. Its broadest protection for whistleblowers came in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act, which guard most federal employees who step forward from retaliation for their actions. These laws aren't perfect, but they've helped ordinary Americans serve their fellow citizens.
早在1912年国会就意识到，在民主社会公众应该对政府的不当行为或者铺张浪费有所了解，这是非常重要的社会福利。1978年的《文官改革法》以及1989年的《举报人保护法》保护大多数的联邦雇员不因他们的行为受到报复，这是对告密者最广泛的保护。这些法律并不堪称完美，但它们帮助美国普通老百姓为自己的同胞服务。
Whistleblowers have disclosed a cover-up of airplane near-misses at Dallas-Fort Worth airport, revealed toxic emissions by Federal Prison Industries, and laid bare repeated violations of nuclear safety laws at a plant in Ohio—misdeeds we might never have known about, were it not for the protection Congress gave them.
告密者揭发了达拉斯-沃斯堡大型机场试图掩盖飞机劫持未遂事件；揭露了联邦监狱工业公司释放有毒气体这一事实；将俄亥俄州一家核电站屡次违反核安全法公布于世——如果不是国会提供保护，我们永远不会知道这些罪行。
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