• The right to communicate within the profession, on the job and with colleagues. This basic principle, if respected, would prevent the need for whistle-blowing.
• The right to be part of an institution whose leadership makes integrity the cornerstone of professional expectations. Unless matched by deeds, rhetorical commitments in speeches and memoranda can foster cynicism and be counterproductive.
• The right to due process. Those who witness wrongdoing and allege reprisal must have a fair hearing to defend themselves against harassment.
• The right to information. Sufficient information should be available on the record for whistle-blower quality control to permit responsible dissent while also holding accountable those who make false reports.
• The right to make a difference by submitting misconduct concerns for review to an independent forum that is free from conflict of interest.
• The right to an expedited, timely decision when exercising legal rights.
• The right to interim relief while legal proceedings run their course.
• The right to sanctions against those who retaliate.
• The right to be "made whole" through relief for the tangible and intangible wounds of retaliation.
• The right to vindication. This permits public recognition for those who make significant contributions to integrity.

The introduction of the long-awaited whistle-blower protection act in Canada is just the first step in restoring integrity and trust

For government and corporate bosses, March 2004 erupted with warnings. As the government sponsorship scandal unfolded, it appeared the cat and mouse game between cabinet ministers and their deputies to dodge accountability was finally "game over." The scene was not much better on the corporate front. As stories of one derelict company after another inundated daily papers and nightly newscasts, the world witnessed the handcuffing of Bernie Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom, who surely lamented his failure to exercise greater due diligence and stewardship in the oversight of his company. But Ebbers was not alone, as bosses, implicated in scandal after scandal, were left reflecting on the heavy, sometimes fatal, price paid for stonewalling whistle-blowers - those conscientious employees who had attempted to sound an early alarm on institutional wrongdoing.

Public revelations of corporate and government malfeasance have spawned an industry of consultants and speakers preaching to the boardrooms on the need for organizational integrity. Although a valid and necessary first step in fostering an ethos of good governance, trust and accountability, the pervasiveness of institutional crimes and meltdowns have compelled us to move beyond discussion and lock in action plans for reform. The decline in citizen participation in civic matters and an alarming distrust in government and industry has only reinforced the need for change.

A recent Leger poll indicated that approximately 70% of Canadians believe their federal and provincial political systems are highly or somewhat corrupt, while 45% reported having a more negative view of the business community in 2002, with 66% believing that the accounting and stock-related scandals have resulted from a widespread problem whereby many business executives are exploiting a failing system. The trickle-down effect of this growing cynicism and disaffection is all around us: unstable stock markets, litigation and criminal prosecutions of corporate executives, record low voter turnout, disinterest and non-participation in public discourse and debate, and a cadre of leaders who are complacent and self-preoccupied as a result of the absence of public interest and scrutiny. This is not a solid foundation for a healthy democracy or robust economy.

The tragic events of September 11 and the Enron debacle forced the US to confront fears and doubts about its security and the integrity of its corporate economy. In the aftermath of these events, 2002 was an extraordinary year for whistle-blowers in the US culminating in three female whistle-blowers gracing the cover of Time magazine as Persons of the Year. Sadly, in Canada, recognition of the role and value of whistle-blowers has been slower, but the mood is increasingly less tolerant.

Indeed, the past decade has produced a slow but steady evolution in our understanding of what whistle-blowers are and the role they play in cleansing institutions of rot and corruption. We have learned that whistle-blowers are often the best qualified, the brightest, as well as those employees most committed to the longevity of the organization. It is this loyalty that in fact causes them to risk everything in speaking out. And speak out they have.

A review of major historical precedents demonstrates the power that one individual can have in exposing corruption and wrongdoing that endangers the public. Daniel Ellsberg whose disclosures to The Washington Post and The New York Times of the lies and deceptions perpetrated by the US government in order to justify its role in the Vietnam War led to the beginning of the end of the brutal conflict. Jeffrey Wigand embodied courage and conviction when he disclosed on 60 Minutes the practice of nicotine spiking of cigarettes. His revelations lead to punitive damages in the amount of US$350 billion against the major tobacco companies for their deceptions.

But the single biggest catalyst for change was the 1986 explosion of the Challenger, witnessed by millions. When it was subsequently revealed that three engineers had cautioned against the launch because of faulty seals, only to be overruled by NASA, the collective American conscience was awakened. As a result, in 1989 Congress passed unanimously the Whistleblower Protection Act, providing legal protection for federal whistle-blowers.

The '90s witnessed increased employee activism as workers risked much to reveal tainted food, major government contracting fraud and potential environmental disasters. The nuclear industry came under intense scrutiny as nuclear plants that were 87% and 92% completed were ordered halted because of shoddy workmanship. Increasingly, the common law duty of loyalty to the employer that had traditionally secured employee silence or simply forced an employee to quit was successfully challenged. The notion of ultimate duty to the public good replaced unquestioning loyalty and sycophancy to one's boss. Fear and intimidation, which for decades had secured acquiescence among compliant workforces, was being challenged in favour of greater transparency and workers' right to speak out.

The ultimate days of reckoning occurred in the aftermath of the multi-billion dollar collapses in 2001 of corporate giants Enron and WorldCom. With surprising alacrity, US Congress in July 2002 passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a comprehensive law implementing harsh criminal sanctions for corporate wrongdoers of publicly traded companies. But more important, as a result of the efforts of the Government Accountability Project, the world's leading advocacy group supporting whistle-blowers and good governance, Sarbanes-Oxley provides strong statutory protection for employees who blow the whistle on company misconduct that threatens shareholders' investments or violates federal fraud laws and includes the right to a trial by jury.

Canada doesn't have a Sarbanes-Oxley. But recent events have provoked an outcry of indignation from the public and forced our politicians to take action. On March 22, Paul Martin's government introduced Bill C-25 - the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act - purporting to deliver on his promise to protect whistleblowers. But criticism of the bill has been widespread and in its presentation to the Parliamentary Committee reviewing the legislation, the Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform declared it to be a Trojan Horse creating an illusion of being something other than it really is.

Far from empowering workers, C-25 imposes a restrictive regime on occupational dissent and reinforces a tolerance for arbitrary managerial manoeuvres. Rather than promoting transparency, it values workplace secrecy, the very secrecy that enables sinecures of power to effect betrayals on the public trust. The good news is that C-25 died with the election call. Hopefully the new government will deliver a real whistle-blower protection act, not simply a cynical, politically expedient stopgap.

Nonetheless, the introduction of a law is just a first step. Leading theorists and policy-makers must continue to ask hard questions about the state of our parliamentary democracy and Canada's ability to compete in a global market. Likewise, in a climate of greater corporate and government scrutiny, risk managers are having to examine and redefine traditional concepts of risk and risk-tolerance. And while strengthened government and corporate accountability standards and rules are a sine qua non of the current reform, there is a growing acknowledgement that whistle-blowers, as eyewitnesses to the birthplace of scandals, are essential to bridge the secrecy gap in which corruption and wrongdoing flourish.

Whistle-blowers are employees who exercise freedom of expression rights to challenge institutional abuses of power or illegality that harm or threaten the public interest. They represent the highest ideals of public service and epitomize the golden standard of loyalty to the long-term interests and sustainability of an organization. Studies have demonstrated that whistle-blowers are not the malcontents their detractors allege, but are, in fact, the employees an organization would want — bright, qualified and loyal. As US Defense whistle-blower Ernie Fitzgerald put it, their only crime is that of "committing the truth."

So why then are there so few whistle-blowers or truth-tellers? Because speaking "truth to power" often carries devastating consequences. Every year thousands of employees witness workplace wrongdoing but only a fraction speak out. Most are simply unable to face the consequences and risks associated with becoming an ethical resister while others believe their disclosures will change nothing. So daunting an endeavour is whistle-blowing that as one US whistle-blower put it: "If you have God, the law, the press and the facts on your side, you have a 50% chance of defeating the bureaucracy."

This climate of fear and intimidation leaves grave incidences of unethical and illegal workplace conduct unchallenged year after year, putting organizations and the public at real risk for future catastrophes. Instead of pursuing investigation and/or corrective action, studies and testimony from whistle-blowers have confirmed the practice of shooting the messenger and covering up the wrongdoing. Rather than being acknowledged for their contributions, too often whistle-blowers face harassment, intimidation, demotion, deployment, dismissal, blacklisting, humiliation and the complete paralysis of their career. Polls reveal a dangerously ill Canadian federal public service with one in five workers reporting being the victim of harassment while workplace stress has been cited for wreaking havoc on productivity and profit margins. The cost associated with stress-related or burnout leave amounts to billions of dollars annually. Toxic workplaces are the modern day plague and, as a result, the public is being betrayed. But to understand the true impact of failing to provide protection and safe channels for employees who report wrongdoing, one must move from the theoretical to real life.

Consider the thousands who would have been spared an agonizing and prolonged death if only someone had blown the whistle on Canada's tainted blood. The ex post facto Krever Inquiry, although helpful in allowing Canadians to follow the sequence of events that lead to the tragedy, was of little value to those consigned to an early death. If RCMP officers had been able to speak truth to power we might have learned just what role then prime minister Jean Chrétien and foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy played in protecting Suharto at the APEC conference while the civil rights of peacefully protesting students were drenched in pepper spray.

Surely if employees had been able to speak out, we would know how the gun registry became a black hole of squandered public monies and we would have learned the genesis of the boondoggle at HRDC. We likely would have averted the $60-million Somalia enquiry and lives would have been saved in Walkerton, Ont. It is entirely disingenuous to think there were not hun-dreds, if not thousands, of public servants wanting to bear witness but were afraid, or complacent, unable to contemplate committing the truth and risking their livelihood and their personal well-being.

However, the time for profound attitudinal, legal and policy change is here. Although critics lament that it is not moral rectitude but political expediency that has driven the change, managing major enterprises is rarely guided by utopic aspirations of morality as first principle. In the real world, this opportunity for substantive reform must not be lost.

Whistle-blowers are not going away and therefore the duty for government and the private sector to implement a legitimate disclosure framework is essential. By doing nothing, even the best leaders run the risk of being blamed for the consequences of misdeeds of which they were not even informed. As accountability standards are tightened up and while organizational bureaucracies continue to grow in size and complexity, top executives may be many times removed from lower level critical decisions but nonetheless accountable for those decisions. Disclosure therefore becomes the cornerstone of maintaining integrity and good governance and reduces the possibility of being blindsided by risks taken without one's knowledge. Although Enron was too far gone to be saved by the revelations of whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, the consequences for ignoring the Watkinses of the world are increasingly a risk that organizations are simply not in a position to leverage.

Whistle-blower protection is not a panacea. It will never be a substitute for good leadership. But good leadership must embrace it as a legitimate partner. Justice Brandeis of the US Supreme Court once wrote: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." With the expansion of worldwide communications through the Internet, it will be increasingly difficult for bosses to maintain the secrecy gap in which corruption flourishes. With the increasing vigilance being exercised by regulators, auditors, lawyers and boards of directors, the requirement to establish a legitimate framework that provides safe channels for good faith disclosure of information that threatens the public interest and the organization will be a minimum requirement. The ever-increasing calls for statutory protection for whistle-blowers that provides strong locked-in remedial rights for any damages suffered as a consequence of disclosing wrongdoing can no longer be left unheard. The long march toward simply acknowledging that whistle-blowing is indispensable in maintaining institutional integrity is ending its journey. The new journey starts with our collective commitment to implement legitimate due process and procedures that truly protect whistle-blowers, who through their individual acts of conscience serve the public interest and promote public trust.

Joanna Gualtieri is a lawyer and founder of Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform, Canada's only whistle-blower rights organization: fair.Canada@sympatico.ca.

Technical editor: Peter Jackson, CA, partner with Peter Jackson and Associates in Toronto

They took huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at WorldCom, Enron and the FBI—and in so doing helped remind us what American courage and American values are all about

Dec. 30, 2002
This was the year when the grief started to lift and the worries came in. During the first weeks of 2002, two dark moods entered the room, two anxieties that rattled down everybody's nerve paths, even on good days, and etched their particulars into the general disposition. To begin with, after Sept. 11, the passage of time drew off the worst of the pain, but every month or so there came a new disturbance—an orange alert, a dance-club bombing in Bali, a surface-to-air missile fired at a passenger jet—that showed us the beast still at our door.

In the confrontation with Iraq, in the contested effort to build a homeland defense, we all struggled to regain something like the more secure world we thought we lived in before the towers fell. But every step of the way we wondered—was this the way back? What exactly did we need to be doing differently?

And all the while there was the black comedy of corporate fraud. Who knew that the swashbuckling economy of the '90s had produced so many buccaneers? You could laugh about the CEOs in handcuffs and the stock analysts who turned out to be fishier than storefront palm readers, but after a while the laughs came hard. Martha Stewart was dented and scuffed. Tyco was looted by its own executives. Enron and WorldCom turned out to be Twin Towers of false promises. They fell. Their stockholders and employees went down with them. So did a large measure of public faith in big corporations. Each new offense seemed to make the same point: with communism vanquished, capitalism was left with no real enemies but its own worst impulses. It can be undone by its own overreaching players. It can be bitten to pieces by its own alpha dogs.

Day after day, one set of misgivings twined around the other, keeping spooked investors away from the stock market, giving the whole year its undeniable saw-toothed edge. Were we headed for a world where all the towers would fall? All the more reason to figure out quickly, before the next blow to the system, how to repair the fail-safe operations—in the boardrooms we trusted with our money, at the government agencies we trust with ourselves—that failed.

This is where three women of ordinary demeanor but exceptional guts and sense come into the picture. Sherron Watkins is the Enron vice president who wrote a letter to chairman Kenneth Lay in the summer of 2001 warning him that the company's methods of accounting were improper. In January, when a congressional subcommittee investigating Enron's collapse released that letter, Watkins became a reluctant public figure, and the Year of the Whistle-Blower began. Coleen Rowley is the FBI staff attorney who caused a sensation in May with a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller about how the bureau brushed off pleas from her Minneapolis, Minn., field office that Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now indicted as a Sept. 11 co-conspirator, was a man who must be investigated. One month later Cynthia Cooper exploded the bubble that was WorldCom when she informed its board that the company had covered up $3.8 billion in losses through the prestidigitations of phony bookkeeping.

These women were for the 12 months just ending what New York City fire fighters were in 2001: heroes at the scene, anointed by circumstance. They were people who did right just by doing their jobs rightly—which means ferociously, with eyes open and with the bravery the rest of us always hope we have and may never know if we do. Their lives may not have been at stake, but Watkins, Rowley and Cooper put pretty much everything else on the line. Their jobs, their health, their privacy, their sanity—they risked all of them to bring us badly needed word of trouble inside crucial institutions. Democratic capitalism requires that people trust in the integrity of public and private institutions alike. As whistle-blowers, these three became fail-safe systems that did not fail. For believing—really believing—that the truth is one thing that must not be moved off the books, and for stepping in to make sure that it wasn't, they have been chosen by TIME as its Persons of the Year for 2002.

WHO ARE THESE WOMEN?
For starters, they aren't people looking to hog the limelight. All initially tried to keep their criticisms in-house, to speak truth to power but not to Barbara Walters. They became public figures only because their memos were leaked. One reason you still don't know much about them is that none have given an on-the-record media interview until now. In early December TIME brought all three together in a Minneapolis hotel room. Very quickly it became clear that none of them are rebels in the usual sense. The truest of true believers is more like it, ever faithful to the idea that where they worked was a place that served the wider world in some important way. But sometimes it's the keepers of the flame who feel most compelled to set their imperfect temple to the torch. When headquarters didn't live up to its mission, they took it to heart. At Enron the company handed out note pads with inspiring quotes. One was from Martin Luther King Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."?Watkins saw that quote every day. Didn't anybody else?

What more do they have in common? All three grew up in small towns in the middle of the country, in families that at times lived paycheck to paycheck. In a twist that will delight psychologists, they are all firstborns. More unusually, all three are married but serve as the chief breadwinners in their families. Cooper and Rowley have husbands who are full-time, stay-at-home dads. For every one of them, the decision to confront the higher-ups meant jeopardizing a paycheck their families truly depended on.

The joint interview in Minneapolis was the first time the three had met. But in no time they recognized how much they knew one another's experience. During the ordeals of this year, it energized them to know that there were two other women out there fighting the same kind of battles. In preparation for their meeting in Minneapolis, WorldCom's Cooper read through the testimony that Enron's Watkins gave before Congress. "I actually broke out in a cold sweat," Cooper says. In Minneapolis, when FBI lawyer Rowley heard Cooper talk about a need for regular people to step up and do the right thing, she stood up and applauded. And what to make of the fact that all are women? There has been talk that their gender is not a coincidence; that women, as outsiders, have less at stake in their organizations and so might be more willing to expose weaknesses. They don't think so. As it happens, studies have shown that women are actually a bit less likely than men to be whistle-blowers. And a point worth mentioning—all three hate the term whistle-blower. Too much like "tattletale," says Cooper.

But if the term unnerves them a bit, that may be because whistle-blowers don't have an easy time. Almost all say they would not do it again. If they aren't fired, they're cornered: isolated and made irrelevant. Eventually many suffer from alcoholism or depression.

With these three, that hasn't happened, though Watkins left her job at Enron after a few months when she wasn't given much to do. But ask them if they have been thanked sincerely by anyone at the top of their organization, and they burst out laughing. Some of their colleagues hate them, especially the ones who believe that their outfits would have quietly righted all wrongs if only they had been given time. "There is a price to be paid," says Cooper. "There have been times that I could not stop crying."

Watkins, Rowley and Cooper have kick-started conversations essential to the clean operation of American life, conversations that will continue for years. It may still be true that no one could have prevented the attacks of Sept. 11, but the past year has shown that the FBI and the CIA overlooked vital clues and held back data from each other. No matter how many new missile systems the Pentagon deploys or which new airport screening systems are adopted, if we can't trust the institutions charged with tracking terrorists to do the job, homeland defense will be an empty phrase. The Coleen Rowleys of the federal workforce will be the ones who will let us know what's going on.

As for corporate America, accounting scams of the kind practiced at Enron and WorldCom will continually need to be exposed and corrected before yet another phalanx of high-level operators gets the wrong idea and a thousand Enrons bloom. And the people best positioned to call them on it will be sitting in offices like the ones that Watkins and Cooper occupied. The new Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires CEOs and CFOs to vouch for the accuracy of their companies' books, is just one sign of what Cooper calls "a corporate-governance revolution across the country."

These were ordinary people who did not wait for higher authorities to do what needed to be done. Literature's great statement on unwelcome truth telling is Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People. Something said by one of his characters reminds us of what we admire about our Dynamic Trio. "A community is like a ship," he observes. "Everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm." When the time came, these women saw the ship in citizenship. And they stepped up to that wheel.

Dec. 30, 2002
On a Saturday morning in December, TIME brought Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron together to talk, for the first time, about their parallel experiences over the past year. The women had never met before, but over breakfast they compared stories and marveled at the similarities: their motivations for exposing the flaws of their institutions, their shock at having their secret actions exposed and then condemned in some quarters, and their enduring love for the ideals of their workplaces. They also discovered they shared much in their personal lives, and they enjoyed cheering one another on. The following is an excerpt of their conversation:

TIME: How do you explain why so many people at your organizations did not do what you did?

WATKINS: I think it's the value system at the top. [Cooper and Rowley are nodding.] It's very important that the leaders set the tone. Remember the Tylenol-tampering scare? It threw the company into a tailspin. [But] the chairman of Johnson & Johnson came in, supposedly, and said, "I just looked at our value statement. We have got to do the right thing. We are pulling every bottle of Tylenol off the shelves worldwide." It cost them $300 million to do, but they set the standard for tamper-resistant products, and in the long run he saved consumer loyalty.

TIME: Do you believe you three have become standard setters?

ROWLEY: That's the chairman of the board. I am way down the order. All you can do from the lower echelon is try.

TIME: Why didn't those at the upper echelons try? Or admit their mistakes?

WATKINS: It's ingrained in human nature to fight and argue. My 3-year-old [Marion] won't say she's sorry. She'll sit in time-out forever.

ROWLEY: It's even worse in the U.S., with the adversary system and hiring lawyers. No one does anything wrong anymore.

TIME: If the culture comes from the top, how is it that you three didn't fall prey to it?

COOPER: I think it comes back to values and ethics that you learn through your life. My mother has been a tremendous influence on me: "Never allow yourself to be intimidated; always think about the consequences of your actions." I think this is a wake-up call for the country. There's a responsibility for all Americans--teachers, mothers, fathers, college professors, corporate people--to help and make sure the moral and ethical fabric of the country is strong.

ROWLEY: [Stands up and bursts into applause] I don't care if you're an FBI agent or a priest or a government official. We are all human, and we are all susceptible to any number of vices and mistakes. All we can do is try to uncover and correct them.

WATKINS: If you just say, "I have this admission or I did this wrong, I am sorry," human nature is to say, "I understand."

TIME: Are you known as people who admit when they're wrong?

ROWLEY: [After a pause] I'm trying to think if I have ever been wrong. [Laughter all around.] I don't think I am exceptional. I think everyone makes mistakes.

TIME: You've all spoken about the importance of role models. Who were yours?

COOPER: I would say Oseola McCarty [the Mississippi laundress who donated a $150,000 scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi in 1995], Oprah Winfrey, my mother. And Barbara Bush--she's very comfortable with who she is.

WATKINS: Certainly my mother is still setting the example for me to follow. My parents divorced when I was 14. Divorce wasn't that common back then, especially in the Lutheran Church. [My mother] said, "I am going up there and kneeling, and I dare them not to give me Communion."

TIME: And did they?

WATKINS: Yes, they did.

ROWLEY: Right now, I would say that Iranian professor [Hashem Aghajari] who has been sentenced to death [on charges of blasphemy after he gave a speech calling on people not to follow religious leaders blindly]. [But in the past, it was my maternal] grandparents. They didn't have running water, a bathroom or indoor plumbing until my grandfather was 93. My grandma was orphaned at 11 and went to work to support her brothers and sisters. And my father was orphaned at age 2. He became the town's postman and walked 14 miles a day delivering the mail. You see somebody who didn't have opportunities--and I agree that being disadvantaged is very difficult--but what do you do about it? You have to try hard. Even if you can't win, try hard.

TIME: You are role models to some people. [All of them shake their heads. Rowley crosses her arms; Cooper screws up her face.] Why are you all so uncomfortable with this?

COOPER: We don't feel like we are heroes. I feel like I did my job.

ROWLEY: One of these days, maybe I will do something to deserve awards, and I have got 40 years to try ... The May 21 letter from me? I am repulsed by the idea of thinking that makes me a hero or anything like that...If I jump into an icy river and save a child, and I am lucky enough to get out, then fine. I would hope that I would do that, but maybe not. Maybe I would be a chicken.

TIME: Would any of you go back and change anything you did?

WATKINS: I wouldn't not do it. [But] what I really failed to grasp was the seriousness of the emperor-has-no-clothes phenomenon. I thought leaders were made in moments of crisis, and I naively thought that I would be handing [Enron chairman] Ken Lay his leadership moment. I honestly thought people would step up. But I said he was naked, and when he turned to the ministers around him, they said they were sure he was clothed.

TIME: What would you have done if you had known?

WATKINS: I would have gone to the board.

TIME: Would it have made a difference?

WATKINS: There's a slim chance Enron might not have imploded. It's hard to say. People are much more forgiving than we think. The scary thing is the amount of resistance we met. People I thought were my friends and I thought would support me backed away. They said, "Sherron, you're on your own on this."

COOPER: [Nods in agreement] It's a lonely road.

ROWLEY: I am not a good speaker. If you look at the Senate testimony, I think I set a record for uhs. Sometimes I couldn't even work out what I was trying to say. But I have no regrets on taking action.

WATKINS: [Addressing Rowley] This is the safety of the nation. It needed to be out.

ROWLEY: I don't think everything is really rosy and peachy now, and I don't see any concrete changes that are directly attributable to my actions. But it doesn't mean you can stop trying. And if I end up flipping burgers, come buy some.

TIME: What price have you paid for these actions?

COOPER: I certainly knew it was possible that I would lose my job. I told my husband that I am going to report to the [WorldCom board's] audit committee what I need to report. I even cleared some things out of my office. But the fear of losing my job was very secondary to the obligation I felt.

WATKINS: I was really shocked when I saw a detailed memo about the pluses and minuses of discharging me. You think, I am doing this for the good of the company. I have got the best interests in mind. You think the company should be on your side.

TIME: Have any of you been thanked? [All three women dissolve into laughter.]

TIME: O.K., what was your lowest moment?

ROWLEY: There's no doubt that the lowest moment was 9/11. The towers hadn't fallen yet, and we were trying to finally get permission from headquarters to seek a search warrant [to get into the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was indicted last December as a Sept. 11 co-conspirator]. This agent [said to me], "This is going to be just like the inquiry at Pearl Harbor. We are going to have to tell the truth."

TIME: All of you shy away from discussing the fact that you're all women, but it's something other people notice. Why do you think there's no connection?

COOPER: I think it could have just as easily been a man. We are all people who are looking to stand up and give our best. I have always been honest and forthright, and it doesn't matter who it is I'm talking to.

WATKINS: I do think there's something to being a woman. There's a little bit of a boys' club, whether it's the golf or the sports talk. I am really uncomfortable with making general statements. But men are more reluctant to put their friends in jeopardy. I don't necessarily want friendships in the workplace. I think most men have no friendships outside the workplace. [Also] society doesn't ask women what you do for a living. Your ego or self-worth isn't [as] tied to what you do.

TIME: Did you love your jobs?

ROWLEY: The idea of this law-enforcement group that is able to solve a crime, get the bad guy and ideally even prevent the crime from occurring? Honestly, I would not want to do anything else. All agents join the FBI with that in mind. We are the good guys. The sad thing is, at some point you see the warping of it, the overlegalization of it, the gaming of the criminal-justice system.

WATKINS: It's also the gaming of corporate America. Enron was a love-hate thing. The opportunities I was afforded and the deals I got to do and the places I got to see--on that end, it was just stupendous. Then there are the times when you say, Why can't we do it right? Why do we have to be pushing the accounting envelope?

COOPER: I love my job. I have always loved it. There was an entrepreneurial spirit; it was an exciting place to be.

TIME: Are there any specific things you've done to help cope with the stress?

WATKINS: I think the ultimate distraction is a darling 3-year-old. You come home, and you almost have to put that away because they're wanting books read, games played.

COOPER: Just to get home and hug my girls and my husband. We have strong support systems at home with our families.

WATKINS: When Congress leaked my memos and it was all over the news, we would be watching, and Marion [her 3-year-old daughter] was getting so bored with it. My husband said we wanted to watch the news, and she piped up, "Well, how about some Elmo news?"

TIME: Were you aware of one another, reading about one another?

ROWLEY: I'm not usually focused on business, but when their news broke, I read that and saw some encouragement. The same reason I wrote the letter was the reason for WorldCom and Enron. I thought, Oh, gosh, there's someone doing the right thing.

WATKINS: I think it's uncanny what similar stories we have.

ROWLEY: [Addressing Watkins] Whenever you talk, I think, Oh, my gosh, great. She's saying what I think. [Rowley stands up and pounds her fist into her palm as she says this.]

WATKINS: It's disheartening to see that the FBI has as many problems as corporate America. In this country, we have a vacuum in leadership. We value the wrong people. Warren Buffett is boring, and he doesn't give too many interviews, but he didn't invest in tech stocks because he didn't understand how they made money. He was right. But we value splashy leaders.

COOPER: People who move to the top are typically racehorses, not workhorses. And they're very charismatic.

WATKINS: And the dark side of charisma is narcissism.

TIME: Let's talk about the word whistle-blower. Why don't any of you like it?

ROWLEY: I hate the term whistle-blower.

COOPER: In elementary school, kids are called tattletales. It has a negative connotation.

TIME: What was the reaction to you in the workplace and on the street?

ROWLEY: Even in my [Minneapolis field] office, with quite a bit of support, still a lot of people are looking at me like, What the heck?

COOPER: You're going to have people who are supportive, and you're going to have people who take shots. All that is part of it.

WATKINS: In January and February there were hundreds of e-mails, voice-mails, letters from the Enron rank-and-file employees. There was a sense of overwhelming relief because they had thought the top executives would get away with it. People were high-fiving; they were pumped. Now no one recognizes me.

ROWLEY: In Minnesota, people get over these things really fast. It's over. This fame thing is greatly overrated.