Photo Minute: A family affair

We may admire whistleblowers, but they’re the ones who pay dearly

                                                            Sgt Maurice McCabe

WHO’D be a whistleblower? Even a cursory look at Sgt Maurice McCabe’s life since he alleged wrongdoing with regard to driving penalty points in 2008 would convince most of us that it’s not worth it. For almost a decade he’s been shunned in his workplace, pilloried in the Dáil, labelled “disgusting” by a former Garda commissioner, falsely accused of sex abuse, had his character blackened, his personal reputation trampled upon and his privacy destroyed. Hell hath no fury like a system scorned.

A minister for justice and a Garda commissioner have lost their jobs as a result of the ensuing controversy, but McCabe is the biggest loser here. No matter what the outcome of the various commissions of inquiry that have stemmed from his initial complaint, his life has utterly change.

For despite all our lip service to the conscientious objector, despite all the supposed legal protections and social safeguards put in place — in Ireland’s case the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 — most whistleblowers, in the end, become scapegoats. Even the famous ones pay a high personal price for their activities. Look at Edward Snowden, exiled in Moscow; Chelsea Manning, who served six years in jail; Julian Assange who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Hardly a glorious resolution for any of them.

They’re the ones we know about. There are others whose names have all but disappeared from the record. Take Fr Bruno Mulvihill. Who, you say? Hardly a household name, though he should be. Fr Mulvihill played a major part in the conviction of the notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth in the 1990s. His testimony exposed not just evidence of Smyth’s heinous crimes but a record of persistent and wilful denial by the institutional church which facilitated Smyth to abuse repeatedly in the full knowledge of his sexual proclivities. (It is estimated that Smyth sexually assaulted 117 children in Ireland — and countless victims elsewhere — between 1945 and 1989.) Fr Mulvihill was a whistleblower before it was popular or profitable, if it ever is. In 1964 when he was a 19-year-old novice at the Norbertine Abbey in Kilnacrott, Co Cavan, he heard what he described as peculiar noises from the sacristy where Smyth was closeted with two altar servers. When he reported his suspicions to the abbot, he was told he was “imagining things”.

There are no photos of Fr Bruno (although the demonic images of Smyth persist in the popular imagination) and what is known of him is slight. He attended Garbally College, a seminary boarding school in Ballinasloe, where he was remembered as studious, artistic (he was an accomplished pianist) and otherworldy. “If Enda [his name before he entered the priesthood] ever broke the rules it was to read material of an abstruse theological or scholarly nature without first seeking approval,” a classmate recalls. His decision to go for the priesthood didn’t surprise anyone.

But what turned him into a whistleblower, a role that eventually forced him out of his beloved Church because his life had been made so intolerable within it? What made him so dogged and fearless when his experience of life had been, seemingly, so narrow — a rural home, a Catholic boarding school, followed by a year in a novitiate? Perhaps it was this very lack of worldliness, coupled with his youthfulness and idealism?

C Fred Alford, professor of government at the University of Maryland, author of a study into the personal impact of whistleblowing, Broken Lives and Organisational Power, cites several reasons to explain why whistleblowers do what they do. They have an imagination of the consequences, a sense of the historical moment, identification with the victim, an inability to hold double standards on moral conflict and a sense of shame. He adds another ethical category to account for whistleblowers’ actions — a higher form of narcissism. “Whistleblowers blow the whistle because they dread living with a corrupted self more than they dread isolation from others.”

Whatever motivated Fr Bruno Mulvihill, his life was twinned with Brendan Smyth’s from the day he first reported what he heard. For 20 years, he pursued the paedophile priest, reporting his suspicions to abbots, bishops and the Vatican, in writing and in person. But to no avail. Until 1995, when he returned to Ireland from Germany to make a formal statement to gardaí about his knowledge of Smyth’s crimes.

Smyth was arrested in 1991 by the RUC but after being released on bail went on the run for three years, staying for much of that time at Norbertine Abbey in Kilnacrott . An RUC extradition request remained unprocessed in the attorney general’s office for seven months, triggering a political crisis that led to the 1994 collapse of the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition, led by Albert Reynolds. (Later that year, Smyth was sentenced to 12 years for the sexual assault of 20 victims. A month later he died of a heart attack in the Curragh prison.) Meanwhile Fr Mulvihill left the priesthood in frustration, and died aged 59 in a car crash in Germany in 2004.

Which brings us back to the question — who’d be a whistleblower?

Only the brave and the very resilient, according to Prof Alford. In his research for Broken Lives and Organisational Power he examined how more than 30 whistleblowers had fared after they had made their claims. Most had lost their jobs and would never work in the same field again, as court cases and tribunals dragged on. The majority suffered from depression, and alcoholism was common. For all of them it was a traumatic experience. The instinct to destroy the truth-teller is endemic in human behaviour.

We may well admire the whistleblower in the abstract but the organisations we, and they, belong to, are more primitive in their reactions. Perhaps it’s the fear of the informer, the snitch in our midst? The corporate and institutional instinct is to close ranks and turn on the person who dares to stand up and be counted. Up against a powerful system, the whistleblower is dismissed as a fanatic, unstable, unsavoury, sexually suspect, or someone who’s acting out of personal grievance or for gain. A binary narrative is often imposed on those who rock the boat; they’re either nuts or sluts.

The earliest of the modern-day whistleblowers, helicopter pilot Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam veteran who in 1969 first disclosed the massacre at My Lai of dozens of Vietnamese civilians by US troops, was initially dismissed as a fortune hunter with a vested interest. Ridenhour said later his motives were more closely scrutinised than those whom he was accusing. ‘’The question most often put to me was not why they had done it, but why I had done it.”

Being a whistleblower has eaten up a decade of Maurice McCabe’s life. Not because of anything he did, but because of the ferocity of the official response to his challenging of the administration of power. His motives were idealistic but in the topsy-turvy world of institutional revenge, he’s the one who’s been characterised as corrupt.

Our laws may enshrine protection for whistleblowers, but the experience of the Maurice McCabes and the Bruno Mulvihills of this world tell us otherwise.

By Mary Morrissy who is associate director of creative writing at UCC. 

Photo Minute: Updated with more photos: Moments in time-Russia (1952-1954) in colour

A spy's eye view of Russia: Never-seen-before pictures of Stalin-era USSR taken by a US Army Major deported for espionage

• Douglas Smith has lifted the lid on the extraordinary stash of US Army Major Martin Manhoff from the 1950s

• The US diplomat was expelled from the USSR for espionage for documents left under a napkin on a train

• He had travelled around the country taking thousands of photographs during the Stalin era 60 years ago

• They remained untouched in a closet in Washington, US, until Mr Smith asked if he could explore his home 

An American historian has unearthed never-seen-before pictures of Stalin-era Russia which were taken by an Army Major.

Martin Manhoff's collection have been described as a 'unique visual archive' of life in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

He was deported for spying in 1954, and hid the photographs in his closet in Washington State.

Until today, they remained untouched, but Douglas Smith has lifted the lid on the stash of the pictures taken from behind the Iron Curtain.

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A child walks through a run-down street in Russia in one of a number of extraordinary photographs taken by a US diplomat

Women cross the street in a busy Russian city in a set of photographs unearthed by an American historian - Douglas Smith

A picture taken from a car shows cars and a bus trapped in a massive flood sweeping through the streets of a Russian city

Russian officials walk an empty street in a picture taken from a building above the road by the US diplomat who was deported

Army Major Martin Manhoff served in the US embassy in Moscow from February 1952 until June 1954, when he was expelled from the USSR on charges of espionage. 

During his two years in the Soviet Union, Manhoff traveled widely and recorded much of what he saw on both color slides and color 16mm film. 

All of this material ended up in a closet in his home in Washington State where it lay unseen for over half a century.

Mr Scott, who has a new book out called Rasputin, said: 'After his wife's death, I was asked to visit the Manhoff home this past summer and see whether Martin had left behind anything of value. I was amazed at what I discovered. 

For the past several months I have been digitizing and organizing the photographs and films. 

'Among the gems is approximately 15 minutes of color movie footage of Stalin's funeral taken from an upstairs window of the old US embassy in the Hotel National. 

'There are thousand of color photographs taken on the streets of Moscow, Leningrad, Murmansk, Yalta, and at points along the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

'I am now working on finding the best way to make this unique visual archive available to the public and to find a permanent home for the entire Manhoff archive.' 

A woman walks down a busy Russian streed holding the hand of a youngster while a man in state uniform strides alongside

Another picture from the previously unseen set of Stalin-era Russia photographs from Martin Manhoff's personal archive

A photograph taken by US Army Major Martin Manhoff of what looks like a state-sponsored public ceremony in Russia

Three boys appear happy as they sit on a bench somewhere in Russia in front of what looks like a dilapidated building

The four American diplomats expelled from the USSR on espionage charges traveled around Russia taking photographs

Thousands of photos are said to have been found by Douglas Smith, including this one of what appears to be a typical day out

A woman poses for a photograph in a Russian street as other women rush by behind her in the collection unearthed in the US

A group of teenage girls gathered in uniform smiling and laughing as they pose for a photo taken by the Army Major

                                                 Pictured, Manezhnaya Square

                                            Pictured, Pushkinskaya Square 

                                             Pictured, a market in Yalta, Crimea

                                           Pictured, swimmers, unknown location

 Pictured, street cleaners in front of the GUM department store in the Red Square

              Pictured, Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, about 45 miles northeast of Moscow

 Pictured, two women outside train window, unknown location

                                                              Pictured, unknown location

         Pictured, Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, about 45 miles northeast of Moscow

In the Chicago Tribune on March 26, 1954, the paper covered the story of Manhoff being sent home.

The story said he and three other American diplomats had been sent packing for abusing the hospitality shown to them by Russia. 

It said a local state-run paper carried news that the men had left espionage documents under a paper napkin while on a Trans-Siberian train the previous year. 

The Russian newspaper said: 'If the above mentioned persons would like to get back their documents, which were evidently forgotten in a rush, they can do so by calling the porter's office.'

A conductor claimed the men were making hurried notes on every passing freight train and took photographs of them.

Gareth Davies

Photo Minute: Dust off your camera for the great outdoors