Five of the best books about whistleblowers

James Ball is the global editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. He was on the Pulitzer Prize winning teams that reported the Edward Snowden leaks and the Panama Papers.

At the Guardian he tagged five top books about whistleblowers, including:

Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg is the former Pentagon official and security contractor whose growing despondency at the Vietnam war led him to painstakingly photocopy 7,000 pages of classified documents and share them with newspapers.

Nixon’s attempts to secure Ellsberg’s conviction led to the appointment of his infamous “plumbers”, whose burglary of the Watergate Hotel eventually ended Nixon. This 2002 autobiography is Ellsberg’s account of his extraordinary life as a whistleblower.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue