No Whistleblower is an ISLAND: A New Model for Whistleblower-Network Relations

Transnational advocates, antiwar movements and other groups contesting state security apparatuses often rely on individual agents in critical junctures of their political campaigns. One such individual practice on the rise in recent years is national security whistleblowing, whereby insiders employed by security and intelligence agencies alert to questionable institutional practices and policies of public concern. Since these whistleblowers are in danger of state retaliation, and in view of their limited resources, their success in engaging with the public largely depends on intermediaries offering outside help. However, to date, the relationship between national security whistleblowers (NSWs) and their networks has been understudied. To address this gap, and building on a combination of concepts from transnational advocacy network studies, contentious politics, and social movement theories, I developed a reciprocal model outlining the possible exchange of ideational resources between NSWs and their transnational networks, referred to as the ISLAND Model. This model is illustrated through two whistleblowing affairs involving wrongdoings of modern warfare post 9/11: UK GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun, whose disclosures challenged “the coalition of the willing” in the second Iraq war, and Israeli former soldier and whistleblower Anat Kamm, who alerted to illegal practices of targeted killing by the IDF in the ongoing “war on terror”. The paper contributes to the understanding of national security whistleblowers as distinct political actors within the broader context of transnational dissent and activist movements and offers insights on the power of supportive networks in global contestations of security apparatuses, both from without and within.