Phyllis Wong Quotes

We inspector generals have the power of the pen, the power to persuade. But we do not have the authority to implement our recommendations or prosecute wrong-doing.

I did not take an oath to support and defend government illegalities, violations of the Constitution or turn a blind eye to massive fraud, waste, and abuse…. My oath to defend the Constitution took precedence … otherwise I would have been complicit.

Keep under strict surveillance and control those secret establishments which, within your government structures, seem to regard themselves as above the law.

People would know virtually nothing about their government were it not for confidential sources who can speak without fear of retaliation.

You can't keep fraud out of the system. The key to good regulation is how quickly you catch it.

Whistleblowers play a vital role in ensuring that the federal government is accountable to the people it serves.

One of the keys to ensuring accountability is to have civil servants who witness fraud, waste and abuse to blow the whistle.

I got more whistleblowers from the Secret Service than I do anywhere else. And if you look at that department and agency, it's the one place you can never, ever, ever make a mistake - ever.

I want to be clear. No company is too big to be prosecuted. We have zero tolerance for corporate fraud, but we also recognize the importance of avoiding collateral consequences whenever possible.

No one can have 33,000 employees and not do something wrong or have one of them do something wrong.

It is the duty of those serving the people in public place to closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the Government economically administered.

Our Defense Department is the best in the world at winning wars and protecting the country. However on basic management, and fiscal activities, their grade would be a D…. The Pentagon is the last obstacle we have to overcome in order to audit the Defense Department. They are unauditable today.

Virtually all Federal accounting is still oriented toward preventing fraud and theft, not toward controlling costs.

Our magnificent cadre of military officers have the kind of performance at military procurement as our magnificent cadre of business executives would have if they did the fighting—terrible!

There should be a precedent that says that when government higher-ups are committing crimes that whistle blowers should be able to blow the whistle in a way that exposes the crimes that they’ve committed. Whistle Blowers who expose systemic crimes against the population … deserve to be treated as heroes, not as criminals.

The U. S. Government tends to be vindictive in these cases when it comes to people who have exposed their wrongdoing. U. S. political Officials who … violate the Constitution of the United States—they get promotions; the people who expose them, like Mr Snowden, get indictments.

That’s typically how the SEC does it. They come in after the crime has been committed they toe-tag the victims, count the bodies, and try to figure out who the crooks were after the fact—which does none of us any good.

To Any Officer or Employee of the Government: Please tell Mr. Lincoln Steffens anything whatever about the government that you know (not incompatible with the public interest) and provided only that you tell him the truth—no matter what it might be—I will see to it that you are not hurt. T. Roosevelt.

Both parties in Washington waste too much of your money. When I worked there, I helped expose waste and abuse by government contractors.

We encourage whistleblowers to come forward in instances where the government is a victim.

Our public officials have forgotten that they are ultimately accountable to the people who put them in office, that the information they keep in secrecy belongs to all of us. Julian Assange took a courageous step by rightfully returning what belongs to the public domain. For that reason, I believe we need to stand behind him.

The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer.

In the Enron scandal, whistleblower Sherron Watkins is now calling herself Enron Brokovitch. She testified Ken Lay was duped by the other executives. Oh, yeah. When is the last time you got duped and made $100 million?

Going all the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, it is clear that the government is not concerned with damage to national security, because in none of these cases was there damage.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.