Linda Haydon Ives died this week. If you don’t recognize the name, she was the mother of Kevin Ives, one of the “boys on the tracks,” who were perhaps the most well- known victims of the Clinton Body Count. Kevin and Don Henry were classic examples of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They paid with their lives.

I corresponded with Linda while researching Hidden History and became good friends on Facebook with her. She provided invaluable background on the murders, and the subsequent silencing of several of the boys’ friends who knew too much. Linda died without the satisfaction of seeing the Clinton crime family behind bars, where they belong. Very few outside the conspiracy world know her name, and her valiant efforts to expose this particular slice of official corruption. She certainly didn’t have any professional journalist interested in her story.

Linda Ives shouldn’t have died in vain. She was one of countless individuals who, when caught in the center of this horrific organized corruption, opted to fight instead of surrender. She alone attempted to demonstrate the lengths to which then Governor Bill Clinton and his minions went to distort the truth about the deaths of two teenage boys. She reminded me again of how real people are impacted by the chicanery of our leaders at all levels. Collateral damage, to use one of their phrases excusing the slaughter of civilians in foreign escapades. Kevin Ives was, for all intents and purposes, a civilian casualty in the elite’s perpetual war on common decency.

Another victim of the Clintons who surprisingly lived on for a few decades, Linda Tripp, died last year at age seventy. I spoke to Linda while writing Hidden History and found her to be a gracious lady. She was ridiculed by our state controlled media, with her appearance mocked on Saturday Night Live and elsewhere. Her crime? Warning Monica Lewinsky about the Clinton Body Count- which she told me everyone who worked in the White House was well aware of- and protecting her own life by recording conversations. But she was portrayed as the exact opposite of what she was; yet another shunned whistleblower.

In my view, a whistleblower doesn’t have to mean someone who publicizes wrongdoing at their particular workplace, although special merit should given those types, given the extra risks involved. It can mean anyone who exposes official corruption anywhere. The rare mainstream journalist, from Jim Marrs and Earl Golz to Sharyl Attkisson, who actually attempted to do investigative reporting. Even bullied students who have the courage to expose their teachers and principals for their negligence, or in a shocking number of cases, their culpability.

The three most high profile whistleblowers of our era remain in dire straits. Edward Snowden wasn’t pardoned by Donald Trump, and is in exile in Moscow. Julian Assange wasn’t pardoned either, and the Biden administration demonstrated again how phony the “two party” system is, as they immediately announced they would continue to seek extradition of the Wikileaks founder from a London prison. The espionage and “hacking” charges against him could result in an ultra draconian 175 year prison sentence. It wouldn’t be shocking to see Chelsea Manning prosecuted again. In one of his rare laudatory moves as president, President Obama commuted the remainder of Chelsea Manning’s absurd 35 year sentence as he left office.

Daniel Hale became the first whistleblower convicted under the Espionage Act during the Biden administration. Hale provided documents to author Jeremy Scahill and anonymously wrote a chapter of his book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program. In present-day America, exposing NSA spying, or the chicanery of political officials, or the conduct of U.S. troops abroad, or the details of the government’s hideous drone program, are crimes.

Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road web site, was convicted of “hacking,” trafficking fraudulent documents, and internet drug trafficking, among other charges, in 2015. He was sentenced to an unfathomable double life sentence plus forty years, without the possibility of parole. You will scour the records of our injustice system in vain to find any cold-blooded murderer punished as harshly. And again, Donald Trump managed not to pardon Ulbricht, either.

Julian Assange did everything but literally name Seth Rich as his source for the leaked DNC emails that exposed the party’s conspiracy to steal the 2016 nomination from Bernie Sanders. Our state controlled media twisted that very real corruption into a fantasy where “Russia” stole the election from the saintly Hillary Clinton. Rich was murdered in what we’ve been told was a “robbery gone wrong.” Where nothing was stolen. In perhaps his lone attempt at investigative journalism, Sean Hannity aired a pretty mild report on the questions surrounding Rich’s unsolved death. For his efforts, Hannity was almost fired, and Rich’s family threatened to sue Fox News.

That is perhaps the saddest element of the whistleblower legacy. Families like the Richs, and that of Gary Webb (the reporter who documented how the CIA was shipping crack cocaine into inner cities) not only accept the impossible explanations for their loved ones’ deaths, they stand ready to sue those who have doubts. Webb’s family actually believes that he shot himself twice in the head. Without exception, all the whistleblowers I’ve interviewed over the years reported a decided lack of support from most or all of their family members.

Jim Garrison, perhaps the most visible whistleblower in the JFK assassination, saw his marriage break up because of his work. Many others experienced the same thing. Garrison had the courage to summon his ex-wife, who had left him in his hour of greatest need, to his deathbed, where he insisted on them remarrying so she would qualify to receive his pension. That is real moral courage. Most of Garrison’s children seem lukewarm at best in their support of his tremendous legacy.

The list of murdered whistleblowers is endless. Danny Casolaro, found dead in a bathtub while investigating the “octopus” tangle of conspiracies during the 1980s. Gary Caradori, the private investigator whose work for a Nebraska state senate investigation into child sexual scandals exposed the involvement of powerful local and state officials. His plane went down, killing him and his eight year old son, and his extensive records were never found.

Online articles claimed that nine whistleblowers connected to the BP Gulf Oil spill of 2010 had died mysteriously. One thing is certain; “climate change” activists maintain absolute silence about the biggest environmental disaster of modern times. “Conspiracy theorists” like Jim Keith, William Cooper, and Michael Ruppert all died unnaturally, and in suitably clandestine fashion. Each of them had effectively blown the whistle on official crimes and corruption.

Young computer genius Aaron Swartz supposedly killed himself in 2013, as he was facing incomprehensibly harsh sentences for “criminal hacking.” James Dolan, Swartz’s co-founder of the whistleblower submission system SecureDrop, later allegedly took his own life as well. Adrian Lamo, the “Tony Robbins of the hacking world,” was infamous for turning in then Bradley Manning and implicating Julian Assange. On March 14, 2018, Lamo’s body was found in a low-income apartment at a senior living facility (Lamo was only thirty seven). Lots of pills were found. "Despite a complete autopsy and supplemental testing, no definitive cause of death was identified.” Par for the course in the conspiracy world.

Most people know that an inordinate number of those connected in some way with the JFK assassination went on to die before their time, especially within the first few years after. Other significant Deep State events like 9/11 and Oklahoma City had impressive body counts as well. These witnesses were blowing the whistle on what they’d seen, and it contradicted the official narratives. Whistleblowers. Almost always unwelcome. Most ostracized and fired. Few drawing the interest of any mainstream media outlet. And in too many cases, dying unnaturally.

It takes a lot of fortitude to be a whistleblower of any kind. At any time. But especially now, in the midst of a tyranny that the world has perhaps never experienced. “When the time comes that a citizen can’t tell the truth because the government won’t, it’s time to give the country back to the Indians,” JFK assassination witness S.M. Holland once declared. Our government has no respect for the truth, and places no value on it, because every pillar of the establishment is supported by lies. They aren’t going to give the country back to the Indians. But much as the One Percent of its day stole land from the Native Americans, our leaders today have stolen our heritage.

The lies are everywhere. Get your “free” trial of whatever. But pay $5.99 for postage and handling. That’s about as “free” as America itself now. “Bumper to bumper” car warranties that too often don’t cover a problem that is undeniably between those bumpers. “Natural” products made from GMO crops. You should have read the fine print. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, unless you’re incredibly wealthy. You expected our product to work? At that price? It’s understandable if some have been driven to a cynicism based on Tupac Shakur’s “Trust nobody.”

The quote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” has been attributed to George Orwell. It certainly sounds like something he would have said, but there is no documentation that he ever said it. Still, whoever said it, it has never been more relevant. Whistleblowers expose wrongdoing by telling the truth. The entire establishment, and unfortunately most people, resent them. Even their families fail to support them. The only motivation any whistleblower has is simply to tell the truth. Maybe they believe it will set them free, in the words of the Bible.

“An old error is more popular than a new truth,” a German proverb reminds us. We have been lied to all our lives, about everything. Whistleblowers deserve our respect for countering some of those lies. Don’t allow the messengers to be attacked. Wrongdoers never deserve your support. Whistleblowers do.

"I Protest" by Donald Jeffries

Blessed are the Whistleblowers