"Fuggitaboudit, Jake. It's Chinatown." My story in a nutshell: it involved an administration and an agency I very much admired and trusted. It involved historic personages, presented to this very today, as shining paragons of virtue. Organizations and people I had known, worked with for years, and fully expected their unflagging support. Promises of protection from on high, by people much like the good Rep. Gowdy. People who simply had no idea of the immensity, the gravity of the situation at hand, and who inevitably decided not to go the distance. Guess who got left out front. Leading the parade, all by his lonesome.
The reality: you're a gas bubble. An irritant. You've interrupted the smooth ebb and flow of a federal bureaucrat's daily existence. You've forced supervisors to make a decision, go on record, engage in confrontational meetings. Produce reports. Do their job. No more leisurely lunch dates with the cognoscenti in the Senate cafeteria. You've cast a pall over their pleasant little golf outings. What evolves is an overwhelming desire to "make it all go away." There's a reason you're called a "whistleblower." It's a pejorative. Welcome to Chinatown.