If he had gone to the government first he would have been told to keep his mouth shut on pain of arrest and imprisonment or worse and the government would then have ignored his information. What the public doesn’t know won’t hurt the government.
Exactly.
And they'd still probably be harassing him, but since noone would know what the hell he was talking about, he'd just sound like he was paranoid.
Personally, I'd sue the thugs for false imprisonment, and tell them if they want to know about what he'd published, they could bloody well just read it for themselves, and if they'd like some consulting services, the hourly rate is $500.