He was new on the job, trying to find out why morale was so low. In a gathering with two senior managers, he asked what they didn’t like about their work.
“I hate that we dump,” one of them confided.
“What do you mean?” Blake Percival asked.
The answer — that the company was cutting corners performing the federal background checks used in granting security clearances — put him on a collision course with his superiors and eventually turned him into one of the government’s most significant whistleblowers in years. That confrontation not only cost him his job and dignity, it left him in such financial distress that at the beginning of this week, he had just $54.51 in his bank account, hoping he would make it to his next payday.