Holding on to Integrity and Paying the Price: A whistleblower’s story

By Blake Percival

This book is the story of Whistleblower Blake Percival. In 2011 Blake blew the whistle on the background investigation process of the United States government. Blake's revelations brought to light serious problems that might have allowed Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis to slip through the cracks rather than be investigated properly and cleared or denied access as found appropriate. Blake's decision to do the right thing was easy for him to make but came at a high price. In this book, you'll hear firsthand who this man is that exposed all this. You'll learn in detail what he did and how he did it as he shares intimate details about why someone would go through such a struggle. You'll hear the inside story of what it took, why he would do it, and what it was like to win in the end. His story just goes to show that you can do the right thing and win.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781684565962

Book preview

Before USIS

If there’s one thing I learned for sure in my whistleblowing experience, it’s that there are times when you must listen to a lawyer, and this is one of those times. To avoid needless lawsuits, I’ll be changing the names of certain individuals. When I do this, I’ll indicate that I’ve done so by placing an asterisk (*) directly before that name to indicate that it’s not the individual’s real name.

I was born in Panama City, Florida, in 1966. My father was a civil servant and an officer in the US military reserves. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, as were most mothers at the time. I was the youngest of five children. By all accounts, I had a typical Southern upbringing for that time. For anyone that doesn’t understand what that is, I’d describe it like this. There was a lot of love in our family, and we attended church often. We went to church on Sunday for Sunday school, then for morning worship services, then we returned for evening services. We also attended midweek services on Wednesday nights. My family hadn’t always attended church; we started when I was about five years old. Before that, we had Sunday services in our living room. That may sound strange, but for me as a young child, it made perfect sense. You see, after being born in Florida, my father was reassigned to work in the Pentagon in 1968, and from 1968 to 1970, we lived in the Washington, DC, suburb of Springfield, Virginia. We never connected with a church there and thus had our own church services at our home. Then in 1970 my father was transferred to Montgomery, Alabama, and we settled in Wetumpka. Wetumpka is a quaint community centered around families and wholesome activities. It’s beautifully nestled between a ridgeline created by an ancient meteor impact and the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers. Our family moved into an antebellum home that was located on Mansion Street, which derived its name from our home and the others like it on this street. We soon found ourselves involved at the First United Methodist Church, and in everything else in our new hometown of Wetumpka.

We attended the local public schools until I was in the fifth grade. About midway through the fifth grade, my parents decided to place me and my next older two brothers, Geoff and Kyle, in a private Christian school in Montgomery. From this point until I graduated from high school, I was educated at Christian schools.

It was at Wetumpka Elementary School while in the first grade that I would have my first crisis of conscience. My brothers and I rode the school bus to and from school, and the bus stop was at the hardware store across the street from our home. On this particular morning, it was raining and as the workers at the store always did in bad weather, they invited all of us waiting on the school bus into the store. I went in, and while waiting, I began looking around the store. For some reason, a bin of screwdrivers caught my eye, and I just had to have one. They weren’t expensive, but I don’t think I even had a concept of the value of money yet, I just knew I wanted this screwdriver. So I stuck it in my pocket. Yep, I stole it.

By that evening, I was almost physically sick about what I had done. I decided I had to get rid of the screwdriver, so I went into the backyard and threw it as hard as I could into the woods behind our home thinking this would make me feel better, but it didn’t help, and by the following day, I was even more miserable. I went to my mom and told her what I had done and how I had gotten rid of the screwdriver and couldn’t return it. She explained to me that the way to make it right was to go to the store and own up to what I had done.

Later that day, she and I went to the store, and she asked if we could speak with the manager. The manager invited us into an office and Mom had me explain what I had done. I’ll never forget the shame I felt while telling him, or the sense of relief when he told me he forgave me and not to worry about it anymore. I think that experience was crucial in forming what was acceptable to me. It’s a shame that more people don’t listen to their conscience. I’m so glad I didn’t ignore it until it went away.

We did switch religious denominations a couple of times. You see, my father was raised Pentecostal, his father had been an Assembly of God preacher, and my mother was raised Baptist.

In the early 1970s we became Pentecostal.

We switched from the Methodist Church in Wetumpka to the Assembly of God in Montgomery. After a few years at this church, we switched to a Church of God that was also in Montgomery. I point out where these churches were to bring out the point that I was shown from a young age that church was important, and we would drive twenty to thirty miles each way for each service. I became a Christian at the age of ten during a Nora Lam revival at a church we visited in Montgomery. As a teenager, we attended Vaughn Road Church of God, and it was at this church, at the age of fourteen, that I met my future wife and soulmate, Melanie Oberholtzer.

Often during Sunday school, they would call on different members of the group to share their testimony. If you aren’t familiar with this term, it simply means to share your story. For me, this was scary, and I was always petrified that I’d be called on. I didn’t think I had a story worth sharing. Nothing shocking had ever happened to me. I didn’t have a story I would enjoy listening to, and I had no desire to share a boring story with others. I vividly recall praying these exact words, God, give me a testimony. Well, here we are, thirty-five to forty years later, and boy, did He!

As a teenager, I began to seek my own identity. I rebelled, or so I was told. I continued to see Melanie even though my mother didn’t approve. I skipped school. Eventually, Melanie and I separated when I was about eighteen, and about a year later, I found myself in a bad relationship that was somewhat destructive in nature. I was trying to get back on track with the way I was raised, and so I married the young lady I was in this relationship with. Almost immediately, I knew I had made a big mistake, but I tried to move forward. We soon found out she was pregnant, and again trying to do the right thing, as well as wanting to provide for my young family, I joined the US Army. When I joined, the Army was offering a bonus if you let the Army choose your career field, and I had joined for the money anyway, so I let them. They chose based on my ASVAB (placement test) scores. For me, they chose material control accounting specialist, or 76P, as my military occupational specialty (MOS). For the next four years, I would work as a supply accountant. I was trained to handle the supply flow at the division level within the Army. I didn’t enjoy it, but I learned valuable accounting skills that would become more valuable later in my life, and that first marriage barely lasted two years. During that marriage, I did become a father for the first time as my daughter Sandy was born.

It was now 1988, and I immediately looked up Melanie Oberholtzer, who now had a son, Travis. Within a few months, we were married. Not a single person from my side of the family came to our wedding, but it was beautiful. I had served at Fort Ord, California, initially, and now I was assigned at Fort Rucker, Alabama. I had been granted child custody in the divorce, but the judge stipulated that it be joint with my mother, since I was now a single soldier and subject to being deployed. Well, as earlier stated, my mother had not approved of Melanie, and that had not changed, so she challenged my child custody. It would have been so easy to walk away from Sandy. My mother was fighting for her, but after about two years and thousands of dollars that, let’s face it, an E-4 in the Army doesn’t have, I prevailed. I was about done with my initial four-year enlistment when my then twenty-one-year-old wife and I found out we were being blessed with child number 3, Ashley. I had intended to get out of the Army, but that was no longer an option. I reenlisted, but this time, I’d get to choose my career field.

I wanted to be a military policeman, and it appeared that if I switched to be an MP, I’d also get promoted to sergeant, E-5. I reenlisted as quickly as I could, but the act of enlisting or reenlisting was very serious for me. When you take the oath of enlistment, it should be special, and it has no expiration date. The oath states,

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

I’ve taken that oath twice. The first time, I took it at the Military Entrance Processing Station in Montgomery, Alabama, and my father, Daniel S. Percival Jr., colonel, USAFR, administered it.

This time my father was no longer on this earth as he had passed away in 1988, so I had my father’s brother Gayle W. Percival, major, USAR, come to Fort Rucker and administer the oath. After reenlisting I went to training to be an MP, stopped by and said goodbye to my young wife and three children, and departed for Germany. I got that promotion the same month I graduated from MP school at Fort McClellan, Alabama, and about a year later, my family joined me in Nuremburg, Germany. I loved being an MP, at least the police part of it. I had found my professional calling, but I didn’t really like the Army.

I got out of the Army in March of 1992, and we moved to where Melanie’s mother was now living, Wild Wonderful, West Virginia. We had bonded as a family while in Germany, and I knew that once we were back in the States, we were subject to interference from my mother again, so I waited a year before I told her we had returned. I used the bonus money I got when I got out of the Army to buy a trailer and immediately signed up for college courses. I took them at night and made money by going to school because of the GI Bill. I soon landed the job I enjoyed most, out of all the jobs I’ve ever had, as a policeman with the city of Beckley, West Virginia.

Beckley was a great place, especially if you were a policeman. It was small-town America, and most of the citizens respected the police. The people I worked with there were wonderful people, and they mostly accepted me and my family even though we were outsiders. While in Beckley I adopted Melanie’s son, Travis. It was the right thing to do. I wanted no one to interfere with my family, and thus neither I nor Melanie ever asked for or accepted a penny of child support from the biological parents of Sandy or Travis. This was our family, and I’d protect them from bad influences at all cost. I know financially we’d have been a lot better off, but a good life for all of us was more important to me than child support.

The entire time I worked at Beckley PD, I also worked other jobs to make ends meet. I worked loss prevention and security jobs, as well as attended college classes. With the income from these, we managed to scrape by. Not to mention we got by with a little help from our friends. When we needed a babysitter, which was not very often, my mother-in-law, Lynda, or a police buddy of mine, Paul Blume, was glad to help us out. I mean, who better to babysit your children than a policeman, right? We didn’t get to enjoy a lot of the recreational things there are to do in West Virginia and had no entertainment budget, but we were happy. I recall a college buddy of mine, Jamie Shufflebarger, calling and asking if Melanie and I would like to go to the state fair with him and his girlfriend. They were about ten years younger than us, but we spent a good bit of time together. Jamie didn’t miss a beat when I told him we couldn’t afford it; he said, I got it covered, and he paid for everything. That’s the type of friends we had, and we knew we were blessed.

I had graduated from the West Virginia State Police Academy as part of being hired by Beckley, which certified me as a police officer in West Virginia. We enjoyed our time in West Virginia, but I was looking for more. I had worked in most areas of the Beckley Police Department. I had taught Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) in the Beckley schools, worked traffic and patrol, but I just wasn’t content. I was never the type of officer that could just be there. I had to be looking for crime. I had to find wrongdoing and make arrests. I think if I had been able to throttle back, we’d have probably stayed in Beckley, but I just couldn’t. I was named the Beckley PD Crime Stoppers Policeman of the Year in 1998, but it was too little too late. After being in Beckley for about five years, we went to Montgomery, Alabama, for a high school reunion. While there I interviewed with Baptist Health Police Department (BHPD) and received a job offer. We returned to Beckley and began preparing to move. Like I said earlier, the people in Beckley had taken us in, and I think some of them took it personal that we were going to take the hillbilly highway.

In May of 1998, we moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and settled in Wetumpka. I started work with BHPD, and I opened a lawncare service. We used the GI Bill to buy our first home. We had a garden in the backyard, and about half the meat we ate was venison from my hunting with my brothers. BHPD put me through the Montgomery Police Academy, which certified me as a police officer in Alabama. Working at a hospital wasn’t fulfilling either, but it had brought us back to Alabama. I went and spoke with the chief about how I didn’t really enjoy this job and how I was looking to move up. After all, I think I was the only officer who had completed a four-year degree. I didn’t have a college diploma, but I’ll elaborate on that later. The chief told me that BHPD was about to form a detective division. He told me they’d be hiring four detectives in about a month and that I was a shoo-in for one of these positions. It would be a significant raise, and I thought I’d enjoy investigating more than just patrolling, so I stuck around. I applied for the position when it was posted and went through the interview process. I was shocked when they posted the names of the four new detectives and I wasn’t on the list. I went to see the chief as I thought I’d been lied to. The chief explained that the people on the board that interviewed me didn’t believe I had done all the things on my résumé. Let’s see, that would be obtaining the rank of sergeant in the US Army and my accomplishments at Beckley PD. I was furious. I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t a police organization verify or discredit my résumé before they dismissed it? Apparently not. I wasn’t getting the promotion. I went back to my fallback plan, a different department. I started putting in applications wherever I saw that they were hiring.

The first offer I got was from Auburn University at Montgomery Police Department (AUMPD). I accepted the offer and began working there. Financially it was a better position as it was a state