(Photo: Central Intelligence Agency)

WASHINGTON: Becoming a whistleblower is often a risky and difficult path for federal employees, and so is finding the truth and protecting those who have exposed wrongdoing from being fired, punished or harassed.

Dan Meyer, director of civilian reprisal investigations with the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Defense (DOD), took the job of protecting whistleblowers to new and often perilous territory — the Pentagon’s intelligence and counterintelligence communities and the murky world of top secret or “black” programs.