Whistle blower passes away
I can't post most of the article. Recommend reading the whole thing.
MARYSVILLE — Few people around here knew the story behind Charles “Chuck” Hamel, who died in a Marysville nursing home bed one morning last month while listening to music through his headphones.
At 84 and in failing health, he looked forward to his wife's daily visits. She'd clip newspaper stories for them to discuss, as they had for years, and they'd watch the national news together in the evening.
Old age — a heart attack, aching joints and other maladies — had caught up with him, but he still wanted to know about the issues of the day.
His life story read a bit like a John Grisham novel. He was a businessman-turned-whistle-blower whose secret sources and access to leaked internal documents confounded big oil companies in Alaska and resulted in millions of dollars spent to fix health, safety and environmental problems.
Hamel not only knew how to get information, he was a master at using it to force change. He passed it on to politicians, government regulators and the media, sparking congressional investigations into oil industry practices along the way. He'd been interviewed on the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” and was quoted in The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
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http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20150506/NEWS01/150509368