Most of us paid little attention to the fact of North Dakota's having whistleblower provisions in the law before five employees of Workforce Safety and Insurance filed protection requests with the attorney general. With one on leave and one having been fired, the situation is now as clear as mud.

Sure, we'd known about whistleblowers. The 1999 movie "The Insider" was about Jeffrey Wigand, who worked for one of the big tobacco companies and revealed the practice of adding known cancer-causing ingredients to cigarettes, which Big Tobacco knew were addictive. Wigand faced retaliation big time, as the movie portrayed.

And Sherron Watkins' name became familiar during the Enron scandal.

But we should have taken particular note when on Jan. 4 a U.S. district judge awarded a former FBIagent more than $1 million from the bureau that retaliated against her when she blew the whistle on widespread sex discrimination within it, and on top of that, negligence in child abuse investigations. Jane Turner was a respected investigator of crimes against children, working on North Dakota's reservations for 13 years.

What really provoked the fury of the FBI is when Turner made her complaint, she alleged that fellow agents scavenged at the World Trade Center site.

There is no such thing as the whistleblower law. There is a tangle of federal and state laws. Bills passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in March and the U.S. Senate in December might dovetail to improve the protections given to the average citizen and to federal employees, if they are merged and become law. They are in limbo, the package facing a presidential veto on grounds of national security.

North Dakota's provisions (note the plural) in the Century Code resemble other states' laws, but there are some quirks. One provision is in the Public Employees Relations Act. The other is in a different location in the statute book and gives an avenue of relief to private sector employees who, if they allege they've experienced workplace retaliation, can within 180 days after an incident "bring a civil action for injunctive relief or actual damages, or both" against an employer. The employee who reports - in good faith - a perceived violation of federal, state or local law or refuses an employer's order that might be a violation should not face discipline or discharge. But note that it's on the employee's shoulders to seek a remedy. The department of labor can have a role in helping an aggrieved worker, but there the deadline is 300 days. It can get confusing.

It should be stressed that no protections are offered as a means for any employee to escape the consequences of his or her own law-breaking. It's not remotely like ratting out the boss and getting a sweet deal from a prosecutor.

The entire idea is to expose and especially to put a stop to wrongdoing. The whole Enron debacle could have had a different outcome had insiders found the courage to blow the whistle loudly and much sooner. Courage is the operative quality. Whistleblowers might have some protections, not absolute ones, but their lot still can be hard and stressful. Society needs highly principled whistleblowers, but until the teeth of protection are sharpened at state and federal levels, who really wants to be one?