Giantkillers (The Team and the Law That Help Whistle-blowers Recover America's Stolen Billions)

In 1986, with contractors stealing an estimated 10 percent of the total federal budget by fraud, Congress passed a newly strengthened anticorruption law. Ordinary citizens could file lawsuits on behalf of the government to recover money stolen from the public treasury, and they would share in the result. In the years since, the False Claims Act has emerged as one of the nation's most potent weapons against corporate greed. Giantkillers is the story of that law: why it was needed, how it works, who brought it back to life, how it has survived the many attempts to kill it, and what it has accomplished. Charged with intrigue and courtroom drama, Giantkillers describes how an unlikely team—a conservative senator, a liberal congressman, and a crusading public interest attorney—revitalized one of America's oldest public interest laws that was gutted by lobbyists and almost forgotten. Recounting the battles for justice with a novelist's eye for their human drama, Scammell tells how the trailblazing firm of Phillips and Cohen gave the law back its teeth and made triumphant heroes out of those previously scorned as "whistle-blowers."