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

by Henry Scammell

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."

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 2004

About the author

A self described slow starter who was raised in Massachusetts, Henry Scammell applied to Harvard College in 1951, and flunked out before completing his first term. He spent the next several years employed as a cook in the merchant marine; a ticket agent for Pan Am at Idlewild; a credit investigator for Household Finance; and traveling the world.

Returning to Harvard as a freshman in 1958, he graduated two years later with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude and the Bell Prize for contributing to the understanding of American literature. He later received a diploma from the International Marketing Institute at Harvard Business School. He spent five years with the consulting firm A.D. Little, then freelanced as a business writer for several years before starting Scammell Associates, a high-tech advertising agency in Boston.

In 1982 he became a full-time writer and moved to East Orleans where he indulged his love of clamming, fishing and berry picking. Scammell served on the steering committee of the Arthritis Institute of the National Hospital and was co- founder of "The Road Back" Foundation.

His 12 books, often collaborations, were published in several languages. He also wrote more than 500 magazine and newspaper articles.