PHOTOGR APHS BY GABRIELLA DEMCZUK FOR TIME
LIEUT. COLONEL
ALEXANDER
VINDMAN
Director for European
affairs, National
Security CouncilVindman emigrated from
Ukraine at age 3 and became
an expert in U.S. policy
toward the former Soviet
Union. After Trump’s July 25
call, he reported his concerns
to White House lawyers.As he fights back against impeachment,
Trump is testing that principle, collapsing
the space for dissent. Arguing that Congress
is abusing its authority, Trump loyalists have
continued their efforts to block the airing of
public servants’ concerns. Recasting the bal-
ance of power that has existed between Con-
gress and the White House since Watergate,
Trump ordered all Executive Branch employ-
ees not to testify in the impeachment inquiry.
For more than two months, he has attacked
the public servants as “traitors” and “human
scum.” At the U.S. Mission to the United Na-
tions, he suggested the proper response to the
whistle-blower’s complaint was the punish-
ment historically reserved for “spies” and for
“treason”: the death penalty.
The public servants came forward to tell
their stories anyway. In Kyiv, the 33-year vet-
eran diplomat Marie Yovanovitch, known as
Masha, was one of the first to see Trump’s per-
sonal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, advancing what
she would later conclude was a personal po-
litical mission for the President. After she was
yanked from the job, her successor, Ambassa-
dor William Taylor, a Vietnam veteran with
50 years’ experience in government, ques-
tioned the efforts to pressure Ukraine to dig
up dirt on Trump’s potential opponent in
the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe
Biden. At the White House, Trump’s top Rus-
sia expert, Fiona Hill, uncovered and then re-
ported what she later realized was a “domestic
political errand.” Hill’s Ukraine expert on the
National Security Council (NSC), Lieut. Colo-
nel Alexander Vindman, witnessed the July 25
call and raised alarms. In the Office of Man-
agement and Budget (OMB), the fiscal boiler
room of the federal government, 15-year senior
civil servant Mark Sandy struggled to recon-
cile Congress’ lawful provision of military aid
to Ukraine with Trump’s orders to withhold
it, and raised legal concerns with his superior.
For each, the decision to step forward came
at a cost. None expected to become house-
hold names or to find their faces on televi-
sions across the country night after night.
And though each followed the rules and used
the proper channels, some have found them-
selves vilified online, their decades of govern-
ment service impugned and their background
questioned. Several have been assailed pub-
licly by the President.
At first, none would speak with TIME for
this article, citing a mix of fear of retribution
and a reluctance to be seen as glory seekers.
Eventually some agreed to share their stories in
interviews, either directly or through interme-
diaries. Several became emotional when speak-
ing about what they described as the most dif-
ficult weeks of their careers. Some expressed
concern about the impact on their families and
colleagues; some fear for their own safety. The
story that emerges—based on scores of inter-
views in Washington and Kyiv, and a review of
thousands of pages of depositions, communi-
cations and other documents—provides an in-
side view of the historic events that unfolded
this year.
In shouldering the 241-year principle of
speaking truth before the American people,
each performed a duty. The first day on the job,
every federal employee takes an oath, swearing
to the same promise the President-elect