You do know the is a legal route for whistleblowers to take?
Whoever told you that fed you a load of baloney.
"Hundreds of laws grant protection to whistleblowers, but stipulations can easily cloud that protection and leave whistleblowers vulnerable to retaliation and legal trouble...Whistleblowers frequently face reprisal, sometimes at the hands of the organization or group they have accused, sometimes from related organizations, and sometimes under law."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower#United_Statesand
"National security whistleblowers do not currently have court access to challenge retaliation. The current system for enforcing intelligence community whistleblowers’ rights against reprisal is entirely internal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_protection_in_the_United_Statesand
"PPD-19 does not protect contractors from any form of reprisal except decisions connected to their security clearance, which leaves them open to retaliatory terminations, investigations and criminal prosecutions. According to whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid, excluding contractors was “a remarkable and obviously intentional oversight, given the significant number of contractors who now work within the intelligence community. This is a gap that desperately needs to be closed, as I often have contractors coming to me with whistleblower-type concerns and they are the least protected of them all."
and
"In 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report stating that employees who reported illegal activities did not receive enough protection from retaliation by their employers. Based on data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, only 21% of the 1800 whistleblower cases reviewed by the agency in 2007 had "a favorable outcome" for the whistleblower. The GAO found that the key issues were lack of resources for investigating employees' claims and the legal complexity of whistleblower protection regulations."
Also, a huge portion of the documents he leaked were not in anyway about whistleblowing.
I believe I acknowledged that already