He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut

他举报了“政府效率部”（DOGE），随后刹车被人切断

On April 14, 2025, Dan Berulis, an IT staffer at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filed a Congressional whistleblower complaint with an extraordinary and urgent claim: The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had seemingly compromised the agency’s data and appeared to be exfiltrating it out of the NLRB entirely. Additionally, Berulis claimed that mere minutes after DOGE members had accessed the agency’s data, there appeared to be login attempts from an IP address in Russia.

2025年4月14日，美国国家劳资关系委员会（NLRB）的IT员工丹·贝鲁利斯（Dan Berulis）向国会提交了一份不同寻常且紧急的举报投诉：所谓的“政府效率部”（DOGE）似乎已经破坏了该机构的数据，并正在将数据从NLRB完全窃取出去。此外，贝鲁利斯声称，在DOGE成员访问该机构数据后的短短几分钟内，就出现了来自俄罗斯IP地址的登录尝试。

At the time, DOGE teams, orchestrated by billionaire Elon Musk, were sweeping across government, firing federal workers, and accessing sensitive data and technical systems with no oversight and little transparency.

当时，由亿万富翁埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）策划的DOGE团队正在政府部门大肆行动，解雇联邦工作人员，并在没有任何监督、几乎没有透明度的情况下访问敏感数据和技术系统。

The following day, Berulis went public in an NPR article with his name and claims. In it, he claimed that in the lead up to his Congressional disclosure, a threatening note had been taped to his door, including photos of him walking his dog that appeared to have been taken by a drone. Berulis was already scared that speaking out had made him a target.

次日，贝鲁利斯通过美国国家公共电台（NPR）的一篇报道公开了自己的身份和指控。他在报道中称，在向国会披露信息之前，他的门上曾被贴过一张威胁字条，其中还附有他遛狗的照片，这些照片似乎是由无人机拍摄的。贝鲁利斯当时就已经感到恐惧，担心自己的发声使他成为了目标。

In a new defamation lawsuit, filed by Berulis in a DC court on April 17 and made public this week, Berulis alleges that Musk himself made him a target of further violence by falsely stating that Berulis’ whistleblower claim against DOGE was fake. The complaint was initially filed under seal because Berulis maintains a security clearance that requires pre-publication review of anything related to his work with the government.

在4月17日于华盛顿特区法院提起并于本周公开的一起新的诽谤诉讼中，贝鲁利斯指控马斯克本人通过谎称贝鲁利斯针对DOGE的举报是虚假的，从而使他成为了进一步暴力行为的目标。该诉状最初是保密提交的，因为贝鲁利斯持有安全许可，要求对任何与其政府工作相关的内容进行发布前审查。

Five days after the NPR story went live, on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, Berulis got in his car to drive to Maryland to make a last-minute visit to his uncle, opting to take local roads instead of the major highway nearby. Within about five minutes of leaving his house, Berulis realized something was wrong. As he approached a stop sign at an intersection, his car wouldn’t slow down. He ran off the road and into the sign. When he examined his car, he found something that terrified him: His brake lines had been cut.

在NPR报道发布五天后，即2025年4月20日复活节周日，贝鲁利斯开车前往马里兰州临时探望叔叔，他选择走当地道路而非附近的高速公路。离开家大约五分钟后，贝鲁利斯意识到出了问题。当他接近十字路口的停车标志时，车子无法减速。他冲出路面撞上了标志牌。当他检查车辆时，发现了一件让他惊恐万分的事：他的刹车线被人切断了。

Unbeknownst to Berulis at the time, the night before, on April 19, at 8:06 pm, Musk had reshared an X post from right-wing influencer Mario Nawfal, claiming that DOGE had been “cleared” and that people were asking the Department of Justice to investigate Berulis. Musk shared Nawfal’s post, writing, “Filing a deliberately false whistleblower claim is a serious crime.” The story had originally been circulated by @amuse, an account that has regularly shared misleading claims and misinformation and is followed by influential people like Musk and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The @amuse post included Berulis’ name and photograph.

当时贝鲁利斯并不知道，就在前一天晚上4月19日晚上8点06分，马斯克转发了右翼网红马里奥·纳法尔（Mario Nawfal）的一条X帖子，声称DOGE已被“洗清嫌疑”，并称人们正在要求司法部调查贝鲁利斯。马斯克在转发纳法尔的帖子时写道：“提交蓄意虚假的举报投诉是严重的犯罪。”该消息最初由@amuse账号传播，该账号经常分享误导性声明和虚假信息，并被马斯克和卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.）等有影响力的人关注。@amuse的帖子中包含了贝鲁利斯的名字和照片。

According to a police report viewed by WIRED, when a police officer from Prince William County arrived at the scene, Berulis’ lawyer from Whistleblower Aid, Andrew Bakaj, who had helped Berulis file his Congressional complaint about DOGE, was also on the scene.

根据《连线》（WIRED）查阅的一份警方报告，当威廉王子县的一名警官到达现场时，贝鲁利斯的律师、来自“举报人援助”（Whistleblower Aid）组织的安德鲁·巴卡伊（Andrew Bakaj）也在现场，他曾协助贝鲁利斯提交了关于DOGE的国会投诉。

Berulis, who found out about Musk’s tweet after the accident, thought back to the threatening note that had been posted on his door earlier that month.

事故发生后才得知马斯克推文的贝鲁利斯，回想起了当月早些时候贴在他门上的那张威胁字条。

According to the suit, Musk’s “readers drew the implication” that Berulis had committed a serious crime, “as reflected in replies demanding prosecution, jail, harm, or arrest,” and this put him at “increased risk of physical harm.” In the replies to the post, which remains online, several users called for Berulis to be prosecuted. One user wrote, “Snitches get stitches”.

诉讼称，马斯克的“读者们得出了”贝鲁利斯犯下严重罪行的暗示，“这反映在要求起诉、监禁、伤害或逮捕他的回复中”，这使他处于“人身伤害风险增加”的境地。在该帖子的回复中（目前仍在线），几名用户呼吁起诉贝鲁利斯。一名用户写道：“告密者会挨刀子”（Snitches get stitches）。

“The correlation was obvious to me, with the timing,” he says. Berulis also began to worry about how exactly whoever had been threatening him knew where he lived.

“考虑到时间点，这种关联对我来说显而易见，”他说。贝鲁利斯也开始担心，威胁他的人究竟是如何知道他住在哪里的。

“I had just moved into that address three months prior. The only people that had that address were my utilities and the [Office of Personnel Management], and the HR systems within my agency,” he says. “I hadn’t even updated my bank, my cell phone, my car registration, my license, all of it was not on that address yet.”

“我三个月前才搬到那个地址。只有我的公用事业公司、人事管理局（OPM）以及我所在机构的人力资源系统知道那个地址，”他说。“我甚至还没来得及更新银行、手机、车辆登记和驾照信息，所有这些都还没改成那个地址。”

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), functions as a sort of HR for the whole government, and was one of the first places where DOGE operatives appeared after President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January 2025.

人事管理局（OPM）相当于整个政府的人力资源部门，也是2025年1月唐纳德·特朗普总统宣誓就职后，DOGE工作人员最早出现的地方之一。

Berulis stayed in a hotel that night, frightened. In the following weeks, he canceled his lease and moved out.

那天晚上，贝鲁利斯惊恐地住进了一家酒店。在接下来的几周里，他退掉了租约并搬走了。

The brake lines incident probably happened “while the car was parked in the driveway of my house. The note arrived at the house,” he says. “I didn’t feel safe there at all. I never stayed at that address again.”

刹车线事件很可能发生在“车停在我家车道上的时候。字条也是寄到那里的，”他说。“我在那里一点安全感都没有。我再也没有在那儿住过。”

Since then, Berulis has laid low. He filed a police report, included in the suit and viewed by WIRED, and had the car seen by a mechanic who, according to the report, found “that the driver-side front impact/airbag sensor had also been removed but noted that the remaining wires had been spliced together, completing the circuit in a manner that prevented the vehicle from detecting or logging the missing component, while also preventing the vehicle from activating its safety protocols, alerting the driver, or engaging limp mode.” The police report also indicates that fingerprints had been found on Berulis’ car. According to the police report, the case is now “inactive,” “due to the lack of any specific suspect information,” though the police’s intelligence unit was notified.

此后，贝鲁利斯一直保持低调。他提交了一份警方报告（包含在诉讼中并被《连线》查阅），并让一名机械师检查了车辆。据报告显示，机械师发现“驾驶员侧的前部碰撞/安全气囊传感器也被拆除了，但剩余的电线被拼接在一起，以一种防止车辆检测或记录缺失组件的方式完成了电路，同时也阻止了车辆激活安全协议、提醒驾驶员或进入跛行模式。”警方报告还指出，在贝鲁利斯的车上发现了指纹。根据警方报告，由于“缺乏任何具体的嫌疑人信息”，该案件目前处于“不活跃”状态，尽管警方的情报部门已收到通知。

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有线索吗？您是现任或前任政府雇员，想谈谈正在发生的事情吗？我们希望能听到您的声音。请使用非工作手机或电脑，通过Signal安全地联系记者，账号为vittoria89.82。

In the days following the accident, Berulis even reported Musk’s post to X’s trust and safety team, but was told that it didn’t violate the platform’s policies. Musk, X, and Mario Nawfal, the influencer whose post citing @amuse’s story Musk reshared, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

事故发生后的几天里，贝鲁利斯甚至向X的信任与安全团队举报了马斯克的帖子，但被告知该帖子并未违反平台政策。马斯克、X平台以及转发了引用@amuse报道帖子的网红马里奥·纳法尔均未立即回应置评请求。

Alexander Muse, who runs @amuse, told WIRED that “Tim Bearese, an NRLB lawyer, denied that the agency granted DOGE access to its systems and stated that…

运营@amuse的亚历山大·缪斯（Alexander Muse）告诉《连线》：“NLRB律师蒂姆·比尔斯（Tim Bearese）否认该机构授予了DOGE对其系统的访问权限，并表示……”