If you become witness of someone in a government organization engaging in an illegal activity and you don't make it be known to either your superior or, if the one engaging in an illegal activity is the highest superior in the organization him/herself, to law enforcement officials, doesn't that make yourself automatically a co-conspirator?

Is being a co-conspirator on the basis of remaining silent about an illegal activity being engaged in by others in a government organization automatically a criminal act?

I have been involved in a whistleblower case, in which employees were used to perform illegal activities for their superior, but the employees were willingly participating in it not so much for fear of being fired but for enjoying some small extra benefits by the boss for "being a good boys and girls".

This didn't involve an American organization, but a local US office of a foreign organization funded by a foreign taxpayer's money exclusively.

As I wasn't sure, if the illegal acts engaged in by a foreign organization causing damages only to foreign funds and not American ones, I asked a lawyer for advice about the situation. He explained to me that the locality of where you engage in illegal activities determines which laws apply and that it is illegal for an employer to use and order his employees to engage in illegal activities according to US laws and that US laws were the ones that would be applied if I would sue in an US court.

The case was resolved without going to court, but basically just because the foreign headquarters whom I whistleblowed to first, were so afraid of US whistleblower protection laws that I didn't get into any troubles and the ones engaging in an illegal activity were fired and pulled out of the United States.

If I understand this decision correctly, it means that all US federal employees (does this also count for state government employees?) have lost all protection to whistleblow illegal activities inside the government, I think it would be a huge and terrible loss to say the least. It also would be a clear invitation for people who would otherwise whistleblow, now would at least engage in leaking the information to the press to get the illegal activity out to the public in some way. In the future it might be the press then, who takes the risk to report that what a whistleblower now is not anymore protected against to do inside the government organization.

I am just saying that the lawyer I asked clearly said that the reason why my potential whistleblowing, if it would go to a US court, would be protected on the basis that an employer, independent of the employer being the US government, foreign government of privately or publicly owned business, is not allowed to accept that employees engage in criminal activities or accept to become co-conspirateurs through silent by-standing and enabling the criminal activities to continue.

Was the advice the lawyer gave me correct?