Donald Vance may not have a face you would pick out of a crowd.  Of medium height and unassuming, the most distinguishing feature is his eyes.  They speak both of sorrow and intensity.  Vance on April 4 was honored in Washington for his courage, and for his speaking truth to power, despite the consequences.

Washington is a city of awards luncheons and dinners.  People are honored for all kinds of reasons, some justifiable, some not.  But of all the capitol's awards events, the event that honored Vance is exceptional.  The Ridenhour Prizes are given to honor "the spirit of courage and truth," bestowed on those who "perservere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society."

The awards were named after the late journalist Ron Ridenhour, who, while serving in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, had heard rumors of a massacre in My Lai.  He followed up on these rumors, and in 1969, wrote a letter to Congress and the Pentagon about what he had uncovered.  Ridenhour, who went to become an award-winning investigative journalist, died suddenly in 1998 at the age of 52.

If Vietnam was the war that propelled Ridenhour's act of courage, the Middle East was the leitmotif for this year's awards.

Vance certainly deserved this year's Ridenhour prize for truth-telling.  A Navy veteran, Vance was working in Iraq for a private security contractor. When he suspected wrongdoing by his employer, he became an unpaid F.B.I. informant, helping investigate whether his security firm was dealing in illegal arms sales.

Instead of being rewarded for his whistle-blowing, Vance found himself imprisoned by the Army, in a notorious U.S. prison in Iraq, held in isolation, enduring extreme cold and sleep deprivation.  "My family did not know if I were alive or dead," Vance said.  When, after three months, he was let go, Vance came away with a troubling conclusion.  "If the government could do this to me, an American citizen, a Navy veteran, someone who voted for Bush, twice," what was happening" at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and all other prisons where U.S. armed forces are operating in secret?

Vance secretly kept notes of his ordeal, and told his story to the New York Times in December 2006.  He remains incredulous that the security firm on whom he had blown the whistle continues to do business with the Army, albeit under a new structure but with the same executives in charge.  His experience taught him, he said, that for many corporations that are doing business in Iraq, "profits take precedence."