The army punished Picquart’s disclosure by exile, defamation, and disgrace.

Evidence

Immediately after he had made his discoveries Picquart was banished to a dangerous post in Tunis. Thereupon he made his will, exposed the whole business, and deposited, a copy of the document with his lawyer. A few months later, when it was discovered that he was still alive, a deluge of mysterious letters came pouring in, compromising him and accusing him of complicity with che “traitor” Dreyfus. He was treated like a gangster who had threatened to “squeal.” When all this proved of no avail, he was arrested, drummed out of the army, and divested of his decorations, all of which he endured with quiet equanimity. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2155

Categorization

• XREF: The sequence — banishment, defamation campaign, arrest and expulsion — exemplifies how a closed institution (the military) defends itself against internal truth-tellers, a mechanism Arendt generalizes to the state apparatus.