Whistleblowers honoured by Time magazine

The magazine, based in the United States, bestowed the honour on Coleen Rowley, an agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sherron Watkins, an executive at Enron, and Cynthia Cooper from WorldCom.

" They were people who did right by just doing their jobs rightly... with the bravery the rest of us always hope we have and may never know if we do "
Time magazine

Two of the women - Ms Watkins and Ms Cooper - unearthed massive accounting fraud at their firms.

Ms Rowley wrote a memo to FBI director Robert Muller criticising the agency for ignoring vital evidence before the 11 September attacks.

"These women were for the 12 months just ending what New York City firefighters were in 2001: Heroes at the scene, anointed by circumstances," the magazine said in a statement.

"They were people who did right by just doing their jobs rightly... with the bravery the rest of us always hope we have and may never know if we do."

'Wave of scandals'

FBI agent Coleen Rowley wrote to Mr Muller describing how her supervisors at a field office in Minneapolis brushed aside her requests to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 11 September attacks, weeks before they occurred.

Her letter sharply criticised the agency's culture of secrecy, and gave rise to an enquiry over intelligence-gathering failures.

Ms Watkins wrote a letter to Enron chairman Kenneth Lay in 2001, warning him the company could "implode in a wave of accounting scandals" because of its questionable accounting.

Ms Cooper similarly discovered that WorldCom had disguised $3.8 billion in losses through improper accounting.

Rare accolade

Only five women have previously won the honour of becoming Time's Person of the Year - the first being Wallis Simpson in 1936 and the most recent Corazon Aquino in 1986.

According to the magazine, Americans are likely to approve of the choice.

Time published a survey on Sunday which showed that six out of 10 Americans viewed whistleblowers as heroes - and almost three-quarters said they would become whistleblowers themselves if they became aware of serious criminal abuses at work.

Other people considered by the magazine this year include US President George W Bush, al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, Vice-President Dick Cheney and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Mr Bush was seen as the front-runner, but Time's Managing Editor Jim Kelly said some of the president's goals - such as the capture of Bin Laden, economic revival and the removal of Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi presidency - have not happened yet.

"There was a sense of bigger things to come, and it might be wise to see how things play out," he added.