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Former Government Employee Provides Evidence of OSC Impropriety
In 2006, Special Counsel Scott Bloch was charged with contempt of Congress for withholding information during a House oversight committee investigation.
The investigation was related to Bloch’s decision in 2006 hire a private company to thoroughly wipe files from four government computers.
Bloch was appointed to the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) in 2004 by George W. Bush, and by 2006, a number of whistleblowers from the OSC had accused Bloch of intimidation and for retaliating against OSC staff that disagreed with his policies.
The relevance of the OSC in preventing corruption in the U.S. government is significant, because it is the specific responsibility of the Office of Special Counsel to protect federal whistleblowers that report things like racial, gender or sexual orientation discrimination within the government and the military.
However, according to the OSC whistleblowers, throughout his term leading the agency, Bloch involuntarily reassigned 12 long-term employees to other field offices, and ignored a number of important whistleblower reports without any investigation at all.
Bloch was eventually convicted in July of this year, and sentenced to just one month in prison. Given his actions, one month didn’t seem like quite enough. But to make matters worse, Bloch’s lawyers appealed that conviction and managed to convince a federal judge to overturn that conviction.
Bloch received no jail time for his actions.
Scott Bloch – Wiping the Records
Bloch resigned in 2008 due to allegations that he’d hired a private company to expunge data from government computers.
On April 27th, 2010, Block pleaded guilty to only one misdemeanor charge of contempt of Congress in front of Judge Deborah Robinson of the U.S. District Court in D.C.
Even though the charge that he plead guilty to carries a maximum sentence of a year in prison and a $100,000 fine, the federal prosecutor supported a plea agreement that carried a maximum of only six months, and no more than a $5,000 fine.
In response to the light sentence laid down by the Justice Department in this case, in February of 2011, a group of whistleblowers sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, requesting that a special prosecutor be assigned to the case, due to the fact that the current prosecutor had supported a plea agreement even before Block withdrew his guilty plea.
They wrote:
“We have long waited for Mr. Bloch to be held accountable in a court of law. For too many of us, the erosion of the rule of law and ethical conduct in government came with a heavy price. With our whistleblowing activities, we sought, and continue to seek, a government of laws, not of men. Please help us restore this noble and long-standing principle by appointing a special prosecutor to lead United States v. Scott J. Bloch.”
The group noted that the current Department of Justice method of treating Bloch’s case with kid-gloves implied impropriety between the Justice Department and the OSC.
The group wrote, “[We] are not of the belief that there is improper involvement by current DOJ officials in the defendant’s case, [but] the concern about the appearance of impropriety is equally pressing.”
Almost as confirmation of this impropriety, and in a strange development on March 31st of 2011, during Bloch’s sentencing trial, prosecutor Glenn Leon was not arguing for harsh sentencing of Scott for his crimes as prosecutors usually do, but instead was pleading with Judge Deborah Robinson to only sentence Bloch to probation and no jail time, because the Justice Department had reached a plea deal with Bloch.
Judge Robinson, however, questioned the prosecutor’s argument – asking both Defense attorney William Sullivan and Prosecutor Glenn Leon what gave her the authority to allow a sentence that was less than the minimum stipulated by law.
Former OSC Whistleblower Offers Evidence of a Pattern of Corruption
Douglas Kinan, a current commissioned officer of the Massachusetts Trial Court and a former employee of the Defense Contract Management Agency, East (DCMAE), had served as an Equal Employment Specialist within that office, so he had direct experience with how government whistleblowers from the Department of Defense were handled by the OSC and the Justice Department.
Douglas forwarded Top Secret Writers his Victim Impact Statement that he had sent to Judge Deborah Robinson in August of 2010, with a poignant statement to the judge that:
“My allegiance and loyalty to the Department of Defense, its mission, policies and objectives toward equal employment opportunity and the law was overruled by conduct, actions and behavior designed to permanently harm innocent citizens and waste tens, and perhaps hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.”
In his Witness Impact Statement, Kinan reported to Judge Robinson several of the worst documented cases that he had in his possession, revealing a pattern of improprieties at the OSC over the course of several years that Kinan worked for the DCMAE.
Kinan listed the worst cases, which included:
->One female employee was written up for being late for work during a December snowstorm. She was blind, and used a seeing-eye dog, so she depended upon the T-Ride system, which made her late for work that day. Deputy Commander Phil Metivier, and all but Kinan and White’s own second-level supervisor voted to discipline the employee.
Afterwards, the supervisor told Kinan that he could not stand up against Metivier any further because “he would face serious consequences.” After several years of this sort of treatment, Kinan says, “Ms. xxxxx was constructively discharged.”
->Another female employee complained about sexual harassment repeatedly. Kinan claims that, “…her June 25, 1999 EEO complaint was ‘manipulated’ to exclude [her] primary allegation [of sexual harassment].” According to Kinan, the woman was intimidated into withdrawing her complaint.
She later wrote to Kinan, “I had been told that [the Complaints Officer and Chief of Staff] made statements that he had connections, made a few calls and found out where I was hired to work within the private sector. I fear that this may cause me to lose or somehow impact my current job.”
Kinan also reported that on March 25th of 2009, he was visited by U.S. Marshal Frank Dawson at work. He provided evidence of the U.S. Marshal Service threats with court pleadings and signed affidavits concerning that harassment. Kinan reports:
“I was threatened for lawfully reporting verified public corruption and verified criminal activity to the DOJ and members of the federal bench, and [I was] warned to stop or else. On June 16, 2011, I was informed that my name has been placed on a government ‘watch list.’”
Dawson advised Kinan to cease communications with Judge William Young in relation to civil complaints that Kinan was actively filing since leaving his former position. Kinan contends that Dawson systematically attempted to intimidate him into dropping his whistle-blowing efforts.
Ignored by Federal Investigators
Kinan’s case in particular is a clear example of a passionate public servant doing his job almost too well.
After years of bucking the system and standing up against the harassment of and retribution against government whistleblowers, he was subsequently removed from his position at the DCMAE.
Kinan claimed that he was framed because he was actively supporting black victims in a promotion-fixing case from 1994 through 1998, involving the Equal Employment Opportunity office (EEO). In Kinan’s own affidavit, the writes:
“Beginning approximately July or August 1994, the EEM failed to follow objective guidelines in reviewing merit promotional certificates. I was present during discussions held between the Agency Ethics Attorney and my former Team Partner. They characterized the failure to review promotional certificates as ‘criminal’ because, among other reasons, the practice generated ‘unnecessary EEO complaints,’ from black, female and minority employees.”
After reporting what Kinan calls “verified criminal activity” to the DOJ, the FBI told him that he had no case. Special Agent John T. Foley specifically responded to Kinan and said that the FBI had no interest. Federal prosecutors, judges and the Attorney General ignored, and continue to ignore, his letters.
