Decency

by Rex Fuller

  “You’ve heard of sexual harassment? Well, I was accused of that. Complete rubbish. I had asked a female co-worker out once. She refused. A short time later, I was notified of a complaint lodged against me. She claimed I was constantly asking her for dates, always ogling her, and generally making things uncomfortable for her. I denied it. So, of course, they ordered me to psychological evaluation, to determine if I was some kind of aggressive personality, or otherwise unreliable to suspend my clearance.”

  “Excuse me. Just because you had a sexual harassment complaint made against you they referred you to psych eval?”

  Thompson looked startled. “Ms. Hawkins, you really don’t know much about NSA. Doing a mental on you is their knee-jerk reaction. In one sense, you can understand it. They have to be paranoid about security. But the way it works in reality is whenever they want to start you on the way out, for whatever reason, that’s what they do.”

  “But if it’s a legitimate evaluation, nothing would come of it. You’d be cleared by the psychologist.”

  Now he looked weary and impatient. “Think what you like. I’m telling you what I know. Any psychologist worth his salt can find something. Just like any lawyer worth his salt can figure out something to sue for.”

  “All right, what happened in your case?”

  “They said I was passive-aggressive. They suspended my clearance. They notified me of pending termination. If two of my colleagues hadn’t stepped forward and said I was the most reliable person they’d ever worked with, they would have fired me. The hearing board determined I was sufficiently reliable and referred me back to management.”

  “So, the system worked in your case.”

  The blue eyes flashed in anger. “If you call being falsely accused, falsely labeled passive-aggressive, and allowed to stay only because two other people risked their jobs, and being dead ended career-wise the ‘system working,’ then I suppose you could say it did.”

  “Mr. Thompson, I’m sorry. I had to ask you that. Genuine anger is a good thing here. What happened then?”

  “Well, to smooth things over, the agency transferred me to a different section and promoted the woman who complained.”

  Excitement, however slight built. His experience with psychological evaluation was the kind of corroboration that could support the case.

  “Mr. Thompson, what you’ve told us about the automatic use of psych evals could be very useful evidence to us. If we find that we can use it, would you be willing to testify to what you’ve told us.”

  “No, I would not.”

  The shock must have been apparent. “They will retaliate. I’ve worked hard to get back into their good graces so I can hope for a promotion. If I did what you’re asking, at very best I would simply never be promoted. I would be given less and less responsibility. Eventually, if I didn’t quit, they would find a way to show lack of performance or maybe a more serious ‘psychological’ problem and get me out the door.”

  “Why would you want to stay or, better still, why do you stay?”

  “So far as I can tell, there’s no market for Russian linguists, at least not a well-paying market. I have twelve years invested towards retirement that I can’t responsibly throw away and a family to protect, a family I did not have when I asked the co-worker out. And, I’m an older white male. We used to joke about petitioning EPA for endangered species status. My options are limited.”

  “One more question. How did you get hooked up with the whistleblowers group? So far you haven’t said anything about making any kind of complaint.”

  “Oh, I did. I made a formal complaint under the agency’s system. I thought I could make it right. I tried to get them to see that false sexual harassment allegations were a real threat to the morale. I tried to get them to see that jerry-rigged mental evaluations were no good to them and destructive to the employee. I thought that the result of my case, keeping me, would show them they allowed things to get too far along before false allegations and false psych eval findings were corrected. They looked at it, or said they did. They politely informed me there was no quote, ‘substantial basis sufficient to warrant further action’ unquote. A white-wash. I was pretty devastated. I just looked for support and ended up finding it in the whistleblowers group. And it does help. After all, you’re here and listening to me.”

  “All right, Mr. Thompson, I think you may have sufficient reason to seek legal counsel. If we agree to act as your attorneys you have confidentiality for what you tell us, will you tell us further details?”

  The man answered without the slightest hesitation.

  “Yes, I would. But understand, I still cannot disclose classified information to you unless you have the proper clearances.”

  “Fair enough. We will act as your attorneys to determine whether you have a basis to make claims. Now, can you tell us who you are and what details you may have left out.”

  “My name is Duncan Richardson. I am a Russian linguist employed by NSA and everything I have told you is the absolute truth. The more important information, that I haven’t told you, is that I am personally aware of five instances of employees at NSA being forced into psychological evaluations as a device for getting rid of them.”

  “That could be invaluable, Mr. Richardson. Would you be in a position to testify?”

  “Oh no, I’m sorry, no. What I said before about being unable to stand the retaliation is still true. You would have to keep my identity a secret from the court. I just can’t let the government know.”

  “It might be possible to keep your identity secret. But I can’t give you that assurance now.”

  “Well, again, I’m sorry. Mrs. Hawkins, you just don’t know what kind of people you’re dealing with.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Richardson looked at each of them for a long moment. Something, fear or shame but something deep, appeared to grip him.

  “I knew people who crossed swords with the agency who died. It could happen to me.”

  His eyes darted back and forth, his knuckles whitened as he gripped the arms of his chair, and he almost cowered like a lamb from an unseen wolf.

  “Who, what are their names?”

  “I only knew the name of one of them, Carl Foley. The other was a woman, a computer scientist. The agency let people think the indications were possibly suicide or natural causes. I just don’t believe either one was at all unhappy or prone to suicide. I used to see them every day, or almost.”

  “Mr. Richardson, what you’ve told us helps a lot. I think we can let you go for now. We will need to have complete information on how to contact you.”

  “Sure. Just don’t discuss anything of substance on the phone.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s very simple. If they want to, they can listen. That’s all I can tell you.”

  In the car, Bonnie spoke first. “I don’t quite know what to say. I believe the man. But I don’t want to believe him. If what he says is true…”

  “I know what you mean. Like looking over the edge of the universe isn’t it?”

  “Abe, I have to talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want you to know we ran into something that may put the firm at risk.”

  Abe’s radar went up when Kelly said that.

  He stiffened and, wary as a mountain lion, said, “Like what?”

  “We found an NSA employee who says the agency will retaliate for disclosing that they use psych evals to get rid of people. But he also said the NSA can listen to our phone conversations if they want to. We certainly can’t have the privacy of the firm’s phone conversations compromised.”

  “I said before that NSA has the capability. The question is whether they would want to. That takes us back to the need to upgrade our security.”

  “Abe, I’m of a mind to go ahead with this matter. But I don’t want to have any of the partners feel like I blind-sided them with these potential problems if it turns out badly.”

  A
be pulled a file from the stack on his desk.

  “Kelly, I retrieved some of my notes on the business of whistleblowing. Some of it comes from the hearing reports on the whistleblower statute and some from newspaper accounts.”

  He flipped through several sheets before coming to what he was looking for.

  “Here we are. Let’s see…

  “General Motors retaliated against Ralph Nader for raising the Corvair concerns by investigating his life…

  “Kerr-McGee retaliated against Karen Silkwood for trying to bring up employees exposed to plutonium at the Cimarron plant in Oklahoma…

  “The Air Force fired William Fitzgerald for pointing out cost overruns on the C-5…

  “Brown and Williamson published results of investigating Jeffrey Wigand’s private life after he said the tobacco companies were manipulating nicotine content in cigarettes…

  “The NRC attacked Bob Pollard, a project manager at the Indian Point nuclear plant, for raising the same kinds of issues that later led to the Three Mile Island disaster…

  “Morton Thiokol acquiesced to NASA the night before the Challenger launch explosion, even though they first agreed with their engineer, Roger Boisjoly, that the o-rings were not safe in cold weather, and then later shunned him.

  “More recently, there’s Kathleen Willey…

  “I have a few more examples, but those make the point.”

  Abe put down the file and removed his glasses.

  “Kelly, the point is it goes with the territory. And as you reminded me, labeling people mentally deficient, in order to get rid of them, is something we just can’t ignore and call ourselves a law firm. But the risk has to be reasonable.”

  “Thanks. Your support means a lot.”

  14

  “Jannie! Can you get the Pierces on the line, please?”

  Thirty seconds later, Jannie reported, “Mrs. Pierce is on.”

  “Good morning, Kathy, this is Kelly Hawkins.”

  “Hello, it’s good to hear from you.”

  “I wanted to bring you up to date a little. We have made some progress. Not enough, yet, to get where we want to be, but progress nonetheless.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “First, let me mention something that may be very important or it may not be. It’s simply this. When we talk on the phone we need to be careful not to mention any names. Our firm does not have what are called secure phone lines and we have reason not to be letting names float around. There is nothing to be alarmed about but just understand if I am not as specific as you might expect.”

  “All right, but what is the progress you mentioned?”

  “We have found out two things that help us to establish the foundation of a possible case.

  “First, we can show that the agency used psychological evaluations as part of their management process. In other words, at least on some occasions they used them as a knee-jerk step to get rid of people as Samantha described.

  “Second, we have found one individual, and we hope to find more, who has been through the psych eval process and was incorrectly found psychologically unfit - maybe by design.”

  “That sounds very good.”

  “It is. We are a long way from having a case we can present in court. But we are getting there. Kathy, now comes the tough part. I would like you and Harlan to consider this carefully before giving me an answer. When we think we can establish the important points in a legal case, we may need to ask you for permission to have an autopsy performed. Because there was one, we will have to start there to show something was missed or at least to cover the bases.”

  “We discussed it many times. In fact, we thought of trying to have it done ourselves.”

  “Then you understand. I’ll send the necessary consent form. Just complete it and send it back.”

  “That will be fine.”

  “Do you have any questions for me?”

  “Not now. Harlan may when he comes in. We won’t hesitate to call if we need to. You know that, Kelly.”

  “Excellent. Thank you, Kathy. I’ll talk to you again soon.”

  “Okay. Bye, Kelly.”

  …that went as well as it could…if only it was possible to tell her how far the case really is from being made….

  …we need expert psychologists and psychiatrists…

  …we need employees from inside the agency who were exposed to bad psychological evaluations…

  …we need witnesses to the facts of the events leading up to her referral to psychological evaluation…

  …we need documents showing the events of her referral and the results of her psychological evaluation…

  …we need all of the documents relating to her work history…

  …we need co-workers who can testify to Samantha’s attitude and condition leading up to her death…

  …we need witnesses to the death scene…

  …we need whatever exists that shows the results of the police crime scene sample testing or lack of it…

  …we need everything…absolutely everything…

  …Samantha Pierce can’t speak for herself…if we can’t get the documents and witnesses to speak for her, we have no case…

  Gil Van Gilder had worked fast, very fast. Three days after Kelly returned from Nebraska, he came in with a report for Kelly and Bonnie.

  “Gil, you must have burned the midnight oil.”

  “You got that right. You’ll see it in the invoice.”

  “Okay, what have you got?”

  “Interviews with the coroner’s assistant, the two uniformed cops at the death scene, the evidence technician, the detective in charge at the scene, the autopsy pathologist, and the detective’s neighbor, his postman, and his former wife. It will take a while.”

  “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Okay, first, the coroner’s assistant. Patrick Johnson, 26, single, black male. Pretty straight arrow. Just wants to do the job right. Reasonably ambitious. No longer sure the coroner business is the career for him.

  “Only thing he really remembers about the case is that the detective in charge was not from Odenton or Columbia, but all the way from Baltimore. He asked the detective if he was new. The detective told him Baltimore sent someone for a close look because Odenton asked for a more experienced guy…”

  “Gil, that could just be because they didn’t want to miss anything in a case of an NSA employee. Did Odenton confirm that?”

  “Nobody really remembers for sure. They say it could have happened. They have asked for help from all sorts of agencies over the years.”

  “Okay.”

  “Next, the uniformed cops. They were there apparently only for scene control and remember little. Cop 1, Corporal Daniel Ogilvy, 32, white male. Overweight, divorced, child support eating him up. Not going much higher on the force. Doesn’t understand much beyond what the command tells him to do. Possibly alcoholic. Vaguely remembers the detective in charge was pretty much in control.

  “Next. Cop 2, then a rookie, Melissa Bartholomew, 27, white female, divorced, one child. Biggest concern is day care. She is bright but distrusts men and is more concerned about her schedule so she can be with her child than trying to remember this case. She did confirm the first cop’s recollection that the detective was in control.

  “For the evidence technician and the autopsy pathologist I’m going to play the interview tapes.

  “First is the evidence technician. Richard Helvorsen, 28, single, white male. Very gung ho, thinks he can solve every case with the right collection techniques. Maybe not as concerned with preservation of what he collects as he should be. Doesn’t think it’s his job, but the cops’.

  “Here’s the tape. You hear me start.”

  “Mr. Helvorsen, I’m an insurance investigator looking at the death of Samantha Pierce about three years ago in Odenton. Do you remember anything about it?”

  “Off hand, no.”

  “Here’s a picture of her that you took, does that help?�
��

  “Oh yeah, beautiful woman, who forgets?”

  “Okay, do you remember what you did?”

  “Hmm…let’s see. It would have been pretty routine because nothing stands out in my memory…the detective said take pictures, light up the sheets, vacuum the floors, and dust for prints not hers… yeah that’s pretty much it.”

  “‘Light up the sheets’ is…”

  “You spray luminol. It will glow under ultraviolet in the presence of blood or semen.”

  “Did it?”

  “That should be in the report. I don’t think I remember now.”

  “Okay, ‘vacuum the floors’…”

  “Yeah, for fibers not associated with the carpet, clothes and other fabrics in the home.”

  “Did you do that?”

  “Must have.”

  “Did you vacuum the body?”

  “Sure, that’s pretty standard any more.”

  “Vacuum the sheets?”

  “Probably. It would be in the report. We collect about as many different samples as we can, you know. Hair, fingernails, cavity swabs, prints. Once you have the world of the unseen evidence in your control you can pretty much figure out what happened.”

  “So you did get the woman’s prints?”

  “Oh sure. Got all of the things I just mentioned. Even the ones the detective didn’t specifically ask for, now that I think about it.”

  “Now. Who did you sign the samples over to?”

  “Hmmm…it would have been the detective…don’t remember.”

  “Would there have been a chain of custody receipt for each sample?”

  “Normally.”

  “If there is only one chain of custody receipt in the file, what would that mean to you?”

  “More than likely that they were lost.”

  “Some evidence techs keep copies of all receipts themselves. Do you?”

  “Oh heck no. That’s the investigator’s job.”

  “Do you remember which cavities you swabbed?”

  “No, but it would have been, vaginal-rectal-oral, maybe nasal too.”

  “Do you remember anything else that was significant?”