The document shredding undertaken by the then-national director of law enforcement for federal fisheries — previously described by officials as a routine cleanup of paperwork — included evidence related to an investigation of law enforcement practices then underway by the Inspector General's office, according to an internal memo from the investigating officer.
And the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been aware for 10 months of the Inspector General's finding that the effort was designed to conceal evidence from the IG's probe, according to documents obtained by the Times.
Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser wrote to NOAA chief administrator Jane Lubchenco on April 2, 2010, that the document-shredding in October 2010 involved the destruction of "75-80 percent of the files in the office of Dale J. Jones Jr.," then the director of NOAA law enforcement.
The IG wrote that "the shredding implicates that it was done to conceal information from the (inspector general)."
According to Zinser's report, "about six of law enforcement headquarters' 40 employees" contributed files for shredding.
"Such office-wide shredding was not a routine function for the Office of Law Enforcement; rather, the director and deputy director (Mark Spurrier) told us this was the first such an exercise in their 10-plus years with OLE," Zinser wrote.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.