NEW BEDFORD — Four congressmen, including two from Massachusetts, on Friday asked the administrator of NOAA to dramatically ramp up her efforts to overhaul the agency's fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, specifically asking that she exclude the No. 2 law enforcement official from the reform effort.
The letter comes days after U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, revealed that the former head of NOAA law enforcement shredded up to 80 percent of his own files while being investigated by the Commerce Department's inspector general last year. That official, Dale Jones, was forced out of the job earlier this month in a hailstorm of criticism, but NOAA has never revealed whether he was fired, transferred or put on leave.
Kucinich, chairman of the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, threw a spotlight on Mark Spurrier, Jones' deputy, for questionable conduct in office and during the investigation, including document shredding. He said, "Spurrier's stated reasons changed considerably to explain why he, unlike Jones, director of OLE, did not participate in the inappropriate shredding of documents."
A source confirmed that Kucinich's committee has obtained from NOAA the full report of the inspector general, which documented years of anecdotal reports of arbitrary and even malicious prosecution of fishermen, especially in the Northeast. But the report hasn't yet been released to other members of Congress or the public.
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