The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

Human Resources Division almost two years ago. Rather than seek balanced information, it seemed that the adjudicator went out of his way to avoid it — a refutation of the 1974 Privacy Act provi- sion that directs investigators to “collect information to the greatest extent practicable directly from the subject indi- vidual.” The biased and prejudicial nature of the Summary and Analysis strongly suggests retaliation for a complaint that I filed with the Office of the Inspector General on Dec. 31, 2003. E-mail evidence indicates that the adju- dicator in my case and others within his office had access to the complaint during April 2004, at which time the Summary and Analysis was being drafted. Other than reprisal, there is no plausible reason for an adjudicator, pledged to “evaluate the facts fairly and objectively,” to rely solely on negative specula- tion and innuendo when reli- able information was readily available and to interject per- sonal opinion and rhetoric into the Summary and Analysis, a supposedly neutral document. Nor is there any excuse for out- right falsification of the FAM, intended to harm me and severe enough to be consid- ered a felony, to be authorized by two senior DS officials. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking about a recent Newsweek story based on a single anonymous gov- ernment source whose data proved to be false — a situa- tion parallel to mine — stated that, “It’s appalling that this story got out there… I hope that everybody will step back and take a look at how they handled this — everybody.” After nearly three years in bureaucratic limbo, with no end in sight, I couldn’t agree more. n F O C U S 70 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 The adjudicator called no witnesses, would accept no evidence and never spoke to me even though I was physically no more than 40 yards away.