The remnants of Lubchenco's credibility went down the drain last week with confirmation that Inspector General Todd Zinser notified Lubchenco that the shredding operation was hardly the routine house-cleaning purge NOAA had claimed, but rather an effort that "implicates that it was done to conceal information.
When did Lubchenco know this, and how did she respond?
On April 2, 2010, according to Zinser's correspondence. And that was six months before Lubchenco assigned Jones — by then, out of his police post — to a new position as a "fisheries program specialist," where he's "specializing" on work in the Gulf of Mexico, at an annual salary of $152,000.
It's been more than a year now since Lubchenco vowed to "fix" the problems within NOAA law enforcement. More than a year since she and her administrative sidekick, former Maryland freshwater fish warden Eric Schwaab, said they were indeed tackling NOAA enforcement's lack of financial oversight and free-wheeling spending that sent Jones, and many others on junkets to far-off parts of the world — all funded, of course, by fines paid by harassed fishermen.
Now, we know that Lubchenco, Schwaab and their allies have no intention of tackling any of these issues. Nothing cries "corruption" like a good old-fashioned, Watergate-style shredding party. Yet Lubchenco's handling of Jones' case shows she not only sees nothing wrong with his actions, but believes his expertise should be rewarded with a $152,000-a-year job on the dime of America's taxpayers.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.