Sorry, Mr. Juliand. It's not about you. It's about an out-of-control, arrogant agency that "lost critically important perspective on their duty and obligations" and has been tormenting the citizens whose taxes and fines paid their salaries and expenses and (maybe) their bonuses.
STONINGTON, CT – Sept. 26, 2010 – NOAA Senior Attorney Charles Juliand has, through his federal employee union, issued comments in response to the Inspector General's report on NOAA Enforcement in the Northeast . The report referenced statements, notes and actions taken from cases he prosecuted in the past several years. It noted that, among numerous other colorful notes and comments, his proclivity for referring to defendants as “lying sack[s] of s***” created the perception that he "– along with the office—has lost proper perspective and harbors bias."
Mr. Juliand notes that he received a NOAA Administrator’s Award “for worldwide leadership in establishing the legal soundness of new satellite technology – vessel monitoring systems – in law enforcement actions against marine resource violators” and the Department of Commerce’s Gold Medal Award “for distinguished achievement in the federal service”.
He expects us to believe that these awards — Oscars-on-the-Potomac given by government agencies to career employees with the frequency that Kindergarten teachers hand out Kleenex™ — actually mean he did good work, rather than serving as a cog in a self-congratulatory, corrupt system.
He offers no response to charges verified by the Inspector General, but would like us to believe that twenty pages of detail — showing how the Inspector General investigated 27 complaints and painstakingly either confirmed, failed to substantiate, or found the allegations inconclusive — was a coordinated effort by a "small group of lawbreakers and their minions" aimed at making scapegoats of those "who have faithfully carried out the dictates of the law." He ignores the Inspector General's detailed findings that many "individual complaints we examined are credible, have merit, and we consider appropriate for further review."
I guess he'd like the public to believe that the fishermen, the shoreside businesses, the Office of the Inspector General, the Congressional oversight committees, Congressional delegations from Maine to North Carolina, the mayors, governors, lawyers, judges, reporters, columnists, scientists and researchers are all in a conspiracy of "false and unsubstantiated charges" in order to "smear" him and his colleagues.
Now there's an ego! Methinks the man doth protest too much. That's the kind of ego that can lull someone to believe that they're above the law. To believe that the law doesn't apply to "dedicated public servants", only to the "regulated community".
The reality is simple. Mr. Juliand doesn't rate the energy that would be needed to organize a conspiracy on the level he is implying.
What he doesn't "get" is that this is not about him. "Nothin' personal", —although he's hurt a lot of people. He's a cog in the much larger and more sinister, powerful, and oppressive agency that we're fighting. An agency which corruptly and wrongly allowed people like him to misuse their "virtually unchecked prosecutorial discretion." An agency which is now focused on an insane push to "profitize" our ocean resources.
There is a reason that the Inspector General is "initiating a formal review of NOAA’s progress in implementing the corrective action plans". This isn't about Mr. Juliand. This isn't a case of one rogue attorney working without "management attention, direction, and oversight." It's about an out-of-control, arrogant agency that "lost critically important perspective on their duty and obligations" and has been tormenting the citizens whose taxes and fines paid their salaries and expenses and (maybe) their bonuses.. That is why the Inspector General found "a compelling basis to look back at NOAA’s enforcement cases to determine whether there are individual complaints and cases that require action to correct unfair enforcement."
As much as many of us wish we could take credit for being among the "minions" responsible for exposing NOAA attorneys whose "serious lack of judgment" allowed them to take actions that constitute "conduct unbecoming a federal government attorney charged with enforcing the law," the reality is simpler. Eventually, our system works. This this is a case of good government — eventually and after a long, long, time — ferreting out bad government.
But Mr. Juliand's conspiracy-theory laden response has given me one idea. Perhaps fishermen should take a cue from Hollywood and the Federal Government and start giving out routine self-congratulatory awards. Then, when we find that we made an honest mistake, resulting from what the Inspector General observed as "fishing regulations promulgated by the Fisheries Management Councils [that] are complex and can change significantly", we can argue: "Ok, maybe I made a mistake, but look at my record, in 2006 I was awarded the Golden Twine Top Medal!"
Sorry, Mr. Juliand. It's not about you.
Then again, never ever trust anyone that calls us "fishers".
Dick Grachek is a "fisherman" based in Stonington, Connecticut