The Uncivil Service

By gferren, Unfiltered 12-21-07

THE
UNCIVIL SERVICE
By
Glenn D Ferren


















This is the Story of
How One Civil Servant's Promising
Career Was Ended
And
A Revelation Of the Corruption
Within the Interior Department's
Montana/Dakotas Bureau of Land Management
By
Glenn D Ferren












Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.
Which pill will you take?



(From The Matrix - 1999 - Warner Brothers)




I am Glenn Ferren. I was born in Arkansas in 1956. My mother Carrie Lorene Lee, one of the 11 children of sharecroppers, my grandparents Grandville and Edith Lee.
Strong, down to earth, true to their word people.
I graduated from Searcy High School in 1974, academically in the top of my class. My favorite school sports were track and cross-country running.
In the early 1970's in Arkansas I pulled a dazed friend from an overturned wreck and in the mid 1970's saved another friend from drowning. In the early 1980's in Cashmere Washington, I pulled an unconscience man from a burning vehicle.
I became a single-parent to my 3 year old and 5 year old sons in the late 1980's after a painful and bitter divorce. When the divorce was finalized I moved to Anchorage Alaska, where I began my Civil Service career as a summer hire GS2 clerk-typist for the Army Corps of Engineers.
After reading my story, I hope you will better understand what civil service employees face in performing their jobs and keeping their careers. And I hope my story helps to prevent good civil servants from facing the abuses I will detail here.
This story is not meant as a personal attack, but the participants, both good or bad, that played a role in this story, are identified. The story is based on facts that can be verified…the "opinions" are my own.
Glenn Ferren


























A Brief Introduction (circa 1986 - 1991)
I began my civil service career after attending college classes at Wenatchee Valley College in Wenatchee, Washington. First year classes which included a typing course. With that class and about 8 weeks work experience as a clerk for the Chelan County WA Court Clerk's office, I accepted a summer hire GS2 clerk-typist job with the US Army Corps of Engineers located on Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage Alaska.
Recently divorced and the custodial parent of my 5 year old and 3 year old sons, Benjamin and Joshua, I went ahead to Anchorage to find us a place to stay. I had an uncle in Anchorage at the time, but within a couple of months of my arrival, my uncle returned to the lower 48. About a month after my arrival in Anchorage, my mother drove the boys up and then returned to Washington. I had rented us a small apartment owned by some friends of my uncle.
At first the plan was for this family to provide day care for my sons, but after arriving home from work one day to find both boys wet and cold from a rain and laying on an uncarpeted floor without even a blanket that plan ended.
So for the next couple of years, the boys and I rode a bus into Eagle River Alaska in the am, where I took them to a day care. Then I would jump on the next bus to Anchorage in order to get to work on time. This part of the travel plan included bailing off the bus at a strategic spot where I could then jog about a mile, cross a railroad yard, and enter the Air Force base near the Corps building. Anywhere we went was by bus, to do our shopping or laundry, or to see a movie. We lived and traveled by the bus schedules. I devoted all my non-working time to my sons, to be there for them. We were close and still are.
At the end of my summer-hire position, I applied for a voucher examiner position and was hired as a temporary government employee. This clerical position was in accounts payable, where I audited and made contract payments, and processed local travel vouchers for reimbursement. These payments ranged from multi-million dollar construction contracts to food and supply contracts for a dredge crew working on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. [My first government performance award came from the support work on the oil spill.]
My supervisor, Dolores Franklin, offered this review of my performance as a USACE civilian employee…"Glenn has a knack for knowing what needs to be done and for getting it done". The job was a busy one, going full bore all day long, contracts, typing, filing. Then we were given computers and told to learn to use them.
Having had college programming classes on Apple computers, the PC's were something new but not intimidating. Whenever I could get a few minutes to sit down at the computer, I did. Word processing documents and spreadsheets were easy.
Having a strong desire to see my family and with thoughts of Montana in mind, I resigned the Corps. By this time we had acquired a 1980 Toyota pickup with a shell cover for the bed. The boys and I left Alaska and drove the ALCAN, Alaska Canada Highway, returning to Cashmere, Washington.
Without a real plan on how to get to Montana or a job offer there, I accepted work as a clerk with a manufacturing company in Wenatchee, Washington. The job was unpleasant and had been advertised as clerical work with a computer, which it wasn't. After 90 days I parted with the company and looked again to Alaska.
When a computer assistant position came open at the Corps of Engineers, I applied for it.
I was selected for the temporary position and the boys and I drove the ALCAN back to Alaska.
We arrived with just enough money for food and just enough gas for the Toyota to make it to my first paycheck. For a few weeks after our return to Alaska, we camped near a creek in the evenings, and in the am drove into Eagle River to get the boys to school. I caught a bus then and continued on to Anchorage. Soon we had a place to stay and settled back into life in Alaska. We lived in Chugiak and rented a place from some good friends, Sandy and Donny Lofgren.
When the Corps computer assistant position expired, I continued to work as a direct hire for the project contractor, Computer Sciences Corporation. After the mainframe to PC data conversion project was completed, I applied for as was hired for a Corps mail clerk position. And I waited for a computer position to open at the Corps of Engineers. When after 6 months there had been no new computer position advertised, I learned of (2) computer assistant positions in Montana. One of these with the Forest Service in Bozeman and the other with the Bureau of Land Management in Miles City. After interviewing for both positions the BLM called back first with a job offer. I had hoped for Western Montana and mountains, but a decision had to be made and I accepted.
Within days of my acceptance of the job in Miles City, the Forest Service called to offer me the computer assistant position in Bozeman. I had to decline having already accepted the BLM offer. If I had known how things would eventually turn out with the Bureau of Land Management, I would have gone to the Forest Service. But hindsight is always 20/20.
I looked forward to the opportunity that the new job offered and prepared for the big move from Alaska to Montana. By this time my family had grown to include a female companion, Robin Archer, who I had met while she was the librarian in Cashmere Washington, and her two children, Anna and Daniel. Anna and Daniel (DJ) were the same ages as Benjamin and Joshua and together Robin and I had a full and noisy house. [Robin and I married on July 4th, 1995.]
In late August 1991, we left Anchorage in a new-to-us vehicle, a full size 1980 Toyota landcruiser, pulling a trailer with all our worldly possessions on this third trip on the ALCAN highway. Our first night out of Anchorage saw a fresh fall of snow.
Between Billings and Miles City Montana, a van approaching us from the rear at high speed veered off the interstate to our right down an embankment and flipped over as we watched in horror. We stopped quickly and I ran to administer aid to the husband and wife and their two children. Thankfully no one was seriously injured and when medical help arrived we continued on to Miles City.
The long journey ended as we reached our hotel and arrived in 110 degree heat. Hotel air conditioning and a pool saved our lives. We were being introduced to the weather extremes of Eastern Montana. Miles City is in a unique region of Montana, both in weather and geography, and we enjoyed living there.
I reported for duty as a US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management employee at the BLM Miles City office on August 25th, 1991. Janet Edmonds, Administrative Officer at the Miles City BLM office, would be my supervisor. Janet later told me that her decision to select me for the computer assistant position came when during the oral interview I stated my desire to share with others what I learned about computers and software.

Testimony of Inspector General Earl Devaney…US House of Representatives Hearing, Sept 2006
"Short of a crime, anything goes at the highest level of the Department of Interior," he said. "Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials — taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism and bias — have been routinely dismissed with a promise of not to do it again."
[I believe that the lack of ethics in higher level Interior officials is being reflected in the lack of ethics of lower level Interior officials at Interior Agencies such as the BLM, especially at the Montana State Office. GF]
CHAPTER 1: Bureau of Land Management, Miles City Montana (1991-2000)
Starting in 1991 I worked as the computer assistant at the Miles City BLM District Office (after a later "reorganization" the District Offices became known as Field Offices). When I arrived in Miles City the computer specialist was Dale Hanson, a palentologist who had taken the position due to the grade level (and higher pay). Hanson had some experience with dBase databases, but computer systems were not his first love.
Hanson told me that he had envisioned my computer assistant position as strictly low-level software support…along with formatting diskettes for users and the like.
I had not really thought about being a computer specialist at that time, but I did intend to be the best computer assistant I could be and that required training on the various BLM programs and platforms. Hanson balked at my requests for training classes, so I went directly to Janet Edmonds and offered to pay for the classes myself. Janet saw to it that I received the training.
The BLM in Montana was beginning to implement a Novell Local Area Network (LAN) and it became my job to prepare training materials for the Miles City employees. Hanson having becoming disenchanted with being a computer specialist and forseeing the soon to increase workload, applied for and accepted a computer position in the Oregon BLM that would allow him to spend more time on his Palentology speciality. His departure left the computer specialist duties to fall in my lap. I embraced the job and began to learn all I could about the Novell network that we would install, circa 1992-1994.
I applied for and was given the opportunity to perform the job duties as a 5/7/9 computer specialist. If I did well, I would advance up the job levels. For several years and at great personal expense to my wife and children, by taking my time and attention from them, I lived and breathed everything computer and computer related. Even coming in to work and to study on my own time on the weekends. Because of this, Robin and I separated for a time in 1997. But we were able to work through and I began to put my family and work in proper perspective.
[This overzealous dedication to my job would later earn me the "best system administrator" description given by Asko Virtanen during the administrative review team "report" used to justify moving me from Miles City to Billings.]
In the early 1990's, the BLM in Montana was organized as follows: A central state office, district offices in Miles City, Lewistown, Butte, and Dickinson ND. The District Offices had smaller satellite offices, known as resource area offices. Miles City for example had about 100 employees total in the District Office, the Big Dry/Powder River, Belle Fourche, and Billings RA offices. My district office computer specialist peers were Steve Brandenburg and Gary Warfield at Lewistown MT, Lynn Ridl at Dickinson ND, and Greg Pedersen at Butte MT.
The BLM game plan for computer support had always been district computer specialists relying on state office computer specialists to bring out new hardware or software and install it for them in the District Offices. The district computer specialist would then become the local "guru" or contact for software support and the point-of-contact who would go back to the state office for help with software and hardware related problems.
I envisioned a role for the District Computer Specialist where he or she would be able to install hardware and software and not be totally dependent on the state office staff for almost all problem resolution. The District Computer Specialist would become more skilled, proficient, and efficient, and earn their (*GS11) pay. *The lead Computer Specialist had now become a GS9/11 standard grade.
So when state office computer specialist, Park Richard, came out to install the first BLM Miles City Novell LAN server, I stood over his shoulder and took notes. We had (3) more servers to install so I tackled the next one. I learned from and corrected my mistakes and more importantly, I shared my how-to instructions and notes with my peers in the other District Offices. Lynn Ridl came to Miles City from the Dickinson BLM office and we worked through a Novell server installation. Events such as this started a technology sharing communication and teamwork interaction between the district computer specialists that continued during my tenure as a Montana BLM computer specialist.
When the BLM moved from the Novell LAN implementation to implementation of IBM Unix hardware and software in the failed ALMRS Modernization effort (lands records databases) in the mid 1990's, a pre-ALMRS readiness review of the respective BLM state organizations noted this unique interaction and sharing between the Montana District Office computer specialists and gave Montana a plus in the readiness review as a result. I take credit for this though none was ever given, by the Montana BLM management or state IRM manager Robin Stoebe, as to how this teamwork and interaction came to be a reality.
Along with the increased peer to peer interaction and teamwork, I also encouraged my counterparts to work toward IBM AIX UNIX certification. As a general matter of practice, the Bureau supplied information technology training instructors and courses, most of this by classes at the Phoenix Training Center. But the BLM never gave certification of its computer staff a high priority. Certification is often a requirement for consideration when it comes to private sector employment opportunities in information technology and computer skill positions.
The Montana District office computer specialists on their own, using personal time, studied, tested, and certified as IBM AIX unix system administrators. Essential AIX study materials were supplied by a fellow computer specialist in the California BLM, *Bob Alimi. The BLM did pay the test fees. [I met Bob Alimi at some training class in Phoenix. My conversation with Bob started with "…so you are the guy Park (Richard) wants to be when he grows up!" Bob was the best AIX specialist and quick to help fellow employees.]
The ALMRS modernization plan was doomed to failure from the start. During the years of planning, started years before actual implementation, the hardware and software to meet the requirements seemed sufficient. At actual implementation both hardware and software came up short in computing power and failed to run the databases for ALMRS. And there was also the fact that the user interface was "clumsy" as a kind description and required a higher level of computer expertise than most BLM employees had or were willing to acquire. The Novell network had been replaced by the Unix network (AIX) and for most end users it seemed to be a big step backwards. [The state office IRM staff even changed their ALMRS promo ink pens that read "records never clicked like this" to "records never clicked "]
After hundreds of $millions were spent, the initial ALMRS modernization was scrubbed. The AIX Unix platform was given a face lift with a GUI (graphical user interface) and continued as the office automation platform, while new plans for computer access to lands records were being developed.
A trend had begun with the Novell network…an increase in both hardware and software support requirements that had to be met by the BLM computer staff. The Novell network required support to servers and workstations, installation of network components, support of network software, and peripherals. The Unix network brought an even greater computer support responsibility above that of the Novell network just on the basis of the increase in the number of servers, workstations and peripherals, not to mention the new software programs to support. In Miles City the IRM staff of one (me) had not increased to meet the quantum increase in installation, maintenance, and support duties.
In the late 1990's a plan to implement the NT generation of Windows and windows networking was started. In 1999 this plan would involve the support by District office computer staff of both Unix and Windows environments.
[At an IRM meeting in Lewistown to discuss the pending Windows NT implementation, when I stated that we (FO Computer Specialists) would need training to handle the new workload, Park Richard blew up. Out of the recesses of his troubled mind, he blurted "…so you are saying I don't do anything." Neither I nor anyone else had said anything like that. We took a break after this outburst and IRM chief Robin Stoebe's comment was "You sure know how to push his buttons."]
After I left the Montana BLM in 2000, the move continued toward Windows and likely phased out the majority of the AIX Unix deployment. But during my time the systems in use and being supported were always a bastardized combination of several platforms, which meant there was a little bit of everything that had come down the pike and was coming down the pike.
About 1997 the computer staff at Miles City increased with the addition of Jerry French, the GIS and Autocadd computer specialist and Tammy Watts in the computer assistant position.
Jerry had worked in the Engineering division with Autocadd on PC's and Tammy had been the personnel clerk. When the bulk of Tammy's job duties were taken by the state office personnel staff, she was moved into the computer assistant position. [There was a bit of controversy in this selection due to the fact that Deb Sloan, BDRA, who had worked as a temp for at least (3) years and had computer experience was not selected despite her better KSA's as compared to Tammy's lack of computer knowledge, skills, and abilities. The BLM State Office (personnel division, Diane Friez) was the encouraging influence and director in the choice of Tammy Watts for the Miles City computer assistant position.]
The BLM in Montana underwent a "reorganization" to improve efficency around 1997-98, termed "two-tier". Designed on paper to improve efficency by eliminating a surplus of management level positions and to move people out of the Billings State Office to the Field Offices where real work actually occurred, the reorganization was merely a paper exercise.
Not one person moved out of the state office and many managers were merely renamed "team leaders". [Janet Singer confirmed this in testimony during the MSPB hearing held in Billings MT in late 2000.]
One aspect of this reorganization that would later cause serious problems within the Montana BLM was the placing of the State Office Support Services division, headed by Janet Singer, in management over the Field Office administration staffs. [It was said that this was motivated by the need to keep the nepotism of the BLM Butte office, where Michelle Good worked under her husband Merle Good, acceptable by, again really only a paper exercise, placing Michelle under Janet Singer's supervision. Both the Good's were near retirement and did retire in 2000, and soon after BLM MSO Support Services was removed from its direct supervisory position over the Field Office support staffs.]
Janet Singer was not a good manager. Whether it was her attitude toward lower ranking employees, probably derived from her time in the military, or her proneness to hold grudges against those that disagreed with her, she was not well liked. It was not uncommon for Singer to direct state office employees traveling to the field offices to listen for employees comments and gripes especially about management and to bring that information back to her. In 1999 during a hallway conversation, a state office employee told me that "she prefers the company of women to men", allegedly heard from his wife, a resource area office manager. After having personal dealings with Singer and the attitude that she exhibited, I agree with that statement. [At her retirement, Janet Singer began a foster home for young girls and even adopted some of those girls. The Billings Gazette has this article on Janet Singer in archives]
In early 1998 I became involved with the Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) Travel Management Planning project being initiated in the Montana Dakotas BLM. The OHV TMP was biased and being weighted to favor permittee's (drillers & ranchers) and their use of and travel on public lands. These are the same people that create most of the travel routes (two tracks) that exist on public land. My involvement included attending planning meetings and to writing letters to the local newspaper encouraging the public to participate. The Miles City BLM manager at that time, Tim Murphy, expressed his displeasure and concern to Janet Singer over my letters to the Miles City Star newspaper.
When the BLM representative to the OHV meetings, David Squires, and members of the Eastern Montana RAC (Dwayne Andrews,Bill Melton) offered to write the travel management plan at one of the meetings, I decided it was time to step up and to represent the public. [The RAC (resource advisory committee) is a tool directed and employed by the BLM to achieve politically motivated goals and does not fairly represent the public's interests. RAC members have stated that they "felt used and manipulated" in the process of these directed projects.]
My involvement lead to my writing of the first draft OHV guidelines plan (draft #1), which was then taken and modified several times by David Squires and the RAC subcommittee. The plan came out in the final version still biased toward liberal public lands travel exceptions for permittees and with greater restrictions on the general publics' use of those same public lands (take a look at draft #7). I began posting the OHV draft plan and the changes to it to my web site in early 1998. In the end those with exemptions allowing travel on public lands were just told to stay out of sight during the fall hunting season when the general public would be more likely to notice and complain.
[http://gferren.150m.com/lte.html]
One of the participants in the draft OHV planning meetings, Ron Devlin, a rancher who later became a (Republican) representative in the Montana state legislature, asked for a travel exemption in order to drive across public lands to his dog kennel. Devlin even stated at one of the OHV planning meetings that "…the recreational public never paid for anything in Montana"! I was floored to hear such an outrageous statement. Before losing reelection Devlin even tried to taxpayer fund the startup of a railroad and coal power plant for private interests in Eastern Montana, an $800 million startup to be paid for by the taxpayers of Montana.
When I started work in the Miles City office (1991), the District manager was Sandy Sacher, acting. Then came Chuck Frost, Glenn Carpenter, and Tim Murphy (circa 1997). The first act of all these managers was to "reorganize" the office, so for the first year of their presence a great deal of time, energy, and taxpayer money was invariably spent in moving employees and their office furniture including computer equipment. This didn't seem to increase either office efficiency or employee morale. It did serve to increase my workload.
Tim Murphy came from a BLM office in NM, where he was a resource area office manager (small satellite office). His position was being eliminated in NM and he had connections with Larry Hamilton, the Montana BLM state director. Tim was a "team player" and as he described himself upon introduction to the Miles City office at his first all employee meeting, an "idea man". He had strong loyalty to his superiors and political aspirations of upward mobility. Tim was big on playing office politics and worked the advancement of women, "breaking the glass ceiling" angle, to further his own advancement. [Political agendas like this one fail the public due to the promotion of a particular candidate regardless of that candidates ksa's, sometimes over more skilled applicants.]
Tim expected direct line computer support from the state office and acted as though the state office computer staff was his first line of support. This would have fallen right into place in the early 1990's, but under my encouragement the district computer specialists had evolved to systems level support capability and were now responsible for the computer systems and user support in their respective offices. It was hard to pierce the void. Murphy never seemed to adjust to the fact that his computer staff existed onsite. In any event it was an issue; my ability to do my job without dependence upon the State Office IRM staff, that prompted communication between Tim Murphy and the state office support services director Janet Singer in 1997.
There was a computer system problem in the fall of 1997, while I was on leave. Greg Pedersen, Butte office, was my system administrator backup. The Unix server was hung during a reboot process (incomplete reboot) and Greg couldn't access it remotely due to the hung state. I was in town and came in to the office and fixed the problem when Jerry French got word to me about the problem later that day. Tim Murphy had tried to get the MSO computer staff to fix the server and they did not have login access (root password, superuser). (Which would not have worked in any event with a hung server) This type of problem required a physical onsite presence at the server console.
The Montana State Office computer staff did not have root level access to the Miles City computer system for a couple of reasons. The MSO staff was never good about keeping their Field Office computer specialist counterparts informed of their activities on the FO systems. Often our end users would contact MSO who would then work on the problem and later those same end users would contact the local computer support staff with a request to address the same problem. This lead to duplication of effort and the extra strain on limited FO computer support resources was at the least inefficient. Without root access the State Office computer staff were forced to refer our local end users back to their first line of support preventing the circumventation.
[Field office computer specialists did not have root level access to state office computer systems, but routinely provided root level backup support to each other and when necessary provided root level access to their sites to top level state office IRM staff.]
Tim Murphy would again email correspondence to Singer in 1998 over his concerns with my letters to the newspaper regarding public participation in the OHV travel management planning process.
Both Murphy and Singer were aware of my web site by early 1998. This came about through my letters to the editor listing my web site URL link and from an incident involving the Miles City BLM's web browser startup web page. I had posted a link from this browser startup page to access the draft OHV plan. Murphy didn't think it was appropriate, allowing the public to see the OHV drafts, so I removed the link and informed him that I would continue to post the OHV drafts documentation on my own web site.
Murphy discussed both the lte's and the OHV link with Singer. He was looking for a way to stop my letter writing, reflecting a common managerial policy that BLM employees should be seen and not heard, unless they are managers. I found out later that the BLM even has a written policy against employees' letter-to-the editor public discourse. The policy discourages both initiating and responding, and for any letters to be edited and approved by the public affairs staff.
Tim Murphy accomplished a lot of office turmoil during his tenure at the BLM Miles City office. He whole-heartedly embraced assisting female employees with greater opportunities to break the "glass-ceiling". Miles City got its first female law enforcement ranger under Tim's insistence. Though the position need was justified an "emergency" fill, the emergency was put on hold while the candidate was trained for the job which took about a year. There was a time when giving Lori Harbaugh a gun (with bullets) would have made me nervous.
Murphy also managed to install security measures and restrict public access to the interior Miles City office. Initially Tim's calls for restricting public access to the building were ignored, no one took his fears seriously because no one in the Miles City office was afraid of the public except Tim. With the OK City bombing and the government wide knee-jerk reaction to secure all building sites, Murphy was able to push on with his security agenda. As a result, as far as I know, no one has ever blown up the Miles City BLM office.
I should briefly explain that Lori Wittenhagen (later to be Lori Harbaugh) was a clerk working in my section. I remember a particular incident where we (office staff) were discussing who would backup the front desk receptionist position when the receptionist was on break or absent. Lori was very emotional and in tears and asked "why I thought I was better than her…", because I had declined to cover the receptionist desk. I replied to her statement that for one, I had more work than I could do and two, the taxpayers were paying me a pretty good salary and probably expected me to do more than answer the office phone to earn that pay. And yes, a clerical job (like hers) was easier to fill than a technical job (like mine).
There were plenty of people in the Miles City office that could answer a phone and none that could perform my duties. Having worked both as a clerk and as a tech, I knew this was true.
After this particular incident, arming Lori would have been the last thing I would have considered. As I remember it, the discussion mentioned here occurred before Lori's first husband was killed in a tragic accident. The opportunity to become a ranger occurred after that accident. Perhaps she was more emotionally stable by that time. And perhaps it was just (the tears) a female emotional reaction to a stressful discussion. I have to admit that the meeting was highly charged. I was in particular upset over having seen my boss, the Administrative Officer (Janet Edmonds) on several occasions having to work the front desk and answer the switchboard. She was afraid that if she assigned a backup to the position the clerks would file a grievance against her.
In an office full of clerks there should never even have been a consideration to use technical support positions with the responsibilities that mine entailed for sitting at the front desk and answering and directing incoming phone calls. Nor for my supervisor GS13 Administrative Officer Janet Edmonds, to have to cover the front desk phones because an office full of clerks would complain when asked to do the job.
Which leads me to flash back to an even earlier incident. Why was Janet Edmonds so concerned about her female staff's response to her actions? About a year after I started at Miles City the entire administration office staff spent three days sequestered in a "team building" session because Kathy Bockness had filed a grievance against Janet Edmonds. Janet was Kathy's supervisor at the time, Kathy was doing budget work for the office. Various division managers in the office started going directly to Kathy, making budget matter decisions which Janet was responsible for knowing about and should have been included in. Janet made this known to Kathy in an attempt to stop the circumvention and Kathy filed a grievance against her.
Sandy Sacher was acting at the time, just prior to Chuck Frost's arrival as manager circa 1992, and Sacher sided with Bockness in her grievance. Sacher and Bockness were friends. The matter had caused enough problems that Chuck Frost decided the team building session was in order. Janet Singer was sent from the Montana State Office to facilitate and assist Chuck. This was my first introduction to Janet Singer and I came away with the impression that she was a politician…and blew whichever way those above her wanted her to blow.
In 1998 my career with the BLM (and my civil service career) was about to end. Having made the cardinal mistake of public discourse on a political matter (OHV), coupled with my independent ability to support the Miles City IRM needs, my fate was sealed.
Add to that the fact that I had made critical comments regarding some of Murphy's (and Robert Mitchell's) web page ambitions…those being Miles City BLM web site pages heavily loaded with graphic images of Murphy and Mitchell that were extremely slow to load by the public using web access over the then standard 56k dialup ISP connection. [The US military had already recognized this problem of multiple "pictures of the general" plaguing their web sites around 1995-96]
Robert Mitchell was the Miles City soil scientist, a special skill that should have had an associated workload large enough to keep him busy. Strangely, it didn't. But Robert aspired to be a computer specialist, claiming previous system administration duties from his work for another agency. Robert's soil scientist position description (PD) even listed dangerous work conditions due to the possibility of wolf and bear attacks…in eastern Montana! [Employees often worked on their own job description and his supervisor must have neglected to read the wolf/bear blurb in it or just figured it was good for a laugh ;>)]
Robert Mitchell knew just enough about Unix to be dangerous and volunteered for jobs like the web page coordinator. Having a sponsor like Tim Murphy only served to encouraged him. Murphy even made a point to call and interrupt a web page planning meeting at the Montana state office, asking IRM manager Robin Stoebe to see that Robert was selected for the Miles City web coordinator position (this position not to be confused with a web master, who at that time was state office employee Pam Dandrea).
Mitchell and I crossed swords in mid 1998 over the filling of a hard drive space on the Unix server that was shared by the entire office with his web page graphics. An Internet web server had been setup in the Montana state office to store the files related to the various field offices' web pages. Mitchell refused to use the web server and to stop filling the shared hard drive file space and told me he could do whatever he wanted in the shared hard drive file space. After that declaration, I took away his file creation permissions in the file system and restricted his login time to a (8:00 - 5:00) timeframe.
Robert squealed like a pig under a gate of course and was then given his own local 9g hard drive for storing web page files. Unix disk drives were expensive in 1998. The taxpayers funded the cure for Robert Mitchell's temper tantrum to the tune of around $1500. He also got a definition of what his "web coordinator" duties and abilities consisted of when his grievance against me was denied. [*This definition was something I had asked the state office to clarify months before Robert's blowup.]
When funding was approved to buy Mitchell a hard drive, I used the situation to procure (2) new hard drives for the Miles City computer system and salvaged an older drive to install in Mitchell's personal unix workstation. Good system administrators learn to develop social engineering skills to achieve goals that benefit the many vs the one or few. No one, including Mitchell, was the wiser. Even though the decision to appease Mitchell was really unnecessary, government spending expenditures often are, I guess you could say Mitchell's tantrums did benefit more than Robert Mitchell. There is no way to explain why BLM Miles City managers decided to spend your tax dollars rather than direct Mitchell to use resources that already were in place and existed for his specific purposes.
You might wonder why social engineering skills are necessary. For example, when the AIX Unix system was installed, the field offices were directed to move file systems to a central server. This makes sense for support purposes, file backups, etc. But when this action was initiated, the Montana state office (Robin Stoebe) also promised to help by funding replacement hardware for the field offices should a server hard disk drive fail and need to be replaced.
Miles City became a test for this promise when the office server hard disk drive failed. When that happened, the Montana state office (Robin Stoebe) replied to my request for help by telling me we were on our own. If we couldn't come up with the funds to purchase a new hard drive (there were no funds because the offices' budget was already spent), we would have to steal a drive from one of our other servers. Having to canabalize computer systems taught me to use funding opportunities to secure against these threats to systems uptime and availability, to use situations like the one Robert Mitchell produced to protect our office computer systems.
Another example of social engineering is reflected in the process of removing older computer systems. Often an end user would have 2 or even 3 different or older computer systems that had to be supported by a field office computer staff with limited numbers of staff and many responsibilities. Some end users were resistant to move to and use a software program on a new system that had been specifically created to replace the software product on an older system. Miles City BLM employee Dale Tribby was one such end user. In order to get him to give up an old PC and switch to the Unix database tracking program designed for BLM wildlife biologists, I set the PC's BIOS so that it would not recognize the internal hard drive. Then I told him the hard drive had failed. Sometimes you have to drag them kicking and screaming into the future, to use the current computer system and to maximize limited computer support resources.
I was admonished (by Singer and Murphy) for taking my own initiative in protecting the computer system and restricting Mitchell's access. Even so, I admit that I did enjoy flexing administrator muscle when Mitchell threw down the gauntlet in such an arrogant manner. My supervisor, Janet Edmonds, understood why I took the action in dealing with Mitchell. Robert's reputation for being somewhat uncooperative and hard to deal with having already preceded him throughout the Miles City office.
I became aware in mid 1998 via Asko Virtanen, lead state office computer specialist, that Janet Singer had asked Asko to investigate the activities of one of the field office computer specialists. He implied that it was me. Not long after this revelation, at an awards ceremony in Phoenix, I disclosed to Asko that while running security software on the Unix network, software poorly named "crack", I had discovered that several system users had chosen poor passwords…Janet Singer being one of those. [Asko had this information in October 1998, but waited and relayed this info to Singer in December 1998.]
Being a system administrator this information had no implication one way or another toward my abilities on the system or regarding user accounts. It only reflected that I was skillful enough to assemble and use the same tools that hackers would use to attack our systems. System administrators have super user or "root" level access and are unhindered on all system levels as opposed to users who are restricted to a particular level or to specific file systems.
I never came up with the story on the special relationship between Singer and Virtanen. Seems at one time Asko was the lead computer specialist at MSO and held a position simular to the one that Robin Stoebe now holds. I heard that Singer busted Asko out of that position, but no one volunteered info on the why. Asko Virtanen is the contributor to the infamous "administrative review team report" who stated that I was the "best systems administrator" in the Montana Dakotas BLM. As much as Asko was a "regular guy", the type you could go to strip joints with, and we did (Greg, Steve, and I) more than once in places like Cheyenne and Phoenix, I have the impression that whatever power Singer had over him was enough to make him fear her. I believe that this fear was a factor in his reporting to Singer that I had her password in December 1998, when she was looking for excuses to use in order to detail me and put me under her boot heel.
In October 1998, Janet Edmonds filed an EEO action against Tim Murphy. I made a statement in support of Janet and said some uncomplimentary things about Murphy and Singer. " It is beginning to appear that we have a core management group ... Murphy, Seidlitz, Christensen ... all new and somewhat exclusionary in their management team actions. Janet Edmonds' productivity is being hindered by being labelled "an outsider"/"not on the team" by this current MCFO management group... who are being assisted in their decisions by Janet Singer. Janet E.'s morale is at rock bottom…"
[http://gferren.150m.com/csandau1.html]
My statement was emailed to Chuck Sandau who worked for Diane Friez. Diane Friez is the BLM state office personnel manager and a personal friend and protégé of her mentor Janet Singer. [Upon Singer's retirement in 2003, acting state director *Tom Lonnie attempted to backdoor Friez into Singer's position with a non-competitive appointment. The efforts of myself and others via Congressional contacts blocked this attempt to circumvent competition for the vacant position.] [*There is also the (strictly office gossip afaik) perceived appearance by some of an improper personal relationship of a sexual nature, between Tom Lonnie and Diane Friez, and indications of secret meetings or liasons between the two in Phoenix and even in private court chambers at the Billings Federal District Court.]
Between the middle of 1998 and October 1998, Tim Murphy raised a fuss over one of my boys using a NT PC to access the Internet. [The FO computer specialists had been given NT PC's in order to become familiar with the operating system, they were not yet an official system implementation - instructions for this came down in mid-1999] I had one of these NT PC's and setup web browser software and an Internet connection on it. My boys sometimes stopped by my office for a few minutes after school and used the PC to lookup info on the Internet.
I was informed that the computer was government equipment and to cease and desist immediately allowing employee children, mine or any others, to access the Internet or for any other use of government computers. [I was informed by Janet Edmonds at the insistence of field office manager Tim Murphy.]
Notwithstanding that there was no security issue or that other offices (Butte for one) were allowing the same family member access to computers and the Internet. [A common practice by myself and the other field office computer specialists, of supplying excess personal computers setup with a modem and web browser for Internet connection capability to BLM employees to use for work from home, was an easy end-around to this family members hands off government equipment policy.]
The simple fact is that a common stranger to the office could become a BLM volunteer and was then given the same access to computers and the Internet as any employee. It would be fair to say that most of us know our own family members better than we know a stranger off the street. But policy is policy whether based on common sense or not. I told the boys to stop using the PC.
In November 1998 I was absent most of the month. First for approximately two weeks while we travelled by car to and from Alabama for the funeral of Robin's only sister. Then for about a week while I took time off to be with Robin and to get some fresh air. I routinely carried 4 - 6 weeks of leave or vacation time and if I remember correctly over a thousand hours of sick leave.
Around the end of November 1998 I allowed my uncle's son to use the PC in my office (Internet) while I was waiting for his greyhound bus to Arkansas to arrive. I had to work on a problem in the engineering building and the kid had nothing to do for the next 30 minutes. Before I could get back across the parking lot and deliver the boy to the bus station, Aden Seidlitz, Tim Murphy's assistant manager, found him using the NT PC. I assume Seidlitz had been directed by Murphy to keep an eye on me. The proverbial crap hit the fan with Seidlitz and Murphy calling and emailing Janet Singer, encouraging her to flex some muscle over Janet Edmonds to see that I was properly disciplined.
Janet Singer started a series of emails to my supervisor Janet Edmonds pushing her to administer "discipline" and correct my actions as I was "out of control". Janet Edmonds showed me the emails and I replied to everyone on the list for those emails. Janet Singer was shocked that my supervisor would show me the emails that she was receiving from Singer. I asked Singer to redistribute the current policy on the use of government equipment and the Internet for clarification.
I read policy directives, but my job required working and what I did read more often than not, when I had any time to read, was related to fixing specific computer system hardware and software problems. Perhaps delusional, I thought I had seen a recent policy statement that was actually "family friendly" regarding employees and family members accessing the Internet.
Janet Singer came to Miles City on the 21st day of December 1998, along with Bart Fitzgerald, MSO law enforcement, and Diane Friez. Her intent was to remove me from the Miles City office (and the civil service), because of "problems with my performance…" [In December 1998, just two weeks prior to Singers appearance, I was given a performance award...also signed by Singer]
Singer kept saying during our "conversation", that is, the speech where she told me what she was going to do to me, that "I had said nothing to change her mind". She seemed to become incensed when I asked if I needed to get the same attorney that David Swogger had used. [Janet Singer had previously attempted an attack against David Swogger that had failed] Singer had also placed Lori Harbaugh, the Miles City ranger, outside my office door, "in case I should be violent", because Lori had a gun. I assume that Bart Fitzerald, being the head of MSO law enforcement, also had a gun. As part of the justification for moving me to the BLM state office, it would be stated that "people in the Miles City office feared me…". Seems like to me that by making sure two guns were handy, Janet Singer was the one that feared me most of all.
Janet Singer had not told my supervisor of her intentions before arriving at the Miles City office. [(Janet Edmonds had informed me earlier in the year that Singer was mad at her over a disagreement but she didn't go into particulars.)] Janet Edmonds strongly objected to Singer's plan to move or "detail" me to the MSO and just as emphatically to Singer's circumvention of her first line supervisory role over me.
In fact, Janet Edmonds had never (1991 - 1998) had any problems with my work performance and I had received multiple quality work awards from other BLM employees (Miles City and other offices) and excellent performance evaluations. This included performance awards signed off on by both Tim Murphy and Janet Singer. The alleged "problems with my performance" statement was a farce. I could not be the "best system administrator" and have received all those performance awards and quality step increases, if I had not been doing my job.
In summary, after my public OHV planning participation and my EEO statement in support of Janet Edmonds and against Singer and Murphy, I was to be "detailed" to MSO because of problems with my "performance".
I was then escorted from the building by Bart Fitzerald, my building keys were taken, and I was informed to report to the state office for non-computer related duties. [(Singer and Murphy's
Merry F******* Christmas!, Thanks for your years of exceptional service.)] Before all was said and done, Singer even made a point to tell me that she was looking into other disciplinary measures that she could take against me. You could say she had "plans" for me.
I was detailed to the Montana State Office for 90 days, the detail was then extended another 90 days. This was Singer's strategy to buy time, while she put together a hatchet team to review my work at the Miles City office, to work up charges for a suspension, and to work on a *"directed reassignment". Under her boot heel, I would no longer pose a threat to her or Tim Murphy. She would remove my computer skills and system level access, to prevent my revealing any future conspiratorial actions against Janet Edmonds or others they might target.
*Directed reassignments are a common management tool used by government Agency's such as Interior/BLM to quiet outspoken employees, those that write letters to newspapers or to eliminate those employees that may object or disagree publicly in house or out to a management policy or decision. A directed reassignment is where the employee is given the ultimatum to move to a new duty station or to be separated from the Agency (in a nutshell - move, resign, or be fired).
A directed reassignment is usually supported with the following bs statement, "to promote the efficiency of the service…". Moving an employee neither promotes efficiency in the employees' work or in the office moved from, affecting said office morale negatively, even causing the redirection of already limited resources from other offices to support the losing office in an effort to offset the loss of the moved employee. For months, MSO would have to send multiple computer staff weekly, from the state office and the other Montana field offices, to fill the void in computer support caused by my removal from the Miles City office.
Where once the BLM Miles City office lead the BLM Montana Dakotas offices in computer system hardware and software implementation, maintenance, and user support, it soon lagged behind in all IRM areas.[As the field office lead computer specialist for Miles City I did the work of an average of two computer staff as relative to the other Montana field offices, and the equal of the work of from three to five computer staff personnel at the Montana state office. State office computer staff are often only skilled on one specific support need, whereas a field office lead computer specialist is skilled on and has to support many IRM functions.]
After taking a couple of weeks leave after the lockout from the Miles City office, I reported to the state office in January 1999.

Jon Roland, Constitution Society 7793 Burnet Road #37, Austin, TX 78757
"As I emphasized in my Mar. 31 talk to the Give Me Liberty 2007 conference (PowerPoint- equivalent at http://www.constitution.org/col/jdr/gml2007.ppt ), it is a constitutional error to speak of rights as being "lost". It is in the nature of those rights arising from nature or the social compact that they cannot be lost, or taken away, or even given away. Rights are simply not things for which such expressions can be grammatically correct. I then pointed out that "there is no right without a remedy", and asked the rhetorical question whether it is our remedies that have been lost instead. But remedies, although not necessarily mapped 1-1 to rights, are equally beyond loss. I argued that to be correct, one must say that what we have lost are "access to our remedies". That is a critical distinction that everyone should dwell on long enough to make it a central idea to their thinking. So, for example, when one is said to "waive his rights", he has done no such thing. All anyone can waive is access to remedies. Now one can argue that this is a quibble, that loss of access to remedies is equivalent as a practical matter to the loss of rights, but it is not, because any loss of access to remedies is essentially temporary, and can be reversed. All it takes is sufficient determination by a sufficient number of people. We may decry a lack of such determination, but it puts the moral burden where it belongs, on us and our own actions, the only things that are under our control. Countless words have been wasted blaming others for abuses of rights, and demanding that "they" stop doing that. Well, people in positions of power do what they do because they can, and always have, and it is up to us to supervise, resist, and correct them. If we don't, don't try to avoid responsibility by blaming others for doing what people will do when not properly supervised.
Never send to know where are the police. We are the police."
[Throughout my ordeal a common thread is apparent…at all levels that should provide civil service protection, from EEOC to MSPB to Federal Courts and Judges, the prevailing attitude is that a civil servant works for a particular manager or group of managers (ie BLM state office management), when in truth the reality is that civil servants work for you the public and only work with management level staff. Until the prevailing attitude is corrected there will be no real protection for your dedicated civil servants and you lose. GF]
Chapter 2: Exile to the Ivory Tower (Granite) and BLM State Office (Siberia)
When I reported to the BLM Montana State Office, the first thing I did was meet with *Sara Romero-Minkoff to file an EEOC grievance against Janet Singer for discrimination. I believed and still do that Singer's actions against me were taken because I was male and over 40, both gender and age discrimination and in retaliation for my EEO statement in support of Janet Edmonds.
Rather than try to correct any alleged performance issues using guidelines as per BLM's own personnel manual, Singer was going to put me in my place, with her foot on my neck. *[I later learned that Sara Romero-Minkoff was mentored by Janet Singer] In the state office I was placed under Singers' subordinate Robin Stoebe and assigned to inventory excess computer equipment. [Robin Stoebe came to Billings from Denver, where several EEO complaints had been filed against him. Stoebe had once worked in the Miles City office as a Range Conservationist. After a stint in the BLM's Washington office he wound up at the Denver office.]
The State office was preparing to move from the Granite Tower lease, near downtown Billings, to a new BLM state office building being constructed on the West side of Billings near the freeway. [Former Montana BLM State Director Larry Hamilton and some of his staff would have to make a trip to BLM headquarters to request more funding for that construction - not sure what the actual end cost for the building came to.]
When Singer told me she was detailing me to MSO, she informed me that I would not be working with computers. What she did was take me from system level computer duties as the MCFO systems administrator and give me entry level computer duties at MSO. [This work was formerly performed by a coop student that had been dismissed for failing to maintain school grades, at least that was the story being given for A. C.'s dismissal.] This assignment to inventory and dispose of old PC's was done in retaliation and meant to make me feel degraded, to show me who was boss.
I started contacting anyone that I thought might be able to stop Singers' abuse of position and authority. I contacted the BLM Inspector General's office (IG), the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB), wrote the BLM director, I even wrote the President. I had naively assumed there was a Civil Service agency such as the MSPB that would protect good civil servants from bad managers like Janet Singer and her cronies. I was dead wrong and was about to receive an education about the "system" in 1999-2000.
Kim Prill was assigned as the EEOC counselor to my complaint against Singer. Kim was also a Singer protégé. She traveled to Miles City to "investigate" and came back with her complaint about a poster I had in my work area. This poster was a promotion of an event (zoo grass) by a local Billings radio station featuring several beauties in jean shorts and halter tops - less revealing than say attire worn by the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Kim Prill found it offensive. And that was about the sum of Kim's work on my complaint along with her recommendation that I drop the complaint. [Kim was later given a high graded position as the Lewis & Clark coordinator for the L&C anniversary, an event that never materialized in the touted wholesale arrival of tourists to Montana's L&C sites and events.]
From January 1999 to December 1999, I continued to drive from my home in Miles City to Billings, at first staying in a motel (during the "detail" and "extended detail") and later because of the expense renting a real dump (holes in the ceiling, mold on the walls) on the outskirts of Billings after the "directed reassignment" was made by Singer. I also changed my work days to 4x10hrs, Monday to Thursday, so that I could spend as much time as possible with my family in Miles City.
Late in 1999 after the EEOC investigation of my case the Denver EEOC office informed me that there was a (2) year backlog on dealing with those case findings. [Deb Chivers, The EEOC investigator on my case was a friend of Singers working out of the Boise ID office, I was told they had worked together in the Washington Office as EEO staff.
During my EEOC Investigation interview I attempted to question her about that personal relationship with Singer and she refused to answer on the record, but did so after going off record.]
The MSPB didn't seem to be going anywhere either, with Administrative Judge Kasic, out of Denver Colorado, being unwilling to consider any of the evidence related to my being moved in retaliation to MSO by Singer. Kasic has a symbiotic relationship with the Agencies and a unethical close relationship with the Field Solicitor, Gavin Frost. Kasic's $125,000+ per year salary was closely related to the workload of cases being generated by the Agencies such as Interior/BLM (aka job security) and he appears in no way interested in putting a stop to that gravy train.
AJ Kasic impressed me a lot by telling me of recently presiding over a case where (2) employees were fighting over who got the best ink pen…and then by informing me before the MSPB hearing in Billings that he was in a hurry to get back to Denver for his daughters T-ball game. Sources have told me that while speaking with Kasic by phone prior to any action on a complaint, he would make statements such as " I haven't read your case, but I'm going to deny it…" During my MSPB hearing after my "removal" from civil service by the BLM, Kasic prompted the Agency to direct it's argument and reasons for the removal on my alleged "hacking" rather than upon its charges against my web site postings, which had been the charges used to initiate the removal action.
As I had gone through the year of exile in 1999, along with attempting to utilize any administrative process, internal or external resource to bring attention to and prevent Singer's illegal actions, I had begun disclosing to the public Singer's actions being taken against me and other questionable actions taken by Montana BLM's managers through the media of my free speech Internet web site.
Singer had detailed me, extended the detail, pushed through a directed reassignment and even suspended me in 1999. [The suspension over my attendance at OHV meetings] With no way to stop her attack, I could and did make information of that attack available to the public via my Internet web page. Having fallen into the crocodile pit at feeding time, I knew that playing dead was not going to help much. I also knew that when wallowing with pigs, you are going to get excrement on your hands. I thought it was about time that some of the skeletons in the Montana BLM closet became public knowledge. I continued to hang on and fight, even when there seemed to be no escape from the abuse and with no end to Singer's retaliation in sight.
After the move from the Granite Tower to the new BLM state office, I had been placed in a cubicle directly in front of Robin Stoebe's office. Since the building was on a computer network, I could login from any terminal. I enjoyed watching Stoebe and certain members of the state office IRM staff hurry to inquiry why I had done so, when I would login from a different terminal other than the one that had been placed in my cubicle. The fact was that I knew I was being watched. Emails [in the case record] from Singer to Stoebe would later confirm that my web page postings were causing her, various other BLM managers and some employees like Watts and Mitchell, some serious heartburn. Singer directed Stoebe to monitor my activities closely.
In late December 1999 I posted a report to my web page regarding an ethics violation by MCFO manager Tim Murphy and also a report on the drunken antics of the Field Solicitor attorney Gavin Frost which had occurred during a rugby team trip to Wyoming, this taken from a previous series of Billings Gazette newspaper articles on the subject. Murphy had given his secretary Linda Reder a grazing lease against the recommendation of his Miles City office grazing staff after the secretary's husband had grazed cattle on the land illegally for the previous (2) years.
The report on Solicitor Gavin Frost mentioned how he had first mooned off-duty female law enforcement officers in a bar and later participated in a gang fight when his rugby team jumped the bartender (by the way there was no rugby game scheduled in the Wyoming town where Frost's drunken spree occurred). After this posting and before I was due to report back to the MSO, I received notice that I was going to be removed from the civil service for "misconduct" and that I was being placed on administrative leave pending that action.
[http://gferren.150m.com/gfrost.html]
["…Bulls team member Gavin Frost, of Billings, spent Sunday night in jail after police responded to a brouhaha at Cassie's Supper Club, a honky tonk bar on Cody's West Strip…Frost smelled of alcohol when he was arrested, slurred his speech and had trouble staying on his feet, Kelsey said…Shortly after jailers locked him in the drunk cell, Frost began shouting, singing and banging on the door, awakening other prisoners…Several off duty officers saw the team drop their pants while Singing and dancing at the Brass Rail Lounge that evening. The team, dressed alike in bright blue, yellow and red jerseys, told the bartender there to turn off the juke box as players sang Irish drinking songs, said officer Ann Fields, who witnessed the group nudity…"]
In January 2000 the effort to end my civil service career was being concluded with the actions of Singer, Stoebe, Friez, and a hatchet-man named John Moorhouse who would signoff on the charge as the deciding official. On my worst day as a government employee, I was better than any of these dregs would ever be. Having endured the abuse for a year, my patience was coming to an end also. The Merit System Protection Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission…who should have protected me from a petty tyrant like Janet Singer, seem to exist in fact and reality primarily to protect government managers from accou

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