A Club in the Hands of the Politically Correct – Part 4

Greetings:

Another housekeeping note: A lot of your comments on my Facebook page – cool, but evidently more people are following the drama than just FB friends. And many I think would benefit reading your remarks – and some of you guys have taken me to task (and again, not deleting). So, consider posting directly below (or not). Thanks.

Hope you are all well and survived the last reality-TV post. There’s a program in Albania, Big Brother (is this a knock-off on an American show?) about a bunch of randomly picked young adults living in this big house trying to get along with each other (or not); anyway, it has a following here and my host family always tuned in. I never saw the appeal…but sometimes I felt like my pre-service training would have made titillating fare in equally prurient entertainment. 

*** 

So, let’s go back to the August 17 phone call from the Country Director: I wasn’t happy with how he wanted me to just go on and forget about the whole thing. Just as I felt there should be some type of accountability with the university experience, I felt even stronger here. The whole thing I considered so juvenile and petty that at the very least a more complete investigation should have been made to determine whether the the complaint was driven out of sincerity or with malice and intent to harm just for the hell of it. I was thinking about filing a complaint myself with the Office of the Inspector General. 

The Country Director did his best to calm me down with regard to the open-endedness of the whole thing. His solution was to address a communication to the volunteers and staff stating his findings – the PCV communication system is incredibly effective – a casual word to a volunteer in Elbasan, for example, will find its way to the north and south extremes with remarkable efficiency. Word had gotten around.

Now, I ask you to consider this. Can you entertain a more damning charge than sexual misbehavior? I can’t, short of killing someone. Fraud, theft, violence, bodily harm, etc. – next to any of these, an accusation of sexual harassment (even dismissed) will stay forever. I mean it’s like toothpaste and tubes. Stereotypes and prejudice are destructive to the extreme; but the individual rumored to be a sexual offender is burdened with a ready-made label from which I think few recover – the fall-out is forever.

As much as I appreciated the Country Director’s intention to send out a message, I wasn’t sure how much good it would do. He told me this was completely outside Peace Corps protocol but given all the publicity (and the good that he felt I could do) he thought it was the least he could offer. Of course, again, there was no communication from DC on this and as I said, I never got anything in writing.

So, follow me on this: exoneration phone call from the Country Director on Monday morning August 17 – I think I went out to dinner that evening with my counterpart; the next two days I’m back at my preps for the fall term and probably meeting with students on their BA thesis research and writing; Thursday morning August 20 I’m up and back to work…and BAM!...I open my emails and my eyes laser one subject box:  “Notice of Consideration of Administrative Separation.” I began shaking uncontrollably. I had just gotten my morning coffee sitting outside at the Coffee House around 830am. My brain was screaming; my God, DC had dismissed the Country Director’s report; DC had decided I was no good for the Peace Corps. I calmed down enough to fumble a call my counterpart – I was nearly incoherent, I blurted something, he just told me to take a deep breath and stay where I was, he was on his way. Just as I hung up, the phone rings with the Country Director – he was on his way from Tirana to Elbasan. I found out later that he intended to terminate my service that very day and send me home. Well, my counterpart picked me up and we went to his office. Together we opened the email: 

From: Burgess, Lateefah [lburgess@peacecorps.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2015 7:44 PM
To: William Karl Martin
Subject: Notice of Consideration of Administrative Separation

Hello Mr. William,

Please find attached a memorandum concerning undisclosed legal charges found in your background investigation. As a result of your lack of disclosure, you are currently being considered for administrative separation from Peace Corps service based upon your provision of misleading, inaccurate or incomplete information during the Peace Corps application. I have also attached Peace Corps Manual Section 284 Early Termination of Service which contains the agency’s policies regarding administrative separations due to the provision of misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete information.

You may provide a written response to this memorandum via email no later than Friday, August 21, 2015 at 5:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Please send your response to lburgess@peacecorps.gov. You also have the option to resign before a final decision is made according to Section 7.2(c) of the Peace Corps Manual.

Thank you,

Lateefah Burgess

Director of Placement

Peace Corps

1111 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20526

Phone: 202-692-1859

Fax: 202-692-1897

RPCV Senegal 2001 – 2004

The next hour or so was right up there with the worst of my life. In all the harassment stuff there had never been any written communication – here on the other hand was my termination notice in official black and white. You read “separation”; I read “terminate with extreme prejudice!” Yeah, PC uses the PC term “separation” – but it’s the same damn thing. And note: one day to respond! Yes, a BAM! from Lateefah Burgess – and not with the attendant “Gimme some love.”

Now, I laid this out, at least the Politically Correct vanilla version, in the previous “My last ‘Peace Corps in Albania’ post.” It was a tough post to write. For one thing, I hadn’t told my kids about the “sexual harassment” complaint – a couple would have gone ballistic and a couple of others would have been so out of joint with worry about me that, well, I didn’t want to think about laying that on them. Plus, I hadn’t come to a decision as to how I was going to deal with the complaint – OIG, whatever, hadn’t had time to fully consider. Additionally, though I thought I had been horribly mistreated regarding the termination (you’ll see what I mean shortly), I wasn’t interested in bashing the PC/DC office and by extension PC/Albania. As difficult as my time was with some of the volunteers, I held many of them and the staff in high regard – and I’d developed friendships with a lot of them. (Remember the permission I got to connect with my friends in Istanbul at the end of July – that was a big deal.) So, I threw out a basic matter-of-fact (bullshit) announcement of my “retirement” due to clerical error on my part – “no hard feelings Peace Corps, my fault, should have paid more attention to detail.”

This is an amusing bit – I know, I know, I can find humor in just about anything. Well, to shorten my “last post” explanation I left some stuff out. Recall the lines. “Just so your brain doesn’t go into overtime I’ll tell you one...” Well, isolated from the events from the month before perhaps this line would not have given cause to wonder. On the other hand, fresh from the sexual harassment complaint and in the midst of a very healthy volunteer rumor mill, this line caused suspicion. (Like I said, a sexual harassment complaint is indelible – it’s like black marker on a white board.) One volunteer and his stateside girlfriend wondered what the other “one” could be – yeah, had there been a previous charge of a sexual nature which I tried to hide on the PC application? Now, I really love this guy – but in all love relationships we drive each other crazy sometimes – plus, maybe some of you PCVs wondered the same thing. He shared this with me a few weeks ago when I told him I had finally decided to start posting my take on the whole experience – the charge, the termination and the aftermath. “So, you’re going to explain the other thing you left off of the application?” “Well, yeah…I guess. Why?” And then he told me their speculations. “Holy hell! Did you think I left the question blank! – ‘No. 263: Are you a sexual harasser?’” Amazing.

So, in the spirit of complete transparency, here is Burgess’s attachment:

MEMORANDUM

TO: William Martin, Peace Corps Volunteer

FROM: Lateefah Burgess, Director of Placement

DATE: August 14, 2015

RE: Consideration of Administrative Separation

This memorandum is to inform you that I am considering administratively separating you from Peace Corps service based upon your provision of misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete information ("non-disclosure") regarding your legal history during the Peace Corps application process.

The Peace Corps Manual (available at http://www.peacecorps.gov/about/policies/docs/

manual/), in Section 284.7.2, asserts:

If the Peace Corps determines that a Volunteer/Trainee (V/T), while still an applicant, provided misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete information to the Peace Corps that could have affected the Peace Corps' review or consideration of that applicant, the V/T may be administratively separated from Peace Corps service.

You responded affirmatively to the following question asked as part of the Peace Corps application you submitted on January 7, 2014, and provided information regarding a 2009 Driving Under the Influence (DUI) charge:

Have you ever been cited for, arrested, charged with, or convicted of any offense(s)? (Exclude traffic fines less than $300 unless the violation was alcohol and/or drug related.

On January 29, 2014, in response to the following question during your interview with your Recruiter you did not provide information on any additional charges.

Is there any new information regarding your legal history that you would like to reveal at this time?

As is outlined on the Peace Corps website and application, Peace Corps conducts National Agency Check (NAC) Background Investigations on every applicant invited to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The results of your NAC indicated that you were arrested pursuant to a DUI charge in September 2009 as you disclosed. However, two additional charges were found. You were also charged with a Retail Theft (Shoplifting) charge in January 2012 and a DUI Alcohol or Drugs First Conviction in October 2012.

As a result of your failure to disclose this information you are being considered for administrative separation in accordance with Peace Corps Manual Section 284 Section 4.0...You have the right to respond in writing to this memorandum no later than Friday, August 21, 2015 at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time. Please send your response to lburgess@peacecorps.gov. I will consider any timely response. After reviewing any submitted response I will make a final decision. You have the option to resign in lieu of administrative separation at any time up to 24 hours after a final decision has been made. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Did I ‘have any questions’?! You damn right I did. Well, the Country Director got to Elbasan within the hour – a pretty fast trip – and we interviewed. I told him the situation with the stolen identity (see Burgess’s email below) and then I told him I had no idea what the 2012 DUI was all about. Let me take a moment to explain the 2009 instance so you don’t think I’m a drunk driver. My father had just died and it was a bit of a tough time. I had walked into a club, had a couple of drinks, and walked out. The owner of the club walked in as I was going out; hadn’t seen me in months and wanted to know what I was up to. Well, went back in, and with his sympathetic ear I got sloshed, wasted – and stupid enough to think I could drive. Pled guilty, and that was it.

(Oh yeah, I point this out in my response to Burgess, which I don’t want you to miss in a brief read: after submitting my Peace Corps application I applied for the position in Guatemala and I needed a criminal background report. Before sealing the document the young lady asked me if I wanted to take a look. Sure. The 2009 DUI showed up – nothing else.)

I told the Director the record showing a 2012 DUI had to be a mistake, unless I just couldn’t remember it. Keep in mind I’d just gotten through a couple of weeks of the worst emotional beat-to-hell and there were times I was happy just to remember my name. Of course he looked at me in utter disbelief. “Bill, you must remember if you had a DUI just three years ago!” Surely he thought he was dealing with an idiot. “Well, yeah, I can’t explain. But hell, I get it, there’s got to be some reason why she’s telling me this. This is serious crap!” He left after an hour, told me to figure it out soon and copy him on my response to Burgess.

August 20, 2015

Lateefah Burgess

Director of Placement

Peace Corps

1111 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20526

Phone: 202-692-1859

Fax: 202-692-1897

Re: Notice of Consideration of Administrative Separation

Dear Ms. Burgess:

This morning I received your email regarding “Notice of Consideration of Administrative Separation.” Rest assured that I take your concerns very seriously. Consequently, in addition to copying this response to Earl Wall, Country Director, I have also copied my attorneys in the offices of Bennett Tueller Johnson & Deere, LLC in Salt Lake City, Utah, to provide information regarding any “misleading, inaccurate or incomplete information during the Peace Corps application.”

Your concerns are two-fold (from your attached Memorandum, August 14, 2015, Consideration of Administrative Separation):

Regarding the Retail Theft (Shoplifting) charge January 2012:

This was a case of mistaken identity and when I first heard about it in April 2012 I contacted my attorneys immediately. It took many, many months to get it sorted out, despite the fact that the store video showed that the theft was committed by a young man of about twenty-five years old. This is an email at the time from my attorney regarding the resolution:

From: Stacy McNeill [smcneill@btjd.com]
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2013 3:58 PM
To: William Karl Martin
Subject: Police Report

Bill:  I’m sorry this has taken me so long to get this to you.  It’s been crazy around here.  Attached is the original police report, the docket, and the Motion to Dismiss signed by the prosecutor stating that your identity has been stolen.  This should be everything you need to go to the Salt Lake City Police Department and file a report.  For fun you can even call your favorite police man and see if he’ll take the report. ;)  Once you have a report relating to your identity theft please forward it to me for processing with the Crime Victims’ Rights Fund.

Thanks!

Stacy

Stacy J. McNeill
Bennett Tueller Johnson & Deere, LLC
3165 East Millrock Drive, Suite 500
Salt Lake City, UT  84121-5207

I am a bit surprised that, as you indicated, I did not mention this in my Peace Corps application. As I hope you can see there would be no concerns on my part if I had included this information. I can only conclude that since the charges were dismissed I assumed that this was not relevant to my application. Nonetheless, any consideration of separation regarding this omission cannot, in my estimation – and hope, be justified.

Regarding the DUI Alcohol or Drugs First Conviction in October 2012:

Your records are incorrect. Perhaps you have misread a report and applied this event to me – another case of mistaken identity. I have been forthcoming with the DUI charge of September 2009. I remember asking my recruiter during the interview if this charge would impair my application. She said that it likely would not. We talked about this in detail as I recall. She asked if there was anything else and I told her no.

You might note that you have some evidence in your files that this does not pertain to me. “First Conviction” is what your records show for October 2012. If this had been me, this notation would have been incorrect. Additionally, Utah takes DUI seriously. If three years after my 2009 charge I was guilty of another DUI I am pretty sure I would have received a mandatory sentence of anywhere between three months and one year. On the other hand, I may have been on a type of probation for three years, I don’t recall, and that this entry does pertain to me but only to show that I had completed the court requirements – I cannot say this is the case, but I am trying to consider all the possibilities. 

I implore you to review these facts and give them an accurate deliberation. If I did not include the shoplifting charge in my application I simply deemed that it did not apply since the charges were dropped because of indisputable mistaken identity. To my arrival in Albania I have not been charged or arrested with any offenses since my DUI in 2009 – this charge in 2012 is not true, or you have (perhaps understandably) misread the reports.

Please, Ms. Burgess, give me the opportunity to sort this out. I understand how the information you gathered must read on your end. I hope you will favorably consider this response and allow my attorneys to supply you with all the information you need for an accurate appraisal.

Thank you.

William K. Martin, PhD

Peace Corps/Albania 2015-2017

Aleksander Xhuvani University, Elbasan

http://wkmartin.blogspot.com/

Well, I connected with my attorney as soon as the office opened (Thursday Aug 20), she calls Burgess to explain the stolen identity and arrange to have docs forwarded and let Burgess know that there is no record of a DUI in 2012 – only one showing for 2009. Burgess does not take the call and my attorney leaves a message to this end. Neither does Burgess return her call. I have since determined that the Peace Corps is like any other US Government agency (duh!): nothing on record either in writing or verbal communication unless it’s absolutely required. Got it. The next day (Friday Aug 21) I get this email:

From: Burgess, Lateefah [lburgess@peacecorps.gov]
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2015 9:10 PM
To: William Karl Martin
Cc: smcneil@btjd.com
Subject: RE: Notice of Consideration of Administrative Separation

Hello William,

I received a voicemail message from your lawyer regarding the Retail Theft charge. I will inform her that no additional information is needed regarding this charge.

For the DUI Alcohol or Drugs First Conviction, I’d like to offer a correction and some additional information that may assist you in responding. The correction is that the date of the charge is October 2002 rather than 2012 as is stated in the memo. As well, the incident was recorded in Orange County Florida. Please let me know if there is any additional information you would like to supply regarding the DUI Alcohol or Drugs First Conviction charge.

Best regards,

Lateefah Burgess

Director of Placement

Peace Corps

1111 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20526

Phone: 202-692-1859

Fax: 202-692-1897

RPCV Senegal 2001 – 2004

Gee, thanks Lateefah, a typo! Here’s my response in letter form attached to an email – OK. I know it’s long, but understand I’ve just finished with a massive mother-of-all moments on the sexual harassment complaint, and now I’m desperately fighting for my Peace Corps service:

August 22, 2015

Lateefah Burgess

Director of Placement

Peace Corps

1111 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20526

Phone: 202-692-1859

Fax: 202-692-1897

Re: Notice of Consideration of Administrative Separation

Dear Ms. Burgess:

This letter is in response to your email of August 21, 2015.

Thank you for the correction. The October 2002 charge is correct to a degree – perhaps to a too fine degree that I should have made sure I included this information in my Peace Corps application of January 2014. You have indicated that this information was not included in my application. I would have had no problem including it in my application and my recollection is that I remember writing out a statement for this event, but perhaps I inadvertently did not cut and paste it on to the application form; or given the circumstances I might have thought that it did not apply. I know the application was just over a year and a half ago but I just don’t remember. 

I was in Florida on business and had a late lunch just before catching a flight to Salt Lake City. I had a drink after. When I left the restaurant I was followed by a police car which was parked across the street (the officers told me this). After five miles they pulled me over for littering. (I was in a convertible and a wrapper from a candy bar flew off the passenger seat). They asked me if I had been drinking, I said yes. They did a field test on me which, unfortunately, I did not take the stop seriously (littering and then an alcohol test?) thinking they would breathalyze me and send me on my way with a ticket. Additionally, I was distracted wondering if I was still going to make my flight – I wanted to get home.

Instead I was taken down to the station where, after the tech did the breathalyzer (it was somewhere around .012), the tech looked up at the officers in disbelief. I called an attorney, was bailed, and after my explanation the attorney (I don’t have any records of this or the attorney’s name) told me that this was a notorious police trap. He said that he would pull the records and have the charge dismissed after he confirmed my alcohol level was what I said it was.

I contacted the attorney a couple of times after returning to Salt Lake City. After about two weeks after my return the attorney said that DUI charges were withdrawn, but that I would have to pay a fine for something like reckless driving – which I also knew was not the case. The attorney argued that it would cost me more money to fly back to Florida to go before the judge and that I may as well just pay the fine. The attorney had required a $2000 retainer, since I was out of state, and he said he would pay the fine out of that. I don’t remember him telling me what the fine amount was – but I just assumed it was around a hundred dollars or two.

I may have gotten some correspondence from the attorney after that, but I don’t remember. If I did, I probably opened the letter only to see if he sent any money back – which I do recall that he did not. I just chalked it up to a bad Florida experience.

Please note that after my January 2014 application communication from the Peace Corps offices was infrequent. I had already put my notice into the university that I would not be able to teach during the summer or fall terms – thinking I might be called up with limited notice. By late June I thought I had been forgotten, so I applied for a position at Colegio Interamericano in Guatemala City. The school required a criminal background check. Before sealing the envelope the officer showed the record to me. This October 2002 offense was not on the report; had it been I would have contacted you immediately if I had thought I had not included this information on my application.

If this explanation is not sufficient regarding the specifics of this event I would appreciate it if you would let me instruct my attorneys to obtain the record from the Florida authorities for your benefit in coming to the resolution of this matter.

As I hope you can imagine, I feel horrible about these lapses in not including this information in my application: the charges dropped because of mistaken identity in January 2012 and this October 2002 instance. Never did I think that there would be anything in my background that would jeopardize my service in the Peace Corps – other than the 2009 DUI, which I freely discussed with more than one recruiter. I met with the Country Director Thursday and he asked me specifically if there was anything, “anything at all” that I did not include in my application. I am chagrined that I did not even give this a thought, probably because you did not indicate 2002 – which had I thought of it I would have assumed I did include it in my application and it was evidently not a concern, or since the charge (as I understood) was a traffic fine and its inclusion wasn’t a matter of substance.

Ms. Burgess, I am doing some good work in my community and I have great expectations of a good deal more. I hope that you will take all of this into consideration before you make a final determination. I am extremely sorry for my mistakes and lapses in dealing with these two items.

Thank you,

William K. Martin, PhD

Peace Corps/Albania 2015-2017

Aleksander Xhuvani University, Elbasan

http://wkmartin.blogspot.com/

Yep, that’s it. Reading the letter over again after six months I’m a bit embarrassed with the prose – could have benefitted from another edit or two. I know, ridiculous to even think that is my first response. Especially the last paragraph – I don’t wear groveling well. But Lateefah could have used some edits, too (I don’t mean the typo). “Best regards”!! Seriously? “Please let me know if there is any additional information you would like to supply…” To what end? And “consideration”? No evidence there was any: in less than two of her working days, the following Monday and Tuesday, she makes her decision and sends out her notification to PC/Albania. Early Wednesday morning August 26 the Country Director calls me on the phone, “Bill, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll get right to it… (Now, I always liked the Country Director, we’d had some association even before the sexual harassment complaint – lunch a couple of times and he asked my opinion on some rather sensitive issues – don’t put your brain in overdrive, just ask me if you’re curious. I wasn’t real comfortable with the latter, but I appreciated his confidence. More than anything, he never beat around the bush – he’d speak his mind and valued the same in return.) …you’re out. I’m on my way to Elbasan right now; just hold tight, we’ll sit and talk this over, and sort out the details.”

So, out on a stolen identity and a bullshit DUI twelve years before. Interestingly enough, I expected the call. Well, what I really expected, in maybe a parallel universe, was that Burgess would let my attorneys get the Florida information together, figure out why in the hell either of these charges would show up on any kind of report, and come to the sense that failure to put down a stolen identity charge was certainly forgivable, and that a recorded DUI from over a dozen years before, under undoubtedly suspect circumstances, required at least a limited amount of time to set the record straight with her office. But that wasn’t the case; neither my attorney nor I received any more communication from Burgess. But a DC weekend passed, and then after a full day and a half she sends out the termination notice to the Country Director – job done; another completed file; on to the next one with careful deliberation. I trust you can appreciate the full measure of irony in her line, my favorite: “let me know if there is any additional information you would like to supply.” Thanks, but what’s the point?

Yes, the Peace Corps is not divested of the mindless civil servant – whose gods are routine and records, and expediency is the first word in the canon law. Perhaps Politically Correct lip service, but any claim to high standard is betrayed by the preference to the routine rather than the individual, preference for the removed general view rather than the close personal touch which, I hope you can see, requires some degree of humanity, imagination, initiative and, we hope, integrity.

***

Yes, I expected the Director’s call: from the time I opened Burgess’s first email just a few days before I knew I was skewered (or something close to that, huh?), cooked, dressed, and ready to be served. BAM! And, Virginia, you may well ask why I had such a surety regarding the outcome? Ahhh…let’s check it out.

If I had been any other average Peace Corps Volunteer serving in any of eighty countries I could have expected, even demanded some due process in this. But I’m not, am I? Why is that so? (Those are rhetorical questions; you already know the answer.) Let’s do some bullet points for the hell of it (I’ve got a killer PowerPoint on this but couldn’t figure out how to load it up!) And what is wrong with this picture?

• January 2, 2014: Peace Corps Application submitted;
• March 2015: preliminary approval;
• March 2014-January 2015: Medical/Dental exams, hospital reports, doctor reports, dental reports, x-rays submitted, tests submitted to, procedures administered to, root-canals rooted, reports, reports, reports, etc., etc., etc., ad anesthesiam; 
• July 2014: I think I have been forgotten by the Peace Corps so I take a position in Guatemala City; 
• August 2014: Peace Corps Criminal Background clearance; preliminary invitation – nothing now but the medical/dental; after one month, I tender my resignation in Guatemala effective at the end of the semester –  bummer; 
• December 2014: I move back to Salt Lake City; 
• January 2015: final Medical/Dental approval and official invitation; 
• March-June 2015: Staging and PST (seems an incredible understatement to abbreviate that experience with only three letters); 
• July 2015: in site – as it turns out, in all my Peace Corps experience from January 2014 to September 2015 (a full twenty months!), I get about six weeks to serve; 
• August 7, 2015: notification of sexual harassment complaint – now keep in mind, other than the complainants, only top, top, top people know how long the complaint was in DC;  
• August 14, 2015: Burgess’s final draft of “Memorandum of Consideration of Administrative Separation” – which I presume will sit on her desk if needed; 
• August 19, 2015: PC/Albania Country Director submits findings clearing me of sexual harassment;  
• August 20, 2015: I receive Notification of Consideration of Administrative Separation, including the “Memorandum” dated the week prior;  
• August 26, 2015: via telephone, notification of separation; and again note how expeditiously events moved from August 19 – a week to the day;  
• August 31, 2015: Out of the Peace Corps.

My stateside attorneys and I had (have) a lot of questions: Why did these concerns regarding the criminal report take twenty months to process after my PC application? Why didn’t Burgess send out the 8/14 termination memo when the final draft was completed? Why did she wait? What kind of internal communication precipitated the termination? Was there any response regarding the Country Director’s report? Was there a tie-in with the sexual harassment complaint? Were there any agenda-driven DC office communications? Too many questions – we immediately submitted a Freedom of Information Act request.

My friends, we are still waiting for the FOIA report – despite countless emails from me, my attorneys, and even the intervention of my US Congressional Representative. Well, my congressman did accomplish something – two weeks after I connected with his office, Peace Corps/DC did sent out an “interim” report: about one hundred and fifty pages which consisted of my application, PC generated pre-service communications and, oh yeah, a copy of my “retirement” form. That was two months ago – four months after the request. (Beyond comprehension why it took so long to find this stuff – I’m guessing the PCVs are wondering where in the hell do their quarterly reports end up.) The last deadline was Friday; here’s my email to the attorneys: “Hi Stacy: While it didn't entirely surprise, another promised FOIA day has come and gone, right? Amazing, isn't it? Almost half of a year and still waiting... Do you have any idea why this could be the case? Of course I'm thinking smoking guns and retribution; I am sure you are thinking less cluttered. Well, give me your thoughts in the next couple of days as to what we do next. Enjoy the weekend. Later.” So, despite the expense, the effort, and the time expended to get some kind of full disclosure, we are still waiting.

***

The staff was stunned how the termination played out; former Peace Corps volunteer friends had never heard of anything like this; the Country Director said that he felt that I had not been a fair shake and as much as he would like, he simply could not be of any help arguing for a more considered look – no one was listening to him. He said he had fallen out of favor with DC; I didn’t ask him about this. That shoe regarding the director would drop within the week – and I’d have a better understanding how this affected me.

The aftermath – which in itself is a never-ending story – is beyond belief; you couldn’t make this stuff up. Later.

XOXO