Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Here we are on the Great White Way, Broadway’s theater district. If you can’t quote Shakespeare here, where?

      What you don’t know is, my own mother grew up across the river in Queens and was in a musical right here on Broadway called “Bloomer Girl.” My father was an actor from Kansas, and my mother saw him here on Broadway in “Command Decision,” a hit play about World War II. My mother told me she knew that she was going to marry him when she saw that play. I wasn’t born too long after in New York City hospital. So watch out what shows you see while you’re here.

      But seriously, I’m proud to be here at FDR. When you say FDR to a New Yorker, they think you’re referring to a great New Yorker and President. Another great New Yorker, a relative of FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, said,  “Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.”     

      While I’m not speaking to all mankind or claiming to be great myself, I would like to tell you about some great actions at the Office of Special Counsel this last year.

      We’ve been in the midst of an historic reorganization that started with resolving chronic backlogs which created an agency bottleneck and caused many to have their claims go unheeded, some gathering dust for as many as 3 years. Some complainants had left the government, others actually died.

      As you know, OSC’s mission is to protect the merit system, protect whistleblowers, and help foster integrity and efficiency. I believe in this mission. We enforce the rule of law by prosecuting agency officials when they violate laws or abuse their power. So we needed to be efficient and follow our own laws. I am pleased to announce that OSC essentially eliminated these backlogs in one year. We took a backlog of over 400 cases in our intake unit called CEU down to 119 cases, and during this period, increased our referral rate of positive cases by 100%. The average age of a CEU case is now less than 50 days. In our disclosure unit, called DU, we took 690 whistleblower claims down to 108 by end of FY 2004. Most of these cases had already been determined to be closures years prior. Moreover, the number of DU referrals to Federal agency heads for full investigation increased from 14 in FY 2003 to 26 in FY 2004, and there has not been any let up in the annual number of cases. Now the DU has 70 open cases.

      We took the Hatch Act Unit with 255 cases down to 146 by end of FY 2004 while receiving 248 additional cases in 2004, and gave over 3000 advisory opinions in last year’s election cycle. Currently it has 98 open cases.

      Finally, we eliminated a FOIA backlog of over 100 cases. I am enormously proud of the efforts of my career staff in achieving these results. But don’t take my word for it. Our oversight committee in the Congress wrote us on May 17, 2005, to congratulate us:

      At your invitation, a bipartisan group of congressional staff visited your offices on three occasions to review closed case [files] … and you provided access to decision makers for questions and policy discussions … we are … satisfied that your hard work – and smart work — has resulted in a more responsive Office of Special Counsel.
      …
      You are providing a great service to the American people and the Federal government by protecting whistleblowers from illegal reprisals.

      But of greater importance to OSC is what we’ve been able to do for real people. For instance, in our Whistleblower Disclosure Unit, DU, Anne Whiteman, an 18-year air traffic controller reported that air traffic controllers and management at the DFW FAA Terminal routinely covered up serious operational errors when aircraft flew too close to each other, on average once a month. This often was neither reported nor investigated, in violation of FAA’s regulations. This was a substantial and specific danger to public safety, but nobody would listen to Ms. Whiteman’s hotline complaints until … OSC got the case. We required an investigation under our laws, and the Department of Transportation Inspector General substantiated her allegations and concluded that the cover-ups represent safety deficiencies and undermine the public’s confidence in the air traffic control system. Ms. Whiteman was the victim of reprisal, but OSC has obtained corrective and disciplinary actions. This case garnered national news and will promote greater aviation safety.

      Or Larry Davenport and Willie Forester, Border Patrol Agents, who blew the whistle on a widespread fraudulent kickback scheme involving border Agents and supervisors with Operation Safeguard. The Department of Homeland Security substantiated allegations that the kickbacks and fraud schemes involved numerous Border Patrol Agents and several Supervisory Agents but exonerated management of any wrongdoing even though it was clear higher ups knew what was going on. I concluded that the DHS report was unreasonable, and reported that to the President and Congress. It got national news, and now DHS says it will look into this further. The Whistleblowers were retaliated against. One has retired, but we are working to obtain corrective action for the other. We obtained results in disclosures as far-ranging as defective welds on the catapult of one of our aircraft carriers, to reports of a personal assault rifle brought to the office by a supervisor in Transportation Safety Administration, to severe neglect of psychiatric patients in a major VA facility.

      Our Investigation and Prosecution Division, or IPD, has obtained a great deal of corrective action for whistleblowers like the afore-mentioned. They have also aggressively prosecuted unauthorized preference and other PPP cases as well as high profile Hatch Act cases, including a recent victory against an attorney who worked for an agency who essentially turned his office into Green Party headquarters for a couple of hours a day on government time, sending numerous e- mails in furtherance of statewide party activity. We have brought a number of other prosecutions in the last year to emphasize that employees should not violate the Hatch Act by engaging in political activity while on duty and/or in a federal building through the use of partisan political emails seeking votes for their presidential candidate. Every federal employee knows it’s illegal to be on the job and go door to door in a federal building handing out leaflets advocating that your candidate win the election. It is no less a violation just because you use e-mail to do the same thing, and in fact it may be worse because e-mail is far more efficient and encourages others to forward it to many more people. We have two cases before the full MSPB Board … I won’t go into that here … (look at Board Member) … but this has broad, far-reaching implications for federal employees. So … stay tuned.

      Speaking of Hatch Act, OSC’s Hatch Act Unit made tremendous advances in raising public awareness of the Hatch Act through enforcement and outreach, such as a complaint against the Chief of Staff for the District of Columbia after solicitation of political contributions and services from DC employees. The Chief of Staff resigned and agreed not to seek employment with federal or DC government for 18 months.

      In another case, the Federal Circuit upheld OSC’s and the MSPB’s determination that a federal employee violated the Hatch Act. After becoming a candidate in a non-partisan election, the employee converted his election to a partisan one by holding himself out as a conservative Republican and publicizing endorsements from the Party.

     We’ve had a number of fundraising cases. In one, I referred the matter to the White House for disciplinary action against the Presidential Appointee who hosted a political fundraiser, and in another, an attorney with the Justice Department agreed to serve a two-day suspension after hosting a fundraiser for a presidential candidate.

     We stepped up enforcement of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act — known as “USERRA,” which prohibits workplace discrimination against employees who serve in the uniformed services. We protect their benefits and jobs when they return from service in Iraq or other duty. I filed the first ever USERRA prosecutions before MSPB, three, and obtained full corrective action, including Jason Burris who was injured on weekend drills and was dropped from a management training program, and Judith Hanover Kaplan, a VA senior nurse who was terminated because she had to take military leave. We added USERRA to our outreach presentations, and I established OSC’s USERRA Unit this year in response to a demonstration project established by a new law. It will bring about 150 new cases annually that used to go to the Department of Labor, but we will insure that we get cases sooner and help service members more quickly.

     We created two new field offices, new procedures for making sure the age of cases stays low, standards that assure more validation of whistleblower disclosures, a cross-training program, and a new customer service unit. You see, we have not been afraid of great things.

      I would like to end with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt who said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” I am lucky to have work worth doing and to be able to do it with highly dedicated and capable people who believe in the mission of OSC to bring about greater integrity and accountability in government. Thank you.