Zinke Purges Staff at Interior Department
When the Department of the Interior set out to purge 50 agency employees in what was disguised as career reassignments back in June, it targeted a special group of highly skilled, nonpolitical senior management from the executive branch. We’re now learning that women and minorities were hit the hardest, according to a partial list of confirmed reassignments put together by current and former agency employees.
Of 19 people on the list assembled to date, at least 13 are women and minorities. Women account for nine of the 19. And four are men of color. That would leave at most six white men who were reassigned. However, the race of two of the six can’t be confirmed. So that could mean just four out of 19 are white men, said Katherine Atkinson, a Partner at Wilkenfeld, Herendeen & Atkinson, who is representing Joel Clement in his complaint against the department that he filed with the Office of Special Counsel. Clement, a former director of the Office of Policy Analysis and the agency’s top climate policy official became a whistleblower when he was moved from his position to the accounting department in July in the reassignment.
Outside of Sec. Ryan Zinke and friends, no one has that full official list. While it’s possible that the majority of the rest of the 30 or so senior employees on the agency hit list are white men, it’s most unlikely.
“The thing that struck me that’s a shame, of the minority men on the list, half are Native American,” Atkinson said. “The agency is supposed to be looking out for Native Americans—that’s one of its missions. But they moved them out.”
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/09/18/zinke-purges-staff-at-interior-department/
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