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Friday, March 7, 2008
Secret Service Official says he didn’t look for documents
The head of the U.S. Secret Service’s Buffalo field office testified in federal court today that he did not search his office files for paper documents sought in a civil lawsuit alleging discrimination against African American agents as he was ordered to do by the service’s legal counsel.
Michael Bryant, the special agent in charge of the office, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson that he signed a document on November 6, 2007 certifying that he had “conducted a thorough search or requested that others conduct a thorough search for documents” requested by the plaintiffs related to the promotion of black agents.
Bryant said he signed a similar certification on January 4, 2008.
But under questioning by Jennifer I. Klar, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Bryant admitted that he did not search the office’s files or any of the former offices where he once worked.
Bryant said he trusted the word of his administrative assistant, who has been with the office for 28 years, that the office files did not contain material relevant to the case.
Bryant said he did not ask her to look in any of the office’s files, offices, desks, cabinets, closets or the federal records center. Outside of his personal papers, he did not search for paper documents, he said.
“You searched the mind of your administrative assistant but not the files, correct?” asked Klar, who is part of a team of lawyers from Relman & Dane and Hogan & Hartson representing the plaintiffs for free.
“Correct,” Bryant said.
Moore and nine other plaintiffs claim that black agents were routinely bypassed for promotion by white agents who scored lower on exams. They claim they confronted racial hostility on the job, including the use of the word “nigger.” And that they were forced to do undesirable undercover work because it was assumed that they talked the language of the street.
Their claims are backed by 58 sworn affidavits of other black agents filed in the case.
Robinson has already sanctioned the service three times during the discovery process. Legal experts say that is an unusually high number, especially against a government agency. The American Civil Liberties Union is closely monitoring the case.
The service denies that there has been any discrimination against African American agents. It is appealing all three of those sanctions. The service contends that it has a proven track record of promoting black agents.
The government attempted to use Bryant’s testimony to argue that it has diligently complied with a Dec. 21 order from Robinson to search for paper documents relevant to the case.
Marina Utgoff Braswell, the assistant U.S, attorney leading the defense of the service, said the service has gone out of its way to conduct a thorough search for records in the case. The service has presented several other witnesses that described extensive searches of their office for paper documents.
The documents in question were due to the plaintiffs in July 2006. The service has released more than 300,000 pages of documents over the course of the past two years, but they did not include paper documents from high ranking officials, the so-called decision makers, who decide promotions.
Bryant told the court he did not consult with anyone in his office other than the administrative assistant about the request for documents until this week. The records were originally sought in the summer of 2006.
Bryant said the Buffalo field agents reported back to him that they found “no information related to this case.”
Bryant said he did not search for documents left behind by former heads of the Buffalo field office. “There’s a possibility that they may have destroyed them,” Bryant said. They could have taken the files with them when they left, he said. He said he did not know what happened to the files.
But the plaintiffs lawyer said his testimony underscored their argument that the service did not properly search for records that they requested and Robinson ordered them to produce.
“This shows that the certifications are meaningless. He signed a certification that he had searched all office files when he didn’t search any,” Klar said. “He testified that he had created documents responsive to the plaintiffs discovery request regarding selections for promotion, but now cannot locate and does not know how to locate those documents.”
