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And Sexual Misconduct

Donald Trump is shoving miscreants into cabinet and key administrative positions. He is breaking several laws and a handful of thoughtful procedural guardrails to do so. His contempt for We the People is without precedent or equal measure. The only clear or immediate remedy of which I am aware is laughably mundane. Have your elected representatives hold the nominees to the same standard of conduct as a common civil servant.

Creator: jackscoldsweat | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Copyright: jackscoldsweat

I worked as a contractor to FEMA from November 2001 to June 2018. I initially waltzed into the world of disaster recovery on 09 July of 2001. The Texas Society of Architects asked for members to volunteer 2 weeks of time to assist the Department of Public Safety in assessing damage to the Texas Medical Center (Houston) done by Tropical Storm Allison. When FEMA joined the Texas team, our photographs were taken. We were issued a laminated badge bearing our likeness.

The work was interesting and my office staff was handling business as usual remarkably well. So, I still was in Houston the day airplanes flew into twin towers, the pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania on 11 Sept 01. As for so many, the attack changed the arc of my life. Three days with no airplanes in any sky was a sobering exercise in national vulnerability and fear. I moved over to FEMA and committed to serve wherever “as long as necessary and useful.” On 08 Oct 01 George W. Bush installed Tom Ridge in a lonely ceremonial Assistant to the President desk in a White House corridor.

George and his secret service detail had offices 4 stories above my firm during the years he built his faux fortune as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball club. My heart sank when he beat Ann Richards to become governor in 1995. That was when Texas turned red. It was as fierce a backlash against her gender as we now are enduring as a backlash against Barack Obama’s skin color. These angers do not die quickly.

Of all the ills I lay at the feet of his weak character, George’s speech on 05 Aug 02 takes the cake. It was a horrible shadow of Adolph Hitler’s diseased dreams and successful sales pitch. "We are fighting ... to secure freedom in the homeland." Prior to the creation of DHS, U.S. Presidents had referred to the U.S. as "the nation" or "the republic" and to its internal policies as "domestic". Also unprecedented was the use, from 2002, of the phrase "the homeland" by White House spokespeople.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush

On November 25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act established the Department of Homeland Security to consolidate U.S. executive branch organizations related to "homeland security" into a single Cabinet agency. It took Tom 15 months to move from a lonely desk for one on 08 Oct 2001 to Director of the Department of Homeland Security on 24 Jan 2003. His new kingdom was an umbrella for 22 executive branch agencies other than the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security

It took Tom and his band of merry men a while to sort through the power struggles and cross-purpose protocols that contributed to the 911 disaster.

By the time that FEMA called me to Louisiana on 29 Aug 05 to respond to damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Michael Chertoff was the Director and Michael Brown was his Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response. And it was a whole new day for going to work for FEMA.

The FBI was doing background checks on everyone in the field not already in its files. I filled out the required forms and warned my family and friends that they might be visited and interrogated by agents with badges and guns. If I thought this turn of events was a just another step down George Orwell’s slippery slope to Big Brother, the presence of armed men in black uniforms and heavy scowls guarding the facilities 24/7 confirmed an authorized force among us “for our own protection.”

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The background checks took at least two weeks. Those of us already on board just kept at the herculean task of trying to reassemble a wind-whipped then drowned civilization. The fate of a Great American City was in serious question.

People who had left their jobs to serve in the field had to wait for clearance to report for work. Some were sent home with no pay check and no future as federal employee. Some were escorted off the job by armed men. Good character was a big deal. One person was sent home for failure to pay outstanding library fines.

For me, this rough bureaucratic handling was a new, alarming, and intimidating view into a tightening circle around my cherished right to privacy. For the federal employees, it was no big deal. They had lost their union rights with a stroke of the pen bringing the DHS into existence. They could be reassigned or dismissed on grounds of security, incompetence, or insubordination.

I passed the check. I was fingerprinted and issued a new badge good for two years of continued employment if I behaved.

Sexual Misconduct

Time rolled on. Principal Federal Officer “Good job, Brownie” was dismissed from the disaster as an embarrassment to the Department and the President. On 12 Sept 05 he resigned from the agency. The body count was at least 1245 souls lost.

The turnover of contractors and sister agency representatives in disaster response is fast and constant. There is the loneliness (and opportunities) of living away from home. There is the stress of constant pressure to perform good work at fast pace in unfamiliar, often uncomfortable, circumstances. There is a whole lot of free-range sexual intercourse among the troops and with willing civilians.

As one of our trainers warned us— “There comes a time in every disaster that it’s time to kiss your loved ones good-bye. And go home.”

One fine day, I was amazed to observe two quite fit and armed men dressed in black walk to the desk of one of my supervisors. They asked him to stand and he did. They took possession of his laptop and his body. They escorted him from the premises. He decided pretty quickly to not embarrass himself further by resistance or public protestations.

Now, this guy was of Middle Eastern descent through no fault of his own. And one the most misogynic men with whom I ever have had the distinct distress of interacting. So, while I did not rejoice in his humiliation, and I personally was terrified at the show of oversight force in the workplace, still—I was curious. What in the world had he done to bring down swift and public justice upon his head?

The answer reached my ear like a hot summer wind through dry corn stalks—pornography on government equipment.

WHAT a vainglorious idiot! You thought your position on the organization chart protected you? Big Brother is monitoring EVERYONE’S keystrokes, Baby. The strengths of the compulsions that drove you to risk your livelihood just amaze (and delight) me. Good riddance.

To Summarize and Repeat

Mr. Big dishonors himself and We the People with his dangerous grandstanding. Be all over your elected representatives like white on rice. Demand that Trump’s nominees meet the same requirements for conduct and character as the most humble of the civil servants whose actions they will direct.

Keep the FBI and the CIA freestanding and strong.