NOAA cuts travel list, using own budget for 'workshop'

The scandal-ridden federal fisheries law enforcement unit is sending a delegation to the third Global Fisheries Enforcement Training Workshop — a five-day conference beginning Sept. 6 in Maputo, Mozambique, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has told the Times.

But in the aftermath of a damning report on the inappropriate use of a multi-million dollar fund built with penalties paid by fishermen and related businesses, NOAA has cut back on the size and budget for the traveling delegation.

Led by Dale J. Jones, who was then director of law enforcement, NOAA sent 15 of its employees, part of a U.S. delegation of 22, to the 2008 workshop in Trondheim, Norway.

Only seven agents and litigators are traveling to Mozambique, according to a roster released to the Times.

NOAA said it is budgeting $42,000 from its own appropriated funds, not the entangled Asset Forfeiture Fund, for the Africa trip, less than half the cost of sending the larger delegation to the second Global Fisheries Enforcement Training Workshop, also a five-day event, held in Norway.

"NOAA is participating," spokeswoman Monica Allen said in a statement, "to strengthen our international efforts to protect U.S. fishers from the harmful effects of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing."

In July, the U.S. Commerce Department's inspector general issued a scathing report on the misuse of the Asset Forfeiture Fund, through which KPMG, the agency's auditing consultant, found more than $90 million had passed in 41/2 years through June 2009 while agents and NOAA enforcement litigators essentially used it as an open-ended debit card.

The charges included $580,000 for travel to more than 40 destinations, very little of it required by "investigations or enforcement proceedings," according to the IG's office.

The Times was unable to determine the charges for the first Global Fisheries Enforcement Training Workshop, which took place in the summer of 2005, but the U.S. sent a delegation of 21 to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

IG Todd Zinser's July 1 report highlighted the $109,000 spent to finance the Norway trip as an example of foreign travel unconnected to core responsibilities, as was 83 percent of the overseas travel charged to the fund, which itself came under a cloud for excessive charges against members of the fishing industry along the Atlantic Coast.

Members of Congress and industry attorneys expressed anger on learning from the IG that the counsel's office had previously denied ulterior motives to drive up the fines — the fund has been the primary source of all operating expenses by the fine-setting legal office, including the payment to the U.S. Coast Guard Administrative Law Judge system for trying cases.

Stephen Ouellette, a Gloucester attorney with a fishing industry practice, has questioned the professional ethics of government lawyers benefiting their office budgets via the levying of higher penalties.

NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco and her law enforcement team — chief counsel Lois Schiffer and assistant NOAA administrator Eric Schwaab — have pledged to clean up the department. Lubchenco has asked for a plan "for proper budgeting, expenditure approval and tracking, accounting and external review of the Asset Forfeiture Fund."

The Mozambique conference, a meeting of fishery law enforcers from more than 40 nations, is sponsored by the International Monitoring Control and Surveillance Network — organized in 2002 by Jones and based at NOAA's Silver Spring, Md., headquarters.

Jones was NOAA's director of law enforcement between 1999 and this past April, when he was removed following allegations by IG Zinser after a six-month national probe that found his agents, allowed to operate autonomously, had targeted fishermen and businesses and sought to extract outsized fines for technical violations.

NOAA had declined to honor numerous requests under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by the Times, other publications, and individuals as well as by members of Congress for information about Jones' status.

But last month, following a showdown meeting with Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank, Lubchenco admitted that she has kept Jones on the federal payroll, where he apparently remains, on administrative leave, at full salary of $158,000.

As recently as last week, Jones represented himself as chairman of the International Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Network, the sponsoring agency for the conference with a telephone at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring.

But after a Times story, NOAA spokeswoman Connie Barclay said he had been replaced by Todd Dubois, an assistant director of law enforcement, and said Jones had no further connection to the event in Mozambique though he remains on NOAA paid administrative leave.

The delegation to Mozambique was identified by NOAA as including Dubois, James Cassin, a special agent based in Gloucester, Casey Oravetz and Murray Bauer, special agents from other regions, lawyers, Charles Green and Mary Beth Ward, deputy general counsels, and Meggan Engelke-Ros.

Dubois, Green and Engelke-Ros also were part of the delegation to Norway.

As the conference assembles in Africa next month, the IG is expected to be continuing his targeted special investigation into the case that became a cause celebre within the fishing industry — spotlighting a decade-long effort by agents and lawyers in Gloucester, including Dubois, to prove violations and win fines paid by the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction.

Dubois, then the deputy agent in charge of the Gloucester office, was deeply involved in the investigation of the auction, including an alleged forced entry which took place on Nov. 1, 2006.

A Gloucester police report, filed by employees at the auction on Nov. 11, cited possible "trespass by federal agent."

Three days later, on Nov. 14, there was an e-mail between Dubois and special agent in charge Andrew Cohen about the "GSDA Incident" (for Gloucester Seafood Display Auction), according to the government log presented to auction lawyers and administrative law judge Walter J. Brudzinski earlier this year.

Shortly after the alleged forced entry to the auction, a force of agents working under Dubois raided the Gloucester waterfront facility.

All of the cases filed by NOAA enforcement against the auction were settled without any admission of guilt on March 1, the night before a Congressional oversight hearing in the City Hall auditorium that included Zinser, Lubchenco and Jones, then still the director of law enforcement.

More than a month later, NOAA published a cryptic announcement indicating that NOAA enforcement was under new leadership, though Jones was never mentioned in the statement about his apparent ouster.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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