By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
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NOTE: This is a corrected version of this story: Mark Spurrier, not Todd Dubois, is the top NOAA official who was called out by Congresman Dennis Kucinich for dispensing legal advice on NOAA enforcement he was not qualified to issue. The initial version of this story had incorrectly pegged that charge to Dubois.
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A letter promoting a "global fisheries enforcement training workshop" in Mozambique next month — purportedly to be led by the discredited U.S. federal fisheries police chief who's now on paid leave after revelations of excessive enforcement against American fishermen — was an oversight that is being corrected, NOAA said Thursday.
Also incorrect, said Connie Barclay, spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was Dale Jones' description of himself in the letter as still the "international chairman" of the Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Network, which he had founded at NOAA.
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Times, Jones describes the network as a voluntary association of nations' fisheries police agencies aimed at merging resources to eliminate "corruption, organized crime, theft, piracy and other forms of illegal fishing on the high seas."
The organization, with 51 reported members, is based at NOAA's national headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.
That is where Jones presided until he was placed on paid leave last spring from his post as head of fisheries law enforcement for the past 10 years, directing a force of more than 200 agents and working closely with the litigating lawyers to enforce the Magnuson Act and other ocean laws.
"Mr. Jones is no longer involved in the oversight, management, or finances of the International Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Network or the Global Fisheries Enforcement Training Workshop in any way," said Barclay.
She told the Times that Jones continues to be paid, pending reassignment. His salary, she said, was approximately $150,000 a year.
The global workshop scheduled for Sept. 6-10 in Maputo, Mozambique comes on the heels of the previous international meeting by members of the network in 2008 in Norway, an event organized from Jones' office at NOAA.
According to the July 1 supplemental report by Commerce Department Inspector General, Todd Zinser, Jones led 15 agents from his office and lawyers from the office of the General Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation to the "week long" conference at a cost of $109,000.
The trip was financed with money paid in fines by fishermen and shoreside businesses into a NOAA Asset Forfeiture Fund that the Inspector General and the auditing firm KPMG found to have been used improperly as if it were a joint debit card.
Member of Congress and industry lawyers have concluded that the ulterior motive for the heavy fines corrupted the legal system.
Gloucester-based Attorney Stephen Ouellette has called for an investigation by the House Ethics Committee and the Massachusetts Bar Association against government prosecutors in Gloucester, the center of ocean law enforcement from Maine through the Carolinas.
The record keeping was so shoddy that KPMG's described the fund more as an "abstract concept than a tangible entity," and exhausted its contract with the IG before it could decipher precise patterns.
However, KPMG adjusted upward the size of the fund which had been thought to contain under $9 million. Between Jan. 1, 2005 and June 30, 2009, about $96 million was traced through the fund.
The IG also found that agents and litigators at NOAA had been levying fines against New England and Middle Atlantic targets that were up to 500 percent higher than fines meted out in other regions, and frequently treated fishing industry figures as "criminals."
Outrage at the system piqued with the revelation last month that the legal office had a previously hidden ulterior motive for the excessive fines — which were relied on for underwriting nearly all of the General Counsel's office operating expenses beyond salaries.
After the revelations, Democratic Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney, who represent the hub ports of Gloucester and New Bedford, and Republican Walter Jones of North Carolina, who represents the fishing ports of the Outer Banks, all called for the resignation or firing of Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator.
The status of Jones has been a flashpoint for the fishing industry and its backers.
Following the March report by the Inspector General, a Lubchenco subordinate announced that a career bureaucrat had been named acting police chief. There was no mention of Jones, and despite multiple requests, NOAA repeatedly refused to clarify his status.
In a meeting earlier this month with Frank and Tierney, where she was threatened with congressional hearings, Lubchenco acknowledged that Jones had been place on administrative leave — no longer working while being paid close to $3,000 a week in salary as well as benefits.
NOAA's spokesperson Barclay said Thursday that the agency was not aware that Jones's message about the conference in Mozambique next month, with numbers to call for the conference connected to NOAA headquarters, and posted online.
She said, however, that Jones' top assistant, Todd Dubois, had stepped into the breach to provide leadership for the international police organization, which was founded at NOAA in 2002, the third year of Jones' tenure as federal fisheries police chief.
NOAA officials declined to provide any information on how many, if any, NOAA agents were expected to participate in the Mozambique event. The IG's investigation had found that NOAA officials had, without higher approval, tapped the Asset Forfeiture Fund for excessive overseas travel in the past.
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
