They see no evil. They hear no evil.
Except, of course, for the evil they believe fishermen are doing on the pitifully few days of the year that they are allowed to try to make an honest living.
But when it comes to looking at corruption within, the leaders of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the regulatory agencies under their oversight see nothing. A "summit" convened by NOAA head Jane Lubchenco on Tuesday was focused on looking forward, not backward, to "advance ... enforcement."
She and her lieutenants have been confronted with evidence — practically mountains of evidence — of misconduct by NOAA agents, in a series of reports by Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser.
As has been noted multiple times on these pages, Zinser found abuse of authority with vindictive enforcement and fines wildly out of proportion for minor civil infractions.
He reported on the blatant abuse of a $96 million Asset Forfeiture Fund by NOAA agents, in which agents bought cars, boats and paid for foreign travel with sketchy or nonexistent documentation.
Yet Eric Schwaab, chief of the National Marine Fisheries Service and also head of NOAA's Office of Law Enforcement, told an interviewer at the summit that Zinser had provided "nothing specific" to his agency.
This is stunning. Nothing specific? If Schwaab had even a shred of that kind of evidence against a fisherman, that fisherman would be out of business and likely in the hole for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Indeed, in yet another predictable diversionary tactic, a year-old study funded by the Pew Environmental Group and done by the Lenfest Ocean Program was redistributed just before the summit. As usual, it paints the fishermen as the bad guys, claiming that 18.5 percent of the catch by New England fishermen were illegal, because enforcement is minimal.
This is beyond willful blindness. It is a blatant attempt to divert attention from where it ought to be — on cleaning up the corruption within NOAA and NMFS.
Lubchenco's defenders continue to insist that she is addressing the problem, contending that it was she who called for Zinser's investigation. But that only came at the insistent prodding of members of Congress and the Massachusetts Legislature.
In spite of her rhetoric about healing the relationship between fishermen and regulators, Lubchenco is continuing a war on them.
The focus of Tuesday's summit was simply more confirmation of that.
