With eyes focused Wednesday on our congressional lawmakers' push for higher fishermen's catch allocations, it's important to remember that an even more blatant case of NOAA wrongdoing cannot go unchallenged.
That, once again, is the ludicrous stand by Lois Schiffer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's national chief counsel, not to revisit past cases of fishermen and fishing businesses who have clearly paid excessive fines and penalties, and to simply "go forward."
And it's good to hear that U.S. Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown and Congressman John Tierney have that issue in their sights as they continue to challenge more and more arms of a rogue, wayward agency that continues to show nothing but contempt for the industry, for Congress and, really, the American people,
Kerry, Brown and Tierney said last week they believe it's essential that the past incidents of excessive force and heavy-handed penalties dealt fishermen by the henchmen of ousted National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration police chief Dale Jones be revisited by Schiffer and other NOAA officials before the renegade agency looks to reform and carry out enforcement from here.
Indeed, Kerry hit the nail on the head when he said, "Sometimes, you have to look back in order to move forward."
For all the understandable talk of fishery regulations, we cannot forget the truly criminal actions by NOAA enforcement agents — many of whom, like Glocuester-based Andrew Cohen and Charles Juliand, remain on the job.
By not getting to the bottom of their tactics — like the unauthorized after-hours 2006 break into the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, and the intimidating visit to Intershell owner and court case witness Monte Rome this past February, just to name a couple — Schiffer, interim enforcement chief Alan Risenhoover and other "new" officials with NOAA are endorsing these agents' actions. That makes them as derelict in their duty as any of their predecessors. And that should be considered a crime in and of itself.
As any talk of NOAA's new fiscal-year budget advances on Capitol Hill, legislators should make clear that this criminal agency must set aside a multi-million-dollar pool for reparations to fishermen wronged in the past.
Sorry, Attorney Schiffer, you can't get a clean start without first cleaning up the filthy slime in your agency's recent and distant past. Better get started — real soon.
If not, we're confident our lawmakers will hold your feet to the fire.
