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Friday, February 1, 2008

Secret Service v. African American agents in discrimination suit

By Rebecca Carr | Friday, February 1, 2008, 08:26 PM

The U.S. Secret Service inspector in charge of complying with a federal judge’s order directing high-ranking officials to search for documents related to the promotion of African American agents testified today that she has never reviewed or even seen the formal legal requests for documents sought by the plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit alleging discrimination.

That means that Inspector Carrie Hunnicutt sent an e-mail on December 26, 2007 to senior Secret Service officials asking them to check their files for documents related to the case without knowing exactly what the plaintiffs wanted.

The e-mail was drafted by Secret Service lawyers, Hunnicutt said. She reviewed it, but that was her only exposure to the list of records sought by the plaintiffs, she said.

The service tasked Hunnicutt with calling 156 Secret Service officials who certified that they did not have any documents in response to her e-mail.

The e-mail was sent in an effort to comply with U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson’s December 21st motion to compel the service to produce responsive documents sought in discovery.

Robinson held the hearing in an effort to determine whether she should sanction the government a 4th time for failing to produce evidence in the discovery process. Legal experts say it is extremely rare for a judge to sanction the government so many times.

Without seeing Robinson’s order compelling the service to turn over documents or the plaintiffs earlier motions requesting documents, Hunnicutt testified that she called all 156 senior officials to see what they did to comply with the order. She testified that she called the officials from Jan. 4-9, which included a weekend.

Hunnicutt’s testimony is important because it supports the plaintiff’s allegation in court documents that the service has not thoroughly check its electronic and paper records to adequately respond to the plaintiffs requests, argued E. Desmond Hogan, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs for free.

Hogan spent nearly three hours asking Hunnicutt to describe how she conducted her search for records.

At times, Hunnicutt responded with long periods of silence before answering. She asked for questions to be repeated several times before answering.

The time lapses were unusual enough for Robinson to ask Hunnicutt if she has a medical problem that would cause her to be “inattentive” in court.

Hunnicutt, an agent for 17 years, once competed for a job protecting the president sought by Ray Moore, the lead plaintiff in the case. She got the job instead of Moore, despite his seniority in the service.

Hunnicutt said she has no medical problems to cause her to be inattentive. She said she was taking her time in answering the question so that she could provide the court with the most accurate answer possible.

Hunnicutt told the court that she was “concerned” when she was asked by the service lawyers to call the senior officials to see how they accomplished their search because it was a major project to undertake.

The merits of the 8-year-old case have never been heard in large part because there was little action for the first four years before Robinson was assigned to oversee discovery, according to the court records The last four years have been tied up in protracted battles over discovery.

The Secret Service contends that it has diligently responded to requests for discovery, that it has provided over 300,000 documents in response to numerous requests from plaintiffs’ attorneys and has produced numerous current and former employees for depositions over the past eight years.

Last week Arthur Kuhn, a veteran agent, testified that the agency worked around the clock to comply with the judge’s order.

Robinson continued the hearing until Feb. 5.

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