Dr. Maureen McCarthy
Dead Fish and Powder Incident Leads to DHS Official's Suspension
Posted on 05/01/2009 9:30:42 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Saying she still has no idea who sent her a box of dead fish, former top homeland security bioweapons official Maureen McCarthy says she has resigned from the department and begun legal action to clear her name.
Occasionally breaking into tears during a 45-minute telephone interview, McCarthy called her resignation "involuntary" and said she had suffered severe financial distress since being suspended without pay in February over the incident.
"I resigned against my will," she said. "I had no income, and I couldn't use my accrued annual leave" for cash. "By resigning I got that back," she said, and could begin to take steps to rebuild her shattered career, starting with retrieving her security clearance, yanked by DHS in March.
McCarthy, who holds a PhD in chemical physics, would be virtually unemployable as a weapons of mass destruction specialist without a security clearance. At DHS, she rose to the position of intelligence advisor to Secretary Michael Chertoff on WMD.
"There has been a lot of financial harm to her," said her lawyer, Jon L. Roberts, of Reston, Va., who said he has filed an appeal with the federal Merit Systems Protection Board to obtain McCarthy's back pay and expunge "unfounded allegations" from her security file.
DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa confirmed that McCarthy was "no longer an employee" but said federal privacy laws prevented her from commenting further.
McCarthy's travails began one night in early February when she found a box on the doorstep of her Fifteenth Street NW townhouse in the District. It had the return address of the Crystal City, Va., office of a former employer, the Battelle Memorial Institute, so she brought it inside and opened it without question.
Inside were two frozen fish in zip-locked bags --"big teeth, not very pleasant," she said -- and a threatening note: "Hey, I love you so much I just wanted to put food on your plate. Don't mock me. Ha, ha, ha."
Dr. Maureen McCarthy
Dead Fish and Powder Incident Leads to DHS Official's Suspension
Something fishy going on at DHS.
I guess she’s not Napolitano’s type.
Seems the bright lady got the fish and some powder in a box delivered to her house. So what does she do? If it were me, I’d call the police. But she called the “private security at her building” (not sure if that means her federal office or her apartment/townhouse) and they told her to take it to her office. Where it promptly caused a panic.
Not the same league as the CIA director taking classified material home with him, but still...!
Cheers!
Isn't that Rahm Emmanuel's signature threat?
Granted her prospects in govt dont look very good but I would think she could find employment in academia without too much difficulty.
Rahm Emmanuel's Signature Threat:
yeah, I be more concerned about the symbolism of the dead fish..............with her particular job, i do not think calling the popo would make a whole lot of sense
IMO, the real story is not even mentioned in this article. (I don’t know the real story either)
maybe she broke up with Janet, the dead fish is definitely a death threat
Rahm is so not a hunk
Is that all we have to do to get rid of them? Dead fish? OOOOOhhhhh i’ll be down at the docks in the a.m. How many dead fish do we need? Let’s see: there’s the WH, Senate, House — DHS, FHA, FBI, IRS, .... tum, tum, .... Should I gift wrap?
No too ostentatious. Want to look, you know, spontaneous, .... FDA, DOD, DOJ, ....
Cryptic dude...real cryptic.
;)
it’s a replication of a Rahmbo previous act when he sent a fish wrapped in newspaper and if you look at his past and to whom he sent the fish to, there is a strong content message.
I’m not saying Rahmbo did this-just someone else being a
copycat and trying to mirror Rahmbo’s original intent.
Truth be told, it’s not that creative on the copycat’s part-truly lame it is.
Such episodes are now common place within many many departments of goobermint.
I think the implication is that she did it herself but they don't want to come right out and say it for some reason. If she did she'd be better off keeping quiet.
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/ts_20090210_1751.php
WMD Intel Adviser Brought Dead Fish to Work, Causing Scare in Downtown Washington
Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009
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