'Dead Fish Lady' Resigns from DHS, Takes Legal Action to Clear Her Name

cqpolitics ^ | May 1, 2009 | Jeff Stein

[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."

[SunkenCiv]

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."

I guess the text of the threatening note would help this story make sense???