NYC Law Department memo on WTC document preservation, 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document Jenkins v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 88-SWD-2 (ALJ July 10,1998) Page 19 of 34

I Complainant's utter lack of credibility could only truly be appreciated through personally observing her six days of testimony. I do not often rely solely on demeanor in determining a witness's . credibility, but the complainant's demeanor was so disquieting that it is dispositive here by itself. . . Complainant often appeared to be in her own world, divorced from reality. She frequently answered questions with long discourses that quickly became unfocused. During her period on the witness stand complainant lied with impunity and did not appear the least embarrassed when she was caught I in these lies (e.g., TR 968-82,1014-17). She bragged about her bizarre behavior which she seemed to I have no idea was in any way aberrant or unusual (e g. TR 1245-55). In addition, she had alleged I lapses of memory on unfavorable points so frequeixily that it was obvious the problem was one of 1 honesty rather than memory. She has her own moral standards which are not in accord with those of t the rest of society. She has no conce ,t of team or organization, refuses to

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recognize +he authority of her supervisors, and has no sense of loyalty to anything other then herself. She also has an enormous ego. Whek Thoreau wrote supportively at jut marching to the beat of a ■different drummer, I do not think this is what he had in mind.

Examples of these points abound. Complainant made it a practice to snoop through other people's offices (TR 1245-55). When confronted about this by Scarberry, she justified her actions by stating "if anything's private, you should keep it locked up." (TR 1245-46) She stated that starting in late 1987 she "was in a data collection mode...." (TR 1247). When asked whether she went through her co-workers' files, she testified:

Yeah. After November of'87,1 was very diligent in looking at anything around, you know, that was coming in, the general mail or the branch files or anything like that, yes. Anything that was being sent out — if something was put on a secretary's desk[,] in her Xerox ... box, I would go through that.

(TR 1248). She also admitted going through a file that was in a credenza in Petruska's office and removing some documents from that file to copy them (TR 1249). She subsequently stated that she might have been going through her co-workers' files as early as June 1986 (TR 1251), and apparently she continued her snooping at least through December 1989, when she removed a document from Sylvia Lowrance's in-box (TR 528-32). Thus it would not be surprising if the complainant went through Scarberry's desk to retrieve the within-grade raise form he signed but did not turn in, and turned it m herself.

Not only did complainant snoop through other people's files, but as above noted, she surreptitiously recorded her conversations with co-workers and supervisors. Although complainant alleges that she was unaware until 1988 of the longstanding EPA Order prohibiting its employees from secretly tape­ recording conversations (see RX 67), her testimony is not believable. Complainant was aware of every statute, court decision, and regulation which supported her v^vuons, whether in regard to the secret taping of telephone conversations, stigmatization, or the leaking of confidential information (see, e.g. TR 309-10, lu54-56,1145-49). It is simply not believable that she was unaware of a specific EPA Order directly on point in this regard. More likely, she simply ignored the EPA Order, rationalizing that it was either outdated or somehow did not apply to her (TR 1145-51).

An enlightening incident related to the complainant's surreptitious tape recording is that on May 16,

fiIe://A:\Dismissed.html 12/21/01

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