Today I received my security file from the Department of Energy.  Enclosed was the first specific allegation of wrongdoing on my part.  They claimed I used the company computer for hosting my personal websites.  This allegation is completely false and I explained this to HR on May 26th in response to their vague questions about “large quantities of personal information” on the company computers.  As I then suspected, they didn’t believe me.  They could have verified my story with any number of my co-workers, the customer, the IT department (who would be aware of any traffic of that nature on the network), by looking up the IP addresses associated with those websites, or a call to my hosting provider.  They apparently did none of those things. I know for certain they didn’t talk to my co-workers and my hosting provider.  I suspect they did not talk to the customer–for reasons I can’t go into here.  This explains why they claimed I was dishonest.  They didn’t believe me and didn’t bother to check it out.

Why did they not bother to check out my story?  I can only think of the following reasons:

• They didn’t want to know the truth–they needed an excuse to fire me for being “a gun nut”.
• They were/are incompetent.

Am I missing something?

As most readers will already know the NRA has called for a boycott on ConocoPhillips regarding their filing of Federal lawsuit against a state law prohibiting companies from firing employees who keep guns in their locked cars on company property.  In many circles this creates some mixed feelings.  Shouldn’t property owners (the company/stockholders/whoever) have the right to ditictate the conditions for the use of their property?  Good question.  An Yahoo groups email list I subscribe to (WA-CCW) had this posting from a lawyer which shed some new light on the topic:

From: wa-ccw@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Glenn Slate
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: [wa-ccw] Has the NRA gone too far?

So here is my not so professional thought about your questions of
competing rights.  I admit it is a little unusual and unpopular right
now, but I think we all will recognize the correctness of the following
position in time.

The biggest difference here is not property rights vs. RKBA, but human
rights versus corporate rights.  Corporations are formed by the state,
they are given almost all the rights of a person, but they are not a
person.  In a competing rights situation, the corporations rights should
usually loose, as they are granted, rather than guaranteed.

A corporation is formed by an action of the state, in WA that is an act
of the Secretary of State.  WA has a state level preemption, so the
Secretary of State cannot ban CCW.  So how can the secretary of State’s
office create an entity and grant it right that the SoS office does not
itself possess?  That is to say if the Secretary is forbidden by state
law from restricting CCW in WA, how could it create a corporation and
then empower that corporation restrict CCW?

The problem with this issue becomes even more clear when you realize
that corporations need not be owned by individuals.  There is typically
no restriction on a state agency’s owning corporate stock.  So if we
allow corporation to ban CCW, couldn’t the city of Seattle for a
corporation to say  mange all it’s parks and lease the parks to that
corporation.  If they did so, could that corporation ban CCW in parks
under a private property argument?  How about to manage leased  bridges,
roads, parks, sidewalks etc.  Of course 100% of the stock would be owned
by the city, but all action would be taken by the corporation.

So the most basic (and socially disturbing) question is where did the
corporation get it’s personal property rights from?

They were granted by the state.  If the state agency could not restrict
your CCW rights, then it should not be able to grant that authority to a
corporation it formed.
Of course all this is up in the air if that state has no preemption, or
if it has a stature allowing the formation of a corporations with all
the rights of a natural person.  There will be lots of variation state
to state.

This is an entirely untested (and totally unpopular )theory, as our
culture seems to want to build corporations rather than restrict them.
  SO I strongly advice none of you to be a test case using this theory
(or any other is you can help it).

Remember I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer and this is most
definitely not legal advice.

—
Glenn Slate  |  mail to:gslate@emarket-group.com  | 503-445-8030
Corporate Counsel / Vice President of Client Development
eMarket Group, Ltd.  <http://www.emarket-group.com/>
eMerchandise <http://www.emerchandise.com/>

A few days ago I posted that a magazine wanted to interview me about being fired as a result of my blogging.  The email was sent on Sunday morning and I didn’t receive it until very late on Sunday night when I came into civilization and an Internet connection.  It turns out I didn’t get back in touch with them in time to meet their deadline–so no interview.

It was People Magazine.

Kim du Toit posted about both his and my adverse experiences because of our websites.  Kim made a comment about PNNL being “a company of skunks”.  I posted a comment in response and I think the same posting here is justified.  I fixed a few typos and grammar errors but otherwise the following posting is the same as my comment there:

My “model” for what happened to me was that there were a few people that had big anti-gun biases and no checks and balances for the power they held.  None of my co-workers, my project manager, nor none of the people in the projects I managed were ever asked anything about me.  Some of them first found out I had been fired, after not being able to make contact with me for a couple weeks, by reading my blog!  I suspect “Safeguards and Security” gets raises based on how many people they get fired or disciplined.  In that situation they look for whoever has the highest “profile”–me in this case.  And the process apparently doesn’t allow for presentation of the evidence to the accused and a chance for the accused to present evidence or witnesses in their favor.  For example: They asked me if there was any Official Use Only (OUO) material on a laptop when my wife and daughter used it.  I said no, I didn’t think so.  A few days later I remembered there were some documents that were marked OUO.  But those documents were old.  All the OUO restrictions had been removed but the documents on the computer had not been updated and the OUO markings removed.  They did not ask me or any one that might have known that.  I suspect, but can’t say for certain, that is one instance of how they claimed I violated policy.  There were numerous other things that I suspect they may have discovered that at first glance looked bad but had innocent or even praiseworthy justification.  They never asked anyone who would have known the truth.

So… my summation of the situation is: The Process is Broken.  For the most part I believe the lab and the people there are doing a decent job and are decent people.  Some of the projects really should be done in the private sector rather than on taxpayer money but that isn’t the fault of the lab.  That is the fault of our congress critters.

In my particular case management is in a tough position.  A couple of jerks screwed me over.  I suspect management has done their own investigation by now and know my case has at least some merit.  Now what do they do?  Their main function is the make the company money.  If they fire the jerks, as they should be, then I can use that against them in my wrongful termination suit–costing the company money.  If they come to me and say, “We have a couple of bad eggs and a bad process, we want to make it right with you.”  then they put themselves in the position of giving away money they didn’t have to.   What they have to do, in my opinion, is wait for me to file my lawsuit then evaluate their chances of winning and the cost of doing so versus settling with me.  Throw in the bad publicity they will have to deal with while the event is going on and afterwords, if I win, and come up what gives them the best odds financially.  One cannot expect them to “do the right thing”.  It would be unethical from the standpoint of the company finances.   They must be forced to do the right thing.

So… I tend to disagree with Kim’s assessment.

My “job” at this point is to help them realize the truth coming out will be more financially painful than fixing the problems a bad process and a couple of “bad eggs” created.  The FOIA requests, the Privacy Act Information Requests, and the publicity around my experience will be a festering boil for them.  The lawsuit will just be the lance that forces it to drain and heal with as little scaring as possible–for everyone except the couple of jerks.  Those people need to be held personally responsible and there is a fair chance I may be able to accomplish that.

I got a call from daughter Xenia this afternoon.  A letter from Battelle came in the mail today.  She said, “It looks like a report card.”  What she meant was that each side had to be ripped off before you could open it.  “Oh, I’ll bet it’s my last paycheck”, I said.  I didn’t expect one because I just had two days of vacation left and they had paid me for two days that I was suspended without pay.  I asked Xenia to open it.  It was a check.  A check for $0.00.

I laughed for quite a while about that.  I have my speculation as to why it would show up over two months after my last day on the job and why they bothered to send me a check for $0.00.  I think it has something (and I have my suspicions about the exact reason) to do with the new website about bigotry at PNNL (PNNL is operated by Battelle who issues the paychecks) I put up last weekend.

I think I’ll frame that check–although I will always wonder what the bank would have said if I deposited it.

Update: By popular demand:

Click on the image for a high resolution version.

Every once in a while I have doubt.  Maybe I did do something wrong.  Maybe I did step over the line and deserve to get fired.  When I was in the first meeting I thought maybe there was something that I got carried away with.  The next day I reviewed everything I could find on my blog.  There was nothing that should have been a problem.  I felt better in some ways but things still didn’t make sense.  Why were they making it into a problem?

I was required to talk with the HR people and I thought it went really well.  They asked factual questions that were not judgment calls.  “Did you know this was a rule?”  “Yes.”  “Did you ever break this rule?”  “No.”  Almost all the questions were easy stuff.  Virtually nothing was ambiguous–which was a problem for me with the first meeting.  Immediately after the meeting I was suspended without pay–which was a shock.  As I drove home the doubt crept in.  What had I done that was so bad?  Maybe I had done something but couldn’t remember it.  I had time to think about things and to try and make sense of it.  They weren’t giving me any more information but I had another source–my web access log files.  I did a quick scan of them and I could see a pattern.  And I could see they had lied to me in that first meeting.  Why lie?  What in the world did they have to gain by that lie?  And they were still looking HARD for stuff in my websites during and after the HR meeting.  I felt better.  There were people out to get me and if there was something I had actually done they should have found it by now and they wouldn’t have to lie about little things.

When I got the call and was told I was fired I was certain.  There had not been any further questions of me.  I knew there was stuff that looked bad but had completely innocent explanations.  They didn’t ask about anything so I knew they weren’t interested in the truth about me.  My web access logs were my only real hope of learning the truth about them.  More reviewing of the logs seemed consistent with my first impression.  But as I continued looking and annotating the logs I began to have doubts.  Maybe it was just a random search through things and it just happened that the firearms stuff was what they looked at first and last.  Then I looked at the times when PUCK would have been preparing for the first meeting.  I was enraged. And I had no doubt.

In the last few days I came to doubt again.  I would look at the preparation time and wonder if maybe there was another explanation.  It’s easy to believe what you want to believe.  Then last night I got a call from someone.  A completely independent source confirmed something I had suspected.  It’s not a “smoking gun”.  It’s not something that is irrefutable proof on it’s own.  It’s like “fingerprints at the crime scene” and there is no contraindicating evidence.  I have no doubt.