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A regular anonymous visitor to Coast Guard Report left a good comment on our post Coast Guards Big Bang Theory. Our reply turned into its own post and reveals more details on the original post we hadn't intended to publish just yet. Timing is everything, so have at it. First the comment, followed by our reply:What you may not understand is that there is no pay raise above a two star admiral. While the pay chart continues to go up there is a DOD/DHS wide cap on pay. Since they all live in govt housing they don't get BAH. Any of their other incentives would have been capped years before. Therefore being able to retire as a 4/4 star admiral is little more than a feather in the cap. I guess what you are trying to insinuate is that there is a cover up to save their retirement pay. Wow, that would be one of the most sad and cynical accusation ever from this site. I may not work on 2nd deck but given their assumed priorities I think that the CG just doesn't care about civil rights. Maybe congress will realign their priorities but it was very evident from RADM Breckenridge's testimony that big CG just thinks that the entire CR program is a waste of time. If the site wants that to change then that should be the focus. So if you want to go after ADM Allen's legacy because he focused on other aspects of the CG (modernization, acquisitions, operations, funding) instead of the CR program then stick to it but you will never get any credibility if you run around acting like a conspiracy nut. Sad!

You're a little bit off on some of your comments. Flag Officers continue to get a pay raise up thru Vice Admiral at over 32 years. Flag pay is limited by Level II of the Executive Schedule which is $14,750.10 per month. They don't all live in Government Housing, and BHA is not calculated in or part of the Level II limit. Only basic pay is caped by the Executive Schedule. No this site is not saying there is cover up to protect retirement pay. In fact we still speculate that the Commandant is operating off some pretty bad information from his staff. Absent that, then yes we have to believe there is a cover-up.

Certainly you have noticed that Admiral Allen has said zip on the Civil Rights issue. By law he is the Chief Equal Opportunity Officer of his agency. Booz Allen and Congress in concert with over a decade of other reviews all indicate a service that has not only lost focus on Civil Rights, but has not had it for a decade. Coast Guard Report covered and broke the story, we didn't invent it. In fact Congress itself has confirmed our roll in reporting what Coast Guard already knew. More over the site worked hard to inform the Commandant of issues, violations of law and acts of reprisal only to be rebuffed. Only after the Commandant refused to work with us and the employees who were literally beaten down by civil rights process that was not only broken but being administered by untrained personnel did employees with our support turn to Congress.

Guess what, Congress listened to what the Commandant of the Coast Guard would not. I remind you again of what Congressman Cummings said at the 1 April hearin:"The proximate motivation for this request [Booz Allen Hamilton study] was the posting of derogatory blog entries on the web. However, as the Subcommittee has come to learn, there have long existed challenges far more central to the provision of effective civil rights services within the Coast Guard than those discussed in recent blog comments."

Since the cats out of the bag, Congress has been listening and they took action. Congressman Cummings already knew more about what was going on inside Admiral Allen's Office of Civil Rights before the 1 April hearing than did the Commandant himself. Members of Congress have been engaged on this issue with the contributors at this blog and the Coast Guard employees who had tried so desperately to get it (the program) back on track. We are told by sources very close to this issue at headquarters that Admiral Allen made the call himself to shut out the employees who brought this issue to national and congressional attention. The reason "it may appear to members of Congress that we coerced them into working with us at this point." That's ridiculous and Congress didn't buy it when informed of the statement first hand.

And on the readers last statement, we were called conspiracy nuts for a long time. What no one at headquarters and certainly not in the Office of Civil Rights anticipated was that Congress was waiting on baited breath for the Booz Allen Report to be released. Additionally Congress was able to quickly see what the Commandant didn't see coming from inside his bubble, and that was that Booz Allen did not conduct a fair and impartial review when it came to employees that the Office of Civil Rights had "labeled as disgruntled." Instead of re-interviewing those employees Booz Allen published statements in their report based off comments from three senior individuals in the Office of Civil Rights. We saw the same one sided approach to the Coast Guard Investigative Service investigation of complaints against the Office of Civil Rights. Agents interviewed the staff at OCR, took their word as gospel without ever re-interviewing the complainant or witnesses. Again, Congress has been able to close the gaps left open by Coast Guards own review and investigative processes.

The good news is that Booz Allen got over two thirds of the report right which identified the same problems that date back a decade. Ms. Dickerson had access to and copies of the previous reviews when she became the Director in April 2006. Three years later and hundreds of thousands of dollars lost, we have another report saying the same thing but with a very expensive slant on trying to blame the offices problems on a Blog.

So what's the big bang theory? Well lets go back to that CGIS investigation. Agents were given more than enough documents to lead even a rookie investigator to the crime scene (that's an analogy). But as we already said, Agents never came back to the "well" for follow-up or more more details. So the assumption is that Admiral Thad Allen acting on recommendations from his staff may still believe there's not a smoking a gun somewhere on this issue. There is a smoking gun and it was offered up to the Commandant's staff and they rejected hearing it. Much like the release of the Booz Allen report, Congress is waiting with baited breath for the briefing and the supporting documents.

Lastly we at Coast Guard Report want to thank President George Walker Bush for signing into law the Open Government Act of 2008. We also want to thank President Barack Obama for signing out his policy on Government Transparency in only his second day in office. More on that later…

USE OIL

BY NICHOLAS HARRIS AND JONATHAN WILLIAMS AND JAKE OCONOR AND ZAMMON JANJUA AND ABUABUABUBUBUBUBUBUBUBUBU BAKER

well

USE OIL

BY NICHOLAS HARRIS AND JONATHAN WILLIAMS AND JAKE OCONOR AND ZAMMON JANJUA AND ABUABUABUBUBUBUBUBUBUBUBU BAKER

well

USE OIL

BY NICHOLAS HARRIS AND JONATHAN WILLIAMS AND JAKE OCONOR AND ZAMMON JANJUA AND ABUABUABUBUBUBUBUBUBUBUBU BAKER

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