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Moreover, your claim that I used OSC to advance "liberal causes" (whatever that means), and at the direction of President Clinton, no less, is ludicrous. President Clinton never directed me to do anything; in fact the last two and one half years of my term were served under President Bush. Further, I incurred the ire of a major AFL-CIO affiliated labor union in the weeks before the hotly contested 2000 Presidential election when I issued an opinion that, under the Hatch Act, the union could not display posters promoting the election of Al Gore, and disparaging then-Governor Bush on its bulletin boards at the federal worksite. The union, in fact, sued me.

In that regard, your claim that I hired "labor union friends" to work in the Office of Special Counsel is another baseless smear. You neglect to mention that the few former union staff members that OSC hired into career positions during my tenure were all hired after an open competition, and were selected for their positions by the career supervisors to whom they would report, not by me. Further, the former union staff members who were hired by the career supervisors were obviously qualified for the jobs because of their significant experience in the area of federal sector employment law. I understand that Mr. Bloch has stopped holding competitions for attorney positions, and also does not include career supervisors in hiring decisions at all. Is it any wonder that this approach (which OSC should be the last one to follow) causes questions to be raised about favoritism and the like?

Let me emphasize that, in my opinion, the issue of which law schools Mr. Bloch's new hires graduated from, which was discussed in your article, is irrelevant. If Mr. Bloch held open competitions, gave his career managers a say in who would be working for them, and hired employees with relevant experience, no one would be able to legitimately question his motives, regardless of the law schools the new employees attended or their philosophical bent. As Mr. Bloch should know, open competition is key to the merit- based civil service that OSC is charged with protecting. While an open competition cannot insulate hiring decisions from criticism, it goes a long way to address the appearance of political favoritism.

I know that my response to your piece is rather lengthy but the charges you leveled against me in your article, and the recent spate of media stories about backlog reduction and related matters OSC, do not admit of sound-bite responses. For obvious reasons, I am concerned that you will selectively edit my remarks or take them out of context. Therefore, I ask that if you choose to publish my response, you include the full text. I also ask that you resist any future temptation you or your magazine might have to smear me, or the work that the OSC staff did under my leadership, in order to defend or deflect negative attention from Mr. Bloch.

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