A Cult of Abuse and Victimization Part 3 of 4

A Cult of Abuse and Victimization;

            The Dysfunctional Inner Circle of the National Park Service (NPS)

Part 3 of 4- The NPS Rhetoric of Seduction

Every year, hundreds of idealistic people are seduced into working for the NPS as a federal employee, a volunteer, or as an interns because of the high-minded values of the NPS mission and by a personal commitment for a working relationship that includes public service. After joining the NPS workforce, these people are continually bombarded with infinite variations of these seductive values cascading down through emails from the President’s office, the Secretary of the Interior’s office, and the NPS Director’s office.  Each one of the messages are designed to reiterate the NPS commitment to merit, equally opportunity, mission, and public service.  A large number of these emails inform NPS employees that they are the single most important resource the NPS has for fulfilling its mission.  These same messages also state the importance of NPS employees in participating in the management of the NPS and promise employees that their perspectives and comments are an integral part of NPS managerial decision-making.  In addition to the top-down emails, NPS employee must take numerous, on-line trainings on the ethical standards expected for NPS employees and on the right and duty of NPS employees to bring issues and problems to the attention of NPS managers.  Processes for NPS accountability are touted as being available through such programs as Equal Employment Opportunity, the Whistler-blower Program, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and the NPS Human Resources Division. If an NPS employee is fortunate enough to obtain a career track position, all of these values and advocacy tools will be reiterated in NPS Fundamentals Training and additional training workshops such as Operational Leadership. These are indeed, high-minded ideals and values.  They would not be seductive, however, if they were true. 

These high-minded ideals and values are categorically not true.  The reality of the values and ethics described above is that none of them are actually available to victims of predatory manager and supervisor.  The systems described above are a one-way street the serves only NPS management. Paul Berkowitz, in his book The Case of the Indian Trader, paints a picture of how the upper management of the NPS is completely insulated from being held accountable to the mission of the NPS, ethics, or the other high-minded ideals outlined above:

In his February 2007 testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee, Inspector General Devaney once again addressed the magnitude of ethics and integrity deficiencies permeating DOI agencies like the NPS. Devaney cited “a culture that lacks accountability,” observing that supervisors generally received lighter punishments than lower-ranking employees and that senior executive service members were “remarkably immune to any adverse action greater than a reprimand.”

Within the NPS it is well known that any employee who files a grievance against a manager or supervisor will eventually be terminated or forced to leave the NPS. The same goes for whistle-blowing.  The NPS has its own Whistler-blower Program, Merit Systems Protection Board (MPSB), Human Resources Division, and even its own Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) program.  These programs are typically housed in the same buildings as the regional NPS management offices.  All of these programs work only to maintain the rigid authoritarian stratification of the NPS and nearly always find in favor of NPS management, not NPS employees.  Many of the officers of these programs designed for NPS accountability are former NPS managers themselves who still have connections and friendships with NPS managers and supervisors.  These accountability program officers often find themselves in the ludicrous position of investigating accusations of hostility, abuse, and ethics violations by their friends and former coworkers.  The results of these investigations are rarely unbiased and the victims of the abuse and hostility from these NPS predators are further victimized by the favorable findings for the predator by the accountability program officers.  These accountability programs serve as advocacy for NPS management, not NPS employees. The same Human Resource officer who advises an employee about filing a grievance against his supervisor will, in all likelihood, be counseling that supervisor on how to defend herself from the very same grievance. It is an incestuous circle that only tends to feed predation and victimization.  MSPB investigations into favoritism and unprofessional behavior by managers and supervisors; Human Resource grievance investigations; and even Equal Employment Opportunity actions are often decided by accountability officers on the basis of secret and (most often) fabricated “insider” records that managers and supervisors illegally keep and share on their employees. 

When one NPS informant requested to see the documents (a right guaranteed by the grievance process) that were used to make the decision on a grievance he filed with a NPS Human Resource officer against a hostile and abusive manager, he was told by the Human Relations officer that no documentation had been used in making the decision.  This same Human Resources officer informed the employee that all of the accusations and complaints against his supervisor had been categorically dismissed and that she had been completely exonerated.  This institutional exoneration provided the predatory supervisory with a “green light” to resume her abuse and victimization with tacit impunity. Another NPS informant described how the MSPB, without consulting with him, subsumed and dismissed an EEO claim he had made against a NPS manager when the MPSB made a decision on another, unrelated matter.  NPS management is also vehemently anti-union and will spend untold tax-payers’ dollars in obstructionist actions to prevent NPS employees from exercising their rights to organize into unions and create a system of advocacy for their rights as employees and citizens. 

The above represents but a fraction of the methodology and deceptions NPS management uses to assure that the high-minded ideals, ethics, and values that were used to entice employees into a relationship with the NPS are not actually available to the employees after NPS managers have subsumed control of employee’s lives.  Clearly, this seduction satisfies the conditions of deception and lies that forms the first requisite step in creating a path to predation, victimization, and abuse. 

Chad Montreaux

Newell, CA