OIG investigated several allegations against a senior law enforcement manager with the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Office of Law Enforcement and Security (OLES):
- The senior manager allegedly mishandled evidence, in the form of moqui marbles (accumulated masses of iron oxide, often spheroidal, that form in sedimentary rock) seized as part of an OLES criminal case, by having a subordinate improperly remove several of the seized marbles from the OLES evidence room and give them to the senior manager. The senior manager also allegedly gave marbles as gifts to several people.
- After the BLM received requests for emails and documents concerning various matters under official inquiry, the senior manager allegedly directed his subordinate to review the senior manager’s BLM emails and delete any that depicted him unfavorably.
During our investigation, we received an additional allegation that OLES documents were intentionally deleted from a BLM shared Google drive the day before a congressional request was received for them.
We substantiated all but one of the allegations. We found that the senior manager instructed his subordinate to remove moqui marbles from the evidence room and give them to him, which violated BLM and U.S. Department of the Interior evidence policy, and that he gave marbles to several people, including BLM employees and a contractor who had worked on a project in the OLES office. We also confirmed that the senior manager had his subordinate use the senior manager’s computer and personal login information to search the senior manager’s emails for messages pertinent to the document requests, and to “scrub” any messages that could harm the senior manager or any in which he used demeaning or derogatory language. The senior manager’s actions violated Federal security and records management policy as well as various regulations and guidance related to the conduct of Federal employees.
We did not substantiate the allegation that documents had been deliberately deleted from the Google drive. An OLES budget analyst told us she deleted documents from the drive the day before she learned about the congressional request, but we did not find that she had intended to obstruct the inquiry. We also did not find that anyone, including the senior manager or members of BLM leadership, had ordered the documents deleted.
The senior manager declined to be interviewed for this investigation.
We provided this report to the Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management for any action deemed appropriate.