NEGLECT OF DUTY: I've reported Jacksonville Army Corps Colonel ANDREW A. KELLY to USDOD INSPECTOR GENERAL re: possible coverups on SUMMER HAVEN RIVER PROJECT

Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

Some USACE military officers have refused to provide documents or answer questions.

I ask questions, demand answers, and expect answers and expect democracy. That's how God made me, my parents made me and my mentors taught me.

This is our country.

My first ancestor emigrated in 1849, on my mother's side, at age 6, her entire family having perished in the Irish potato family.  That was 170 years ago.  Another emigrated, in 1888, on my father's side, escaping from Russian pogroms in Poland.

My grandfather father served, my father served and bled, and generations of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coasties fought and bled (and more than a million died) for our Rights to Know.

You work for us.

We don't cower to power.

To the Department of Defense:

We won't "take no for an answer."

Those are my "family values."

We don't cotton to bigots or bullies of any kind,

We won't accept mediocrity, or excuses, or mendacity, waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery, or nincompoopery as the order of the day.

I look forward to hearing back for DoD Inspector Glenn A. Fine.

Now.

Here's my 5:05 pm October 24, 2019 e-mail (timed in honor of my father's heroic WWII 82nd ABN DIVN., F Co. 505th P.I.R. unit, where he earned three combat Bronze Stars in three combat jumps in North Africa, Sicily and Normandy.

It's called the "Edward A. Slavin Chapter" of the 82nd ABN. DIVN. ASSN., Inc. after my father.

To those USACE and OIG and U.S. Army REMFs who ignored my calls: God forgive you.

I am true to my origins, true to our Nation's values, and I will not rest or yield to

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin
Sent: Thu, Oct 24, 2019 5:05 pm
Subject: Re: URGENT: USACE JACKSONVILLE NEGLECT OF DUTY re: Questions About SUMMER HAVEN RIVER BREACH: St. Johns County Working Without Proper USACE Permit or Scientific Peer Review Under SAPWB Permit?

To: 

Hon. Glenn A. Fine, Esq.

Department of Defense Inspector General, :

Dear Mr. Fine:
1. My repeated efforts to report possible mismanagement or wrongdoing -- about the Summer Haven River Project -- to our U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District Office and to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Inspector General HQ have been unavailing.

2. Efforts to share with or obtain information from those organizations have likewise been unavailing.  Please see e-mails below.

3. Telephone messages left with the USACE in Jacksonville and Washington, D.C. have been ignored, repeatedly.

4. Thus, I called the U.S. Army Inspector General hotline earlier this afternoon. I was subjected to four (4) minutes of recorded messages discouraging protected activity, thereby violating  the First Amendment and the Inspector General Act.  A recording finally stated that I would be connected with an "Action Officer." That effort proved fruitless, then ending with a robotic recording stating that any message left would be ignored.  This is neglect of duty.

5. Please read my reports to USACE and the USACE Inspector General, below, incorporated by reference.

6. USACE Jacksonville office and the USACE Inspector General both exhibit of neglect of duty.  The US Army IG is likewise insouciant.  The USACE and Army OIG hotlines deviate from the standard of care set by Congress, which intended IG hotlines to be answered by living, breathing Special Agents, not by robotic recordings discouraging reports and prattling on about "your chain of command."

7. Enough delay.

8. Will you, as DoD Inspector General, kindly initiate a civil, criminal and administrative investigation of:

A. Permitting and oversight issues concerning the Summer Haven River Project in St. Johns County, Florida, including USACE refusing to address concerns about the purported ORAL permission from the St. Augustine Port, Waterway and Beach District Commission for the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners to operate under the Port District's USACE permit?  Oral permission is unsupported by any signed document produced by then Port District or County. Is this legal?  

B. Col. Andrew D. Kelly and his neglect of duty?

C. The insolent USACE Jacksonville FOIA Office;

D. The insouciant USACE Inspector General office?

E. Lack of proper OIG hotlines exhibiting neglect of duty,  There are NO Special Agents answering their telephones or responding to telephone messages in either USACE OIG or the Department of the Army OIG.

9.  Will you or your staff please call me tomorrow?

Thank you for all that you do.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

904-377-4998

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

www.edslavin.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin
To: Andrew.D.Kelly.mil ; Andrew.d.kelly ; ceig ; Frank.d.ellis ; Frank.d.ellis.mill
Cc: harper.cecelia ; Russell.Morgan ; Leonard.rawlings ; Edward.C.Smith ; Sunny.snider ; Joseph.Sullivan ; michael.shirley ; nancyshaver77 ; bcc5hdean ; sandy ; bcc1jjohns ; bcc2jsmith ; bcc3pwaldron ; bcc4jblocker ; matt ; chris ; maitane.olabarrieta ; waltbog
Sent: Thu, Oct 24, 2019 12:39 pm
Subject: Re: URGENT: USACE JACKSONVILLE NEGLECT OF DUTY re: Questions About SUMMER HAVEN RIVER BREACH: St. Johns County Working Without Proper USACE Permit or Scientific Peer Review Under SAPWB Permit?

Dear Colonel Kelly and USACE Inspector General Ellis:

1. I wrote you both on October 13, 2019 and October 18, 2019.  No response.

2. Your failure to do your jobs is in pari delicto with past instances of neglect of duty and mismanagement by the Jacksonville U.S. Army Corps of Engineers District Office, including:

• multiple instances of lying to law enforcement, resulting in federal criminal convictions of USACE employees in Jacksonville  https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdfl/pr/former-us-army-corps-engineers-employee-pleads-guilty-lying-investigators-about-placing https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/former-army-corps-employee-pleads-guilty-lying-law-enforcement
• "losing" at least thirteen (13) USACE files on alleged wetland mitigation.  As I wrote in 2006: 

While the Jacksonville District office of the Corps was rated better than most, tripling inspections from 2003-2004, GAO also found that it "lost" 13 files on wetland "mitigation."

Agencies' "Neglect"
GAO found "The Corps has consistently neglected to ensure that the mitigation it has required as a condition of obtaining a permit has been completed." "The Corps priority has been and continues to be processing [development] permit applications," the GAO reports.

Ed Slavin, "The Matrix: Wetlands of Mass Destruction (WMD) -- Why Florida's wetlands are being destroyed and who benefits" (Indymedia, 2006), quoting "Wetlands Protection:  Corps of Engineers Does Not Have an Effective Oversight Approach to Ensure That Compensatory Mitigation Is Occurring," GAO-05-898 (September 2005)  https://www.gao.gov/htext/d05898.html

http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-matrix-wetlands-of-mass-destruction.html

3. Please call me by 5:05 PM today, October 24, 2019.

Herein faileth not.

Thank you.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

904-377-4998

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

www.edslavin.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin
To: Andrew.D.Kelly.mil ; Andrew.d.kelly ; ceig ; Frank.d.ellis ; Frank.d.ellis.mill
Cc: harper.cecelia ; Russell.Morgan ; Leonard.rawlings ; Edward.C.Smith ; Sunny.snider ; Joseph.Sullivan ; michael.shirley ; nancyshaver77 ; bcc5hdean ; sandy ; bcc1jjohns ; bcc2jsmith ; bcc3pwaldron ; bcc4jblocker ; matt ; chris ; maitane.olabarrieta ; waltbog
Sent: Fri, Oct 18, 2019 12:17 am
Subject: Re: URGENT: USACE JACKSONVILLE NEGLECT OF DUTY re: Questions About SUMMER HAVEN RIVER BREACH: St. Johns County Working Without Proper USACE Permit or Scientific Peer Review Under SAPWB Permit?

Dear Colonel Kelly and Inspector General Ellis:
Where are your manners?

Please call me by 0855 AM on October 18, 2019 concerning your neglect of duty.

Herein faith not.

Thank you,

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

904-377-4998

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

www.edslavin.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin
To: Andrew.D.Kelly.mil ; Andrew.d.kelly ; ceig ; Frank.d.ellis ; Frank.d.ellis.mill
Cc: harper.cecelia ; Russell.Morgan ; Leonard.rawlings ; Edward.C.Smith ; Sunny.snider ; Joseph.Sullivan ; michael.shirley ; nancyshaver77 ; bcc5hdean ; sandy ; bcc1jjohns ; bcc2jsmith ; bcc3pwaldron ; bcc4jblocker ; matt ; chris ; michael.shirley ; maitane.olabarrieta ; waltbog
Sent: Sun, Oct 13, 2019 8:41 pm
Subject: URGENT: USACE JACKSONVILLE NEGLECT OF DUTY re: Questions About SUMMER HAVEN RIVER BREACH: St. Johns County Working Without Proper USACE Permit or Scientific Peer Review Under SAPWB Permit?

Dear Colonel Kelly and Inspector General Ellis
1. Please call me by 1100 tomorrow, October 14, 2019.  Is ongoing work by our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners repairing the Summer Haven River breach at the Atlantic Ocean legally covered by a current, valid, United States Army Corps of Engineers permit?   Is the current SJCBoCC work legal?  We Americans have a Right to Know pursuant to our Freedom of Information Act, Electronic Freedom of Information Act and First Amendment.  

2. My efforts to speak with our Jacksonville USACE office, Jacksonville USACE permitting office, Jacksonville USACE FOIA office, HQ Inspector General office and HQ PIO office have ALL been unavailing.  As General George Washington wrote the Continental Congress, as portrayed in the musical 1776, "Is anybody there?  Does anybody care?"

3, My late father fought with the 82nd ABN DIVN F Co. 505th P.I.R, as a machine-gunner, awarded three Bronze Stars, after three combat jumps in North Africa, Sicily and Normandy.  Today would have been his 106th birthday.  The South Jersey Chapter of the 82nd ABN. DIVN. ASSN. is named for him, the "Edward A. Slavin Chapter."  My dad would have been very disappointed in the Jacksonville USACE office's insouciance in response to my questions and concerns. My father taught me, as JFK's father taught him, that you must stand up to people in power or they walk all over you.  My father, and generations of Americans, fought, bled, and more than a million died, for our rights to have answers to our questions today by our government, include USACE.  Their ghosts are watching us.

4.  USACE staff has been utterly unresponsive to my queries since last month.   Colonel Kelly, will you please help resolve the problem(s) in your command in Jacksonville USACE?  General Ellis, will you please have your staff investigate?

5. I've been filing FOIA requests since 1978. I have never encountered a FOIA officer quite like the unfriendly unknown, unnamed, uncommunicative, unkind USACE Jacksonville FOIA officer.  I called her immediately after filing my request last month.  She's never returned a single one of my multiple telephone messages.  Apparently she can only write hostile e-mails. She claims to have "administratively closed" my request, without ever talking to me. She refused to answer telephone messages and she won't even give me her name.  She lacks a welcoming spirit.  Her willful refusal to do her job is a disgrace to the United States Army,  Please investigate,

6. FOIA is the controlling legal authority.   FOIA is being violated by USACE, in my opinion, as well as the standards of official conduct.  Please honor your oaths of office.

7. On November 22, 1974, when the United States Senate overrode President Ford's veto of FOIA, I was the 17-year old undergraduate intern who took Senator Ted Kennedy's press release to three press galleries in the U.S. Capitol Building.  

8. I've used the FOIA many times since 1978.  I  was recommended for a Pulitzer Prize by James Nelson Ramsey, the District Attorney General in Anderson County, Tennessee for winning declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in. world history, at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, leading to then-Rep. Al Gore's mercury pollution investigation hearing on July 11, 1983 and to the Department of Energy initiating environmental safety and health remedies that will eventually account for $300 billion in cleanup in eleven states.  

9. As our former St. Augustine Mayor Nancy Shaver says, "Government is a customer service enterprise."  

10. Our unfriendly, unknown, unnamed, unkind USACE FOIA officer in Jacksonville evidently lacks communication skills. She may lack self-respect and respect for others.

11. She needs training, coaching and counseling. Now, please.

12. Is it legal for St. Johns County to seek and to get oral permission from the St. Augustine Port, Waterway and Beach Commission to work under its USACE permit, without any written presentation, and for USACE to ignore concerns about this possible misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance for a month? 

13. Outside actual combat in wartime, have you ever heard of one (1) government agency giving another government agency oral permission to do anything?

14. What environmental QA/QC is taking place on Summer Haven River?

15. Is the USACE permit in quo expired?  

16. Are USACE staff familiar with the history of repeated breaches and repeated spending by St. Johns County?  

17. Is this a wise use of tax monies?  (St. Johns County Commission voted to spend another $500,000 to repair the latest of three breaches, by narrow 3-2 vote).

18. What is the USACE cost-benefit analysis on this use of our tax funds?

19. Have USACE staff examined the breach of the Atlantic Ocean at the Summer Haven. River.

20. Please send me responsive documents.

21. Will you kindly direct USACE Jacksonville staff, from this day forward, to treat citizens with kindness, dignity, respect and consideration, as you would expect your own family to be treated?

Please call me.

Thank you.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

904-377-4998

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

www.edslavin.com