EEOC depot probe to start today

This story was published Mon, Sep 23, 2002

By Karen Zacharias
Herald Oregon bureau

UMATILLA -- A former security guard at the Umatilla Chemical Depot who says he was racially harassed and unlawfully terminated now says he has been blackballed and can't find another security job.

Michael Smart, 35, filed a complaint against the Umatilla site with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in which he says Robert Scaplehorn, the depot's security director, harassed him because he is black.

The EEOC investigation is to begin today with a fact-finding conference call between the parties.

Smart left Oregon when he was hired by the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range as a police officer in June. In a letter dated June 4, Linda Beck, personnel manager for White Sands, said the job offer depended, in part, upon Smart passing a security clearance.

Then on July 10, Beck wrote another letter rescinding the job offer. She said the decision was based on "derogatory information obtained while conducting an arrest and criminal history background check."

Smart believes the background check was bogus. "I got blackballed," he said Friday in a telephone interview from his Arizona residence.

He said he's never been arrested for any reason and noted he never had a problem getting any other security job. "I danced my way around the country, free to do what I wanted until I worked for Umatilla," he said.

A Gulf War veteran, Smart has worked security for 10 years. He's worked for the Department of Defense at Dugway Proving Grounds in Dugway, Utah; the Federal Reserve in Dallas and at nuclear munition sites in Fort Hood, Texas, and Saudi Arabia. He also has been certified in the Army's Special Reaction Training.

"How could I have had all those jobs if I was arrested or if I had a criminal history?" Smart asked. "Why would Umatilla hire me?"

According to complaint documents, Smart was dismissed from his Umatilla position Feb. 14 "for abandonment of his position during probationary period."

Smart contends he had been placed on medical leave because of the stress created by the harassment he was allegedly receiving at Umatilla, but that Umatilla staff lost the worker's compensation claim provided by his doctor.

After contesting the security clearance decision, Smart received a third letter from Beck dated Sept. 4, in which she said she wasn't sure why he couldn't get security clearance.

Her letter said the reason cited in the July 10 letter was wrong. She wrote that the base's security office had rejected his security clearance, but said she did not know why.

Beck recommended Smart contact Capt. Lee Coffman in the White Sands security office for an explanation.

Contacted by the Herald by phone, Coffman said he did not recall ever seeing any background information on Smart.

Coffman said he no longer serves as head of the security office, but he said that at the time Smart applied for the job, he reviewed the paperwork on security employees hires.

"Generally if there was anything negative or possibly negative in their history, I would talk to the people about it," he said. And he said he is certain he would have remembered if Smart had been denied a job based on a criminal history.

Asked about the discrepancies in the letters sent by Beck and the information from Coffman, Debbie Bingham, spokeswoman for White Sands Missile Range, declined to comment.

"It's a personnel issue. It's not something we can discuss," she said.

 

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