In separate letters, U.S. Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown have expressed impatience at the delay by the U.S. Commerce Department in making public what is expected to be a second scathing set of case studies by a retired judge of federal fisheries law enforcement gone bad.
Kerry, whose brother Cameron Kerry, as general counsel for the department, has the lead role in approving the redacted version of the work of special judicial master Charles B. Swartwood III, wrote first to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco on 23 July.
Three days later, last Thursday, Brown wrote to Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank, asking for the report “as a member of Congress and under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Attorneys with clients that are among the 66 cases that Swartwood reviewed on the direction of former Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, have said that Swartwood made his full report to the then Commerce Secretary John Bryson in March.
If true, Bryson, and his acting successor, Blank, have had the second report for four months — three months longer than it took Locke to review, redact and release the first set of findings more than a year ago.
