Latino Agents Accuse FBI of Harassment : Ask Court to Bar Bureau From Retaliatory Action in Discrimination Suit

Latino FBI agents charged in federal court Thursday that the bureau has taken “retaliatory employment actions” against them since they won a landmark class-action discrimination suit against it.

In a move certain to intensify ill feeling inside the FBI over the unprecedented legal action, Hugo A. Rodriguez, the agents’ lawyer, urged U.S. District Judge Lucius D. Bunton to bar the bureau from punishing his clients and others who were involved in the suit.

During the trial of the case in El Paso in August, Bunton had cautioned the FBI against any retaliation. On Thursday he gave the government until Nov. 21 to respond to the new charges, indicating that any hearing on the matter would be held the following week.

Deny Harassment

FBI officials denied that the Latino agents were being harassed.

“While the FBI does not normally comment on litigation, there is no evidence of retaliation in this instance by any FBI official,” a bureau spokesman said in a statement. “The FBI does not agree with the interpretation of events described by the plaintiffs in the motion filed today in El Paso. We will respond in the proper forum in the courts.”

Affidavits from three agents, submitted with the motion, alleged that the FBI stripped one of them of his handgun and his authority to drive a government car, initiated a national security inquiry of another and removed the lead agent in the lawsuit from day-to-day management responsibilities.

The agents contended that the actions would not have taken place if they had not joined with nearly three-fourths of the FBI’s 425 Latino agents in suing the FBI.

Bernardo M. (Matt) Perez, the assistant special agent in charge in El Paso who initiated the suit, said “no less than 20” Latino FBI agents have told him that their FBI superiors had retaliated against them because they testified or assisted in the case.

On Sept. 30, Bunton ruled that the FBI discriminated against hundreds of Latino agents, regularly assigning them to demeaning duties known inside the bureau as the “Taco Circuit.”

The Justice Department has said that it will not decide whether to appeal Bunton’s ruling, as the FBI is eager to do, until Bunton announces what “remedies” he will order in the sensitive case.

Bunton, who took over as chief judge of the sprawling West Texas judicial district when Judge William S. Sessions left last year to become FBI director, has set a hearing for Nov. 15 on the related issue of whether the FBI obtained a grand jury subpoena involving Perez in retaliation against him. The subpoena pertains to an administrative investigation of Perez, the nature of which was not disclosed.

Rodriguez, in the motion filed Thursday, said he was forced to seek an injunction “because of the FBI’s arrogance and the Department of Justice’s complete defiance of this court’s order” against retaliation.

He attached to the motion a copy of an Oct. 25 letter he wrote to Steven L. Zelinger, a Justice Department trial attorney in the case, detailing allegations of intimidation against Perez, Fernando E. Mata and James Garay and citing an incident involving the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.

Rodriguez said the Justice Department has failed to resolve any of the complaints, but a department attorney said there had been subsequent conversations with Rodriguez that sought to establish the facts.

“None of the allegations are completely true,” the attorney said.

In the Los Angeles incident, Rodriguez said, Special Agent in Charge Larry Lawler “several Fridays ago” held a meeting of all employees to advise them that bureau officials were reviewing a recent article in California magazine that had Perez on the cover and included photographs of two other plaintiffs in the suit, agents Rudy Valdez and Paul Maggallanes.

Lawler, according to Rodriguez, told the employees that FBI officials were reviewing the article, which was highly critical of the Los Angeles office, and that it was being sent to the FBI’s office of professional responsibility for possible administrative action against those involved.

Asked about the matter, the Justice Department attorney said: “There is no administrative inquiry (into the article) at this time as far as I know.”

Mata, a Miami agent, said in his affidavit: “The FBI is bound and determined to emasculate me and to do whatever is necessary to eliminate me as an employee of the FBI.”

‘Unsubstantiated Allegations’

He said the FBI had reacted to the suit by making “unsubstantiated allegations” against him involving a breach of national security.

Mata said the allegations are so volatile that they caused him great mental stress and anguish, but that he is leery of discussing his problems with a psychiatrist for fear that the FBI will charge him with violating national security if he does so.

James Garay, an Albuquerque, N.M., agent, said in his affidavit that he was ordered on Oct. 13 to surrender his weapon and to no longer drive a government vehicle, ostensibly because of injuries he suffered in a 1987 automobile accident, but actually because of his participation in the suit.

“As a 16-year veteran of the FBI, I am convinced that but for my involvement in this litigation, all of the aforementioned actions would not have been taken against me and the . . . embarrassment of having my gun and automobile removed from me would not have occurred,” Garay said.

Perez, a former top FBI official in Los Angeles and now an assistant special agent in charge of the El Paso office, said in his affidavit that he is no longer allowed to represent the FBI at any function and that all of his activities “are being closely monitored, scrutinized and reported to Washington.”