The Nation : Report Says HUD Figure Shredded Files

Deborah Gore Dean, a key figure in the ongoing investigation of political abuse of HUD programs, stated in a deposition that she had her office files shredded as she was leaving her job as executive aide to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., the New York Times reported. “I gave them to the inspector general and had them shredded by the inspector general,” Dean said in the April, 1988, deposition, according to the newspaper. But Inspector General Paul A. Adams, HUD’s chief internal investigator, told the newspaper he did not know what Dean was talking about. Federal agencies differ on their rules for saving office files and there was no indication of any wrongdoing by Dean in her handling of the documents, the newspaper said. Dean, Pierce’s assistant from 1984 to 1987, gave the deposition in a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago which involved developers accusing HUD of reneging on an agreement to renegotiate the terms of a mortgage on a large housing project.