Diversity, equity, and inclusion can strengthen organizations when properly implemented. Diverse teams prevent groupthink and spark innovation. But when misused to justify unqualified appointments, DEI undermines the cause it claims to support. This is the case with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Puerto Rico.

The Washington Examiner previously published “FEMA’s DEI Problem,” which first exposed FEMA’s obsession with identity politics derailing recovery. A second story, “FEMA’s DEI Misadventure,” documented sabotage and reverse discrimination against our team of seven straight, older, white military veterans and corporate executives. Here, we reveal how FEMA’s machinery of legal offices, contracting officials, and Equal Employment Opportunity staff colluded to obstruct accountability. Their playbook? Deny, deflect, and depose.

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The term “Deep State” evokes SPECTRE from James Bond, an ominous cabal pulling the strings. But FEMA is no slick villain lair. It’s a bloated bureaucracy of bumbling buffoonery. We joked that if you gave FEMA leadership $50 for a Big Mac, they’d return with a kitten, pincushion, French horn, and no change. FEMA’s real competency is maintaining the status quo — disaster recovery is just a side hustle.

FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity office didn’t investigate — it retaliated. In May 2019, we filed a discrimination complaint through ATCS, a Virginia-based civil engineering firm. ATCS alerted FEMA’s contracting officer, while we notified FEMA’s Continuous Improvement Program leader of our whistleblower status. Within days, ATCS, collaborating with FEMA, fired two team members. The contract was axed, and we filed five more complaints, all ignored by FEMA.

Only after escalating to the Department of Homeland Security did FEMA respond. In January 2020, FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity office told us to file as a class. We complied, and mediation was scheduled for March. We didn’t ask for money or firings — just to return to Puerto Rico, finish our work, and have FEMA employees trained in Federal Acquisition Regulations and Equal Employment Opportunity rules. FEMA refused, and mediation failed.

When our Equal Employment Opportunity counselor said, “This process isn’t for people like you,” it highlighted institutional bias against those outside a protected class. FEMA’s disregard for us grew as the process dragged on. After four months of interviews, the counselor concluded discrimination likely occurred — but she was fired before opening an investigation. FEMA then “lost” our files. The Equal Employment Opportunity office quickly sent a slipshod report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Miami. An administrative judge had to compel FEMA to provide missing documents after six months of noncompliance.

FEMA’s misconduct caused us to miss key deadlines. After advising us to file as a class, FEMA failed to issue the correct notices. When we pursued the class route at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, we were expected to secure legal representation within 15 days during the pandemic — an impossible demand. FEMA missed deadlines by months, blaming COVID. When we asked for a few days’ extension citing the pandemic and the death of our team lead, FEMA deemed those reasons invalid. We were denied class status, and our cases were dismissed.

In 2022, the cases were sent back to FEMA and mishandled for another six months after being outsourced to the U.S. Postal Service. FEMA dismissed the cases on technicalities from its mishandling. The only recourse was to file in the District of Columbia District Court. Five team members withdrew, believing it was a lost cause.

In court, FEMA clings to the “45-day rule,” which requires federal employees to file a discrimination complaint within 45 days. We met that standard — we notified FEMA repeatedly within that time frame, but FEMA misplaced the complaints. The rule doesn’t even apply to contractors! FEMA’s lawyers don’t seem to know their own rules.

FEMA essentially argued it was free to discriminate against us because we weren’t employees. However, we were joint employees under federal law. FEMA controlled our schedules, assignments, deliverables, and day-to-day operations. We were often directed to perform “inherently governmental tasks” — an explicit violation of the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

FEMA also advanced contradictory legal theories about our employment status, which we dubbed “Schrödinger’s Contractor.” We were simultaneously employees (to block Contract Disputes Act claims) and contractors (to avoid discrimination liability). FEMA and ATCS used similar tactics in the whistleblower retaliation case, blaming each other despite their collusion.

As the saying goes: “If the law isn’t on your side, argue the facts. If the facts aren’t on your side, argue the law. And if neither is on your side, argue the comma.” FEMA took that literally. At one point, they tried to dismiss a case over a misplaced comma. It cost me $20,000 in legal fees to fight that absurd claim. Worse, FEMA uses its own misconduct as a shield. In several cases, FEMA’s poor guidance caused us to miss deadlines. I call it the “Animal House” rule: “You f***ed up. You trusted us.”

Rather than focus on the substance of the misconduct, FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity counsel obsessed over trivial technicalities. After my first op-ed appeared in the Washington Examiner, I emailed FEMA’s Office of Professional Responsibility to thank them for their honest assessment of our case. That simple thank-you led FEMA’s attorney to accuse me of “ex parte communication.” Nero fiddled while Rome burned! FEMA remained focused on technicalities, not the substance of our case.

FEMA’s bureaucratic machinery weaponized obstruction. The FOIA office sat on records for over two years or rendered them useless through excessive redactions. Some requests went unanswered for years. Interestingly, I just received an email from the FOIA office saying they were working on a request from early 2020—likely because they’d read my articles criticizing their ineptitude!

One contracting officer’s representative outright lied about her role until FOIA requests exposed her. She then withheld final payment for six months and denied reimbursement for a team member’s hospitalization due to the hostile environment. Meanwhile, FEMA’s Puerto Rico leadership quarantined our team, gagged staff, and scrubbed incriminating files before terminating the contract.

The Whistleblower Protection Unit missed its statutory deadline by over 900 days and refused to examine the discrimination aspect because it “would get messy.” Even the Office of Federal Operations, tasked with overseeing agencies’ handling discrimination claims, rubber-stamped FEMA’s actions. The OIG received our complaints about misconduct but ignored them — unsurprisingly, as it had ignored the $1 billion to $2 billion in malfeasance we previously reported.

We built the “Matrix of Mediocrity,” a spreadsheet tracking 60 FEMA employees who could have assisted us. We scored them on competence, ethics, and apathy. Of those, 23 were so egregious in their failures we inducted them into our “Great Circle of Unaccountability.” Many have since been promoted. Of the 23, 20 belonged to a protected class — raising a sobering question: Were they unqualified DEI hires, indifferent to “straight old white guys,” or both?

What could have been resolved with mediation escalated into seven lawsuits: two discrimination claims, two whistleblower retaliation suits, violations of the Antideficincy Act (also a class E felony), one for breach of contract, and one for fraud in the inducement. A qui tam suit against ATCS is under discussion with a U.S. attorney.

Interestingly, FEMA has never disputed our claims in any of these cases. Their strategy weaponized bureaucracy: First, the Equal Employment Opportunity office ignored us, then Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and FOIA stonewalled, while lawyers buried everything in procedural rubble. This institutionalized sabotage, hiding behind technicalities while quietly retaliating, defines FEMA’s culture of unaccountability.

The legal tide is turning against FEMA’s discriminatory practices. As the Supreme Court considers Ames v. Ohio and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Commissioner Andrea Lucas targets unlawful DEI programs, FEMA’s “diversity at all costs” approach is collapsing. Given the pervasive dysfunction we’ve exposed, it’s no surprise the administration is questioning FEMA’s necessity. Its systemic problems make a strong case that emergency management may be better handled by the states.

We were well-connected, with friends in Congress, the current administration, and the media that helped spotlight our cause. With decades of experience in government operations and contracting, we understood the system. Additionally, we had $700,000 to pursue these lawsuits. Even so, we still haven’t stepped foot in a courtroom. It’s been a miserable and exhausting fight, but we continue hoping future whistleblowers won’t face the same struggle. Most people don’t have the resources or stamina to fight like we did — that’s exactly what FEMA is counting on.

Barry Angeline is a retired corporate executive with over 30 years of experience in process improvement at organizations such as General Electric, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner, the Marine Corps, and the Army. He holds multiple awards for quality management, was awarded several patents, and has publications in performance management. He was a technical leader for the FEMA Lean Six Sigma deployment in Puerto Rico.

Ret. Col. Dan McCabe was awarded two Bronze Star Medals. He was an Army armor officer and two-tour veteran of OIF-1. After retirement, he worked with U.S. and Iraqi flag officers and the State Department in transferring U.S. security training operations over from the Army to the State Department and then to the Iraqi government. McCabe was a senior consultant for the FEMA Lean Six Sigma deployment in Puerto Rico.