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Coming Soon: A Tale of Whistle-Blowing at the EPA
Coleman-Adebayo's case stands out because her crusade against what she calls "government corruption" won her powerful allies, such as President Bush and House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who recently wrote a letter to the EPA on her behalf.
Lodging Complaints
Sixteen years ago, Coleman-Adebayo was a promising hire, having graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in African studies. Her work was generally commended.
  Danny Glover is developing a film about Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a whistle-blower at the Environmental Protection Agency. She won a $600,000 discrimination judgment against the agency in 2000, and a second suit is pending. (By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post) 
 Which President signed the bill establishing the Smithsonian Institution? A. James K. Polk B. Zachary Taylor C. Franklin Pierce D. James Buchanan  
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But when Coleman-Adebayo traveled to South Africa as part of a U.S. delegation focusing on the environment in 1996, her career took a turn for the worse.
She became a whistle-blower after discovering that a U.S. chemical company was mining a deadly substance in South Africa called vanadium pintoxide. Exposure often turns the tongue blue, causes nosebleeds, kidney and liver dysfunction, and sometimes cancer.
When the EPA did not react to her complaints, she took the issue to non-government interest groups. The EPA finally reacted -- against Coleman-Adebayo. Her evaluations worsened, and she said her requests for promotions were denied as white men with far less experience rose above her pay grade.
Coleman-Adebayo sued, and her court battle in 2000 played out like a war. EPA managers said they were upset over the South Africa incident.
"She disagreed with me and made criticisms of the way the agency, of which she was a part, was doing its job," William Nitze, an EPA supervisor who worked in South Africa, testified in 2000. "You have to understand that when we try and organize and manage a program at EPA, we tried to do it as a team."
The agency said the men who rose to positions above Coleman-Adebayo's did so because they were better fundraisers and got along better with others.
Coleman-Adebayo's lawyers said race was also a factor. Witnesses said a white assistant administrator, Alan Bruce Sielen, motioned Coleman-Adebayo into a meeting of mostly white people and said it was all right because she was "an honorary white person."
Sielen denied the claim, but one of the witnesses, a black man, said he confronted Sielen after he also called him an honorary white person. Later in testimony, Coleman-Adebayo said Sielen told her she was denied a promotion because another supervisor said she was too "uppity."
The supervisor, Alan Hecht, a deputy administrator, denied the claim. The EPA fought back, enlisting psychiatrist Christiane Tellefsen to assess Coleman-Adebayo's mental state. Tellefsen said in testimony that Coleman-Adebayo was a self-centered, narcissistic woman who "tended to speak in a dramatic way."
In explaining how Coleman-Adebayo was "passive-aggressive," Tellefsen said she was uncooperative, even when asked to provide her children's names. But in cross-examination, lawyers showed that Coleman-Adebayo did provide the children's names, but the doctor believed the African names were made up. Coleman-Adebayo's husband is Nigerian.
