Delays in Case of Race Bias Could Cost Secret Service

After causing delays that have stalled a racial discrimination case for years, the Secret Service could be hit with a "default" judgment at a U.S. District Court hearing today in favor of the black agents who brought the suit.

The judge presiding over the case, Deborah A. Robinson, has already sanctioned the agency three times for dragging its feet in handing over racially charged e-mails shared by white Secret Service supervisors and for failing to search for documents as ordered by the court. She has also verbally reprimanded government lawyers after they revealed that a paralegal may have burned some documents that were ordered by the court.

Robinson could use stronger sanctions to punish the Secret Service at today's hearing, lawyers said. She could issue a summary judgment on behalf of the plaintiffs that would probably cost taxpayers millions of dollars, she could limit the amount of evidence the agency could use to defend itself against the allegations -- that supervisors routinely harassed black agents and refused to promote them to management positions -- or she could grant a request by the plaintiffs to try their case without any interference from the Secret Service's lawyers. The black agents sued the agency in 2000.

"In all the years I have been involved in big civil litigation," said Melissa N. Henke, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, "I have never seen such egregious conduct by a party in the discovery phase of a case . . . to avoid providing the evidence that the other side is entitled to."

Robinson has been critical of some of the Secret Service's behavior, according to transcripts. During one court session, a government lawyer revealed that a paralegal had placed documents related to the case in a "burn bag" to be destroyed.

The lawyer was not certain which documents were burned.

"Isn't that something that she should have been asked?" Robinson asked. ". . . You have to be concerned that the witness . . . you offered as the person coordinating the production of documents pursuant to a court order, unbeknownst to you, burned the originals."

Eric Zahren, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the plaintiffs requested an extraordinary amount of information, taxing the agency's ability to produce it.

"We have turned over 300,000 paper documents and 20 million electronic documents that span a 16-year period," Zahren said. "You have to think about what's a reasonable demand upon the agency. In very simple terms, they have asked us for a ridiculous thing, and the magistrate has asked us to get it back in a ridiculous period of time."

Secret Service supervisors took two years to produce e-mails that were due in the summer of 2006. And at one point in the proceedings, a Secret Service inspector revealed that he had not searched for relevant documents as the court had ordered, but simply tagged information as he came across it.

The e-mails, which were widely circulated inside the agency, were revealed earlier this year. They included jokes about black men's genitalia, a missile shooting down a plane bearing the Rev. Jesse Jackson and a "Harlem spelling bee" in which black people completed sentences using street slang and poor English. Most of the e-mails are too crude to be detailed in The Washington Post.

Black agents claim that white supervisors who distributed and read the e-mails created a "glass ceiling" that stunted their advancement. Ten agents are listed as representatives of a group of up to 250 plaintiffs, Henke said.