WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- A row between two senior U.S. Veterans Affairs Department executives hurt the agency's security, a report says.
The dysfunctional relationship of two VA senior executives, one a political appointee and the other a career civil servant, hindered the response to a massive early May data breach, according to an investigative report released Tuesday, GOvExec/com reported this week.
The bureaucratic infighting between Michael McLendon, deputy assistant secretary for policy, and Dennis Duffy, acting assistant secretary for policy, planning and preparedness, within the VA's Office of Policy, Planning and Preparedness, contributed to the 13-day delay in notifying senior department leaders of the theft of personal information on more than 26 million individuals, the inspector general report stated.
Duffy, McLendon's direct supervisor, retired June 30 in connection with the data breach. McClendon believed that as a political appointee, he reported to VA Secretary James Nicholson and resented the fact that a "careerist" supervised him, Duffy told investigators.
For his part, McLendon, who resigned June 2 in the aftermath of the data breach, told the investigators that the office was one of the most dysfunctional organizations in VA and was one of the most hostile work environments "he ever set foot in."
The GS-14 analyst from whose home the data was stolen on May 3 immediately notified Kevin Doyle, a VA security and law enforcement policy operations team leader, of the theft, which he described as "a career-ending incident." The data analyst also notified McLendon, who told him to take the next day off to deal with the burglary, the report stated.
McLendon never followed up with the employee and never notified Duffy, who found out from an information security officer in a "casual hallway meeting" two days later, according to the report.
