National Park Service reaches settlement with whistleblower
Source: Omaha World Herald-AP
IOWA CITY (AP) — The National Park Service has reached a settlement with an employee who said she was unfairly fired over the 1990 removal of ancient human remains from the Effigy Mounds National Monument, which were recovered only three years ago, newly released records show.
Sharon Greener, a former employee at the northeastern Iowa site, said she was a part-time ranger when she was directed by then-Superintendent Tom Munson to pack two cardboard boxes with museum artifacts. Munson returned the artifacts — including fragments of jaws and leg bones believed to be 1,000 to 2,000 years old — in 2011 after new Superintendent Jim Nepstad opened an inquiry.
Munson said they had been in the garage of his Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, home, a revelation that outraged the 12 tribes that are affiliated with the monument and consider the site sacred. Tribes were already angry at officials for illegally building boardwalks through the site, which had prompted Superintendent Phyllis Ewing’s transfer months earlier.
The National Park Service, embarrassed over the revelations, suspended and fired Greener even though she had reported the missing artifacts to superiors at least eight times in the 1990s and 2000s, she claimed in records released under the Freedom of Information Act. The agency accused her of a “lack of candor,” placed her on paid leave in 2012 and fired her a year later, in June 2013.
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