Washington – A Department of Veterans Affairs deputy assistant secretary who didn’t immediately notify top officials about a theft of 26.5 million veterans’ personal information is stepping down, citing missteps that led to the security breach.
Michael McLendon, deputy assistant secretary for policy who supervised the VA data analyst who lost the data, said he would relinquish his high-level post Friday.
The data analyst also will be dismissed, and the acting head of the division in which he worked, Dennis Duffy, has been placed on administrative leave, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said Tuesday.
McLendon is the first official to depart after Nicholson pledged to hold officials accountable following the May 3 burglary, in which a laptop computer and disks were stolen from an agency analyst’s home in Maryland.
The resignation comes as the VA is under attack for a three-week delay in publicizing the burglary in what has become one of the nation’s largest security breaches. During hearings last week, Nicholson said he was “mad as hell” that employees did not notify him of the May 3 burglary until May 16; the public was told on May 22.
On Tuesday, Nicholson announced that he had named Paul Hutter, the current assistant general counsel for management and operations, as interim head of VA’s Office of Policy and Planning, filling Duffy’s spot.
Hutter will lead the department “in light of recent, unacceptable events within VA’s Office of Policy and Planning” while the Senate considers the recent nomination of Patrick Dunne to the policy and planning post, Nicholson said.
According to congressional testimony, the VA data analyst immediately informed his supervisors – including McLendon – after the theft of a laptop and disks that contained veterans’ birthdates, Social Security numbers and disability ratings at the data analyst’s home in Aspen Hill, Md.
At the time, the data analyst took responsibility and acknowledged he had violated agency procedures by taking the information home, according to a VA briefing paper given to Congress.
McLendon informed other officials, who then told Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield, the agency’s No. 2 official, on May 10.
But no formal action was taken until the VA inspector general’s office heard about the theft through office gossip on May 10 and began a separate investigation.
