by Sabrina Salas Matanane, KUAM NewsMonday, March 31, 2008 Subscribe to Sabrina's newsfeed
Ginger Cruz, a former Guam news anchorwoman and previous communications director for former governor Carl Gutierrez has responded to yet another article in the Washington Post regarding allegations of impropriety in her position as the deputy of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. According to the latest online article, at least nine current and former employees spoke to federal investigators before a grand jury earlier this month regarding Cruz and her boss, inspector general Stuart Bowen. The feds are reportedly looking into whether Bowen and Cruz improperly accessed staff e-mail messages in violation of federal law. KUAM News spoke with Cruz this morning, who says she did nothing wrong and believes the allegations stem from disgruntled employees. "In my position as deputy inspector general there has been a couple of instances - three that I can recall - in which we conducted internal investigations, and one of those cases I ended up working with our general counsel recommending the firing of one of our investigators for improper behavior because of the review of the e-mail," she recalled. "Anybody familiar with the federal government and anybody in Washington, DC knows that it's perfectly proper to review e-mails in a case of alleged employee misconduct."A previous article in the Post quoted unnamed sources and employees who claimed Cruz was a "witch", allegations that she vehemently denies, calling the allegations "ludicrous". Cruz said, "Clearly the problem is that one of the disgruntled employees was somebody who left in a huff, who happened to be our public relations director, and he's got very close ties with actually two of them - public relations directors. One of them I fired, one of them left because their duties changed, so his ego couldn't take it so he left. And as a result these are two press people who have a lot of connections with the media, so you know how that goes. They've used their connections to try and attack me and to try to attack the organization. It's really unfortunate."According to Cruz, the first group of allegations against her and Bowen were dismissed, adding she continues to believe in the system and that these complaints will also be dismissed. She adds that she's grateful for the support she's received from family and friends on Guam.Read the Washington Post article