This is a sad reality of immense and often losing struggle of a minority aspiring to advance in leadership career despite illustrious accomplishments & experience in the US government service. All it takes is one racist, bigot, bully boss (ex. Andy Hammond) determined to suppress a non-white employee from advancing in leadership career using all means, i.e. lying to Congress, stakeholders, and employees, just to satisfy his ego because he believes that race and national origin matters more than persons credentials, expertise, experience or service to stakeholders. This is a perfect example of how Federal government, particularly conservative agency like USDA-ARS, operates in this country 'penny wise pound foolish' bragging about 'doing more with less'. This is a top-heavy research agency with too many high paid incompetent senior executives wasting too much time with dubious plans by lying to Congress, stakeholders and employees to close or reorganize labs, shuffle funds across labs (favoritism), relocate target employees by force to hostile low budget labs across the country setup for failure & resign. This is how they terminate them under the cover of 'reasonable accommodation'.