Yesterday, Mayor Adrian Fenty fired DYRS' interim-director and replaced him with AG Peter Nickles' "top aide" Robert Hildum. In today's WaPo story, the controversial attorney general had high praise for his side kick:

"Nickles said that Hildum's experience as a prosecutor is an asset at a time when some critics have said that the agency's focus on rehabilitation has come at the expense of public safety. 'I think Rob Hildum brings that terrific approach of balancing rehabilitation with protection of the community,' Nickles said."

But two Fire Department investigators turned whistleblowers may have a different view of Hildum's prosecutorial style. Hildum was instrumental in helping Fire Department brass ruin their careers.

In recent years, Greg Bowyer and Gerald Pennington spoke out repeatedly at what they considered to be shoddy investigative work by the Fire Department, racist hiring practices, and improper prosecutions by the OAG. They called out several cases–including the Eastern Market fire–which they claim were not handled properly by authorities. They have since been demoted for their efforts. Hildum was instrumental in Bowyer's demotion, erroneously claiming in a letter to the U.S. Attorney's Office [see PDF] that the investigator had committed perjury during a trial. Bowyer ended up detailed out of the fire investigations unit. He now works in a unit testing fire hydrants. The U.S. Attorney's Office never brought a perjury charge against Bowyer. [For the full accounting of Bowyer and Pennington's case see this timeline]. Hildum eventually wrote a damaging letter saying he wouldn't support any of Pennington's cases. Hildum's letter writing campaign began after the two filed a complaint against an OAG attorney (who was at one point a very questionable police officer; she resigned from the force while under investigation for covering up mistakes made in a missing person's case).

Pennington has been cleared of all charges but remains out of fire investigations; he's now the most-over qualified firefighter to ever ride an ambulance.

Hildum apparently shares many of the same dickish traits as AG Nickles. In Bowyer's trial board hearing, Hildum admitted that one of the reasons he wrote those critical letters is that Bowyer and Pennington had filed a complaint against one of his own.

Bowyer and Pennington have a civil suit pending in federal court. "The fire department and the Office of Attorney General retaliated against Bowyer and Pennington for refusing to go along with faulty investigations, prosecutions and cover-ups," says their attorney David J. Marshall. "Through their lawsuit, they intend to expose the motivation behind the actions taken against them and to correct the injustice that they suffered."

*classic file photo by Darrow Montgomery.

Pennington and Bowyer had been respected fire investigators until they were removed from their unit. After speaking out, they were transferred to to the Community Services Unit. And Pennington was charged with falsifying his credentials as a proper fire investigator.

For a time, Pennington was tasked with handing out snacks to firefighters. After he was cleared of the credentials charge, the Fire Department did not transfer him back to the investigations unit. Instead, they put him in Engine Company 23. He hadn't fought fires since July 2001.

Now, the department has added a new wrinkle to Pennington's punishment.

The department failed to pay him for his last two weeks of work. "Today, I did not get paid," Pennington says. "No one knows what happened."

Pennington says the payroll system is idiot proof. Time and attendance is put into a computer system which is then sent on to payroll.  Normally, he gets a check stub in the mail the day before his check is deposited into his bank account. Yesterday, he says he did not get his check stub.

"No check stub and no money in my account," Pennington says. "I'm still awaiting some type of resolution. They don't know when they are going to fix it. They just said they are working on it."

*photo of Fire Chief Dennis Rubin courtesy of DC.Gov.

Two years after the fact, Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells has gone on the record suspecting that the Eastern Market fire was arson. Wells tells the Voice of the Hill:

"'I have a tremendous amount of suspicion that it was arson,' Wells told the Voice immediately after the market reopened Friday."

Eastern Market re-opened today with the expected fanfare. Which is great. But it doesn't erase the screw-ups surrounding that massive blaze. In December 2007, we wrote a piece addressing the concerns of numerous fire fighters that the Eastern Market case was arson. Two arson investigators got bounced off their beat for making their concerns known.

It will be interesting to see what Wells does after all the celebrations this weekend. If he truly suspects foul play, what will he do about it? Will he fight for the jobs of those arson investigators? Will he hold a hearing on the fire? Will he question Fire Chief Dennis Rubin who insisted on an electrical cause for so long?

In late May, D.C. Fire Department brass tried to hose down a local reporter's Emmy nomination. Deputy Chief Kenneth Crosswhite lobbied to have a story produced by WJLA disqualified as a local Emmy nominee. The story in question was a three-month investigative piece that ran on Nov. 11. It chronicled the saga of arson investigators-turned-whistleblowers Gerald Pennington and Greg Bowyer. The two had argued that there were serious holes in how arson cases were being handled. The two had gotten demoted for saying so.

When that story got nominated for a local Emmy, Crosswhite decided to pick his fight. Show business was not impressed. Local Emmy honchos overruled Crosswhite's efforts. And this past weekend, the WJLA piece—by veteran newsman Jay Korff—won an Emmy in the investigative category.

Surely this will go down as a devastating blow to Fire Department brass. City Desk reached Crosswhite this afternoon for a response. He tried to be gracious in defeat.

"I want congratulate him that he won the Emmy," Crosswhite says of WJLA's Korff. "I wish him luck. But I still believe deep down that the story was not fair and accurate. Those guys have shopped those stories around to the other news agencies....I wish Jay well."

Korff says that he stands behind the his three-month investigative piece. "We just went where the facts took us," he says. "We were interested in nothing else other than making sure that our story was fair and balanced."

Crosswhite insists Korff did not have all the facts. "I just feel that being such a prestigious award, it should be awarded correctly," he explains, adding that not all the facts are out because Bowyer and Pennington face disciplinary hearings.

When informed by City Desk that the charges against Pennington were dropped last week, Crosswhite admitted he hadn't heard about that fact. "I don't know anything about that one," the deputy chief replied.

On Feb. 5, the department charged Pennington with falsely claiming that he is a certified fire investigator. In the charging document, the department writes: “The agency became aware of these facts on November 25, 2008.” Pennington insisted that he had the proper credentials.

"I knew the charges were groundless. It was retaliation," Pennington says.

If the charges lacked a certain shallowness, the motivations behind them had a deep history. For the past few years, Pennington and fellow fire investigator Greg Bowyer had become outspoken on the subject of their department, alleging that serious fire cases had been botched by inexperienced investigators and that the bad cases had been essentially covered up by top brass.

The two had sent countless e-mails up the chain of command. When those e-mails and subsequent meetings failed to produce results, they talked to the press.

Pennington and Bowyer had keyed on the controversial investigation into the Eastern Market fire. The two had spoken out last November to WJLA. By then the two had been transferred off the arson beat and put into details that had Pennington serving snacks to crews at fire scenes and Bowyer checking hydrants. We profiled Bowyer's plight.

The department appeared to ratchet up its efforts to remove the two once the Post took notice. The day after Courtland Milloy published a column on Bowyer and Pennington, the fire department served Pennington with charges that he had falsely claimed to be a certified fire investigator. A full timeline of the whole saga can be found here.

"It's extremely insulting," Pennington says. He had been a fire investigator since late 2001. "I'd written well over 500-to-600 reports." He adds that he and Bowyer have close to a 100 percent conviction rate.

On June 1, Pennington's attorney David Marshall wrote a letter to Assistant Attorney General Charles Tucker outlining why the the charges against his client were bogus. Marshall describes the charge as "patently frivolous and intended only to retaliate against Mr. Pennington for his exercise of his legal rights."

The charges stem from the fire department adopting a new policy over certifications. The new policy meant that a certified Pennington was not quite certified under the department's new regs. It then charged Pennington with violating this policy. Here's the catch: they charged him with violating the policy two months before they had adopted it. Marshall goes on to write:

"The due process violation grows out of the fact that the fire department seeks to penalize Mr. Pennington for violating a policy that did not exist at the time of his supposed infraction. The department first promulgated its policy against using the designation 'CFI' absent certification by the International Association of Arson Investigators ("IAAI") on December 9, 2009—two months after the October 9, 2008, incident that forms the basis for the charges....Because the rule was not in place when Mr. Pennington designated himself a CFI on a FD Form 23 on October 9, 2008, it would violate due process to apply the rule retroactively and to prosecute him on these charges.

In addition to accusing Mr. Pennington of violating a non-existent policy, the fire department seeks to punish him for listing his CFI credentials accurately and in a way that the relevant accrediting authorities agree was completely acceptable."

In the Milloy piece, AG Peter Nickles attacked both Bowyer and Pennington. He was in full war mode:

“It’s quite an effort that these two guys are making, giving TV interviews, filing complaints," Nickles told told Milloy. "We dispute almost everything they claim, including that they are individuals of distinction.”

So the OAG's turnaround comes as somewhat of a surprise. Marshall praises the OAG for not going forward with its case against Pennington. "The department was so eager to victimize Pennington, that they went out of their way to charge him with false stuff," says Marshall. "It was such a blatant attempt to railroad a fire fighter for having spoken out about wrongdoing at the top that the Attorney General and the fire department decided to do the right thing."

Bowyer faces his own set of charges and is scheduled to go before a trial board on June 15 and June 16. "Those charges are false," Bowyer says. "I'm really happy for Pennington. I hope the OAG does the right thing in my case as well."

Pennington is still on hydrant detail in the community service unit. He says the fire department still won't admit that he is a qualified, certified fire investigator.

This week I chronicled D.C. Fire Department arson investigator Greg Bowyer. Bowyer, along with his partner Gerald Pennington, went from working arson cases to checking fire hydrants. They allege their demotion wasn't for any performance reason. No. They got transferred because of their whistleblowing activities.

For more than two years, Bowyer and Pennington have waged a campaign to right a fire department that they allege has routinely bungled major fire cases like the Eastern Market fire and the Mount Pleasant fire, and put in place untrained and unqualified fire investigators. For their efforts, they got placed on hydrant duty.

I just posted a timeline of their activities. And it definitely appears that when they've talked to the press whether it's WJLA or Courtland Milloy, the departmental hammer has come down. For my cover, Fire Chief Dennis Rubin and Attorney General Peter Nickles refused to comment about the whistleblowers' claims.

But I wonder what will happen to them now? Is there a position in the fire department lower than hydrant checker? I hope my story didn't mess them up.

Since announcing his imminent lawsuit against the fire department, Bowyer says his day has gone pretty normal.

Bowyer has been on desk duty for months. Pennington gets to pass out hot cocoa and snacks to firefighters. They used to investigate fires. That is, they contend, until they started complaining about how fire investigations had become a joke—how major fires were being investigated by inexperienced personnel and just not done correctly.

Sometimes Bowyer gets to go out and check on smoke detectors. Today wasn't one of those days.

It's 2:24 p.m.

"I've just been sitting here all day. We haven't had any smoke detectors today. I came in at 0600 hours and I've sat here at the firehouse all day," Bowyer says. "Likewise, Pennington. There hasn't been any major fires so he hasn't passed out any granola bars or hot chocolate. This is a very typical day."

Except today, a release has been sent out announcing the press conference for tomorrow at noon at Eastern Market. Now he has a lawyer who speaks for him. The release states:

"According to attorney David J. Marshall of Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP, which represents the firefighters, the lawsuit will detail a campaign of harassment and retaliation that DCFEMS and Chief Rubin launched when Bowyer and Pennington began to speak out about botched fire investigations, including the investigation of the fire that destroyed the historic Eastern Market in June 2007.  The lawsuit alleges that the department mishandled a number of fire investigations and then misrepresented critical facts to the public.  Bowyer and Pennington also blew the whistle on various instances of mismanagement and abuse of authority in the department."

The response from his fellow fighters today has been: "Fear and outrage. Fear of what this administration would do if they came forward or spoke out. And outrage at how this department is operating internally. I was just talking to a member today, a white official, he was just like the morale is at the lowest it's ever been at the department," Bowyer says.

Bowyer says some brave firefighters promised him they would come to the press conference. "Since this has been going on, we've gotten so much support. It's the only thing that's kept us going," Bowyer says.