Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka, a long-time federal bureaucrat, often boasts that “I’m an anti-swamp bureaucracy whisperer.”

The whisperer held several federal jobs in Washington, D.C. until Gov. Mike Dunleavy hired her for $141,000 and created a new $139,000 state job for her husband as “assistant commissioner” of education. The state paid $81,000 to move them to Alaska in 2019.

On Sunday, Tshibaka attacked Sen. Lisa Murkowski and quoted her out of context, claiming “It’s obvious she is not interested in putting forth the hard work to give our state a better future.” Tshibaka called her “Lazy Lisa.”

Any honest person who has been in Alaska 15 minutes knows that Murkowski is a lot of things, but lazy she is not.

In Tshibaka’s long work history inside the federal bureaucracy there is a disturbing incident that deserves public examination, especially now that she has chosen to attack Murkowski’s work ethic as part of her campaign for the U.S. Senate.

In 2011, an investigation by the inspector general of the National Reconnaissance Office alleged that between 2008 and 2011 Tshibaka falsified her federal work records and claimed that she worked 596 hours that she should not have been paid for.

The disputed hours included comp time claims, unexplained absences during the day, inappropriately charging hours to excused absences when she was already on leave and when there was an early dismissal for federal holidays. At her pay grade, the hours cost the government $36,000.

At that time Tshibaka worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where she served in the Office of Inspector General. From 2005 to 2011, she was an advisor to the inspector general in the intelligence community.

Her resume summarizes her time in that office this way:

What her resume does not explain is why she left that job in September 2011 to become a “special advisor” in the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Transparency in the office of the intelligence director.

I first wrote about the federal investigation that preceded her transfer a year ago.

The investigation into her work habits began early in 2011 when a co-worker in the Office of Inspector General said that based on a routine review of comp time and overtime charges in the inspector general’s office, Tshibaka appeared to be taking an excessive amount of comp time for hours she didn’t work.

The co-worker based this on “personal observations” about Tshibaka, asserting she did not show up early or stay late.

The first review found that, judging by ingress/egress records from October 2009 to October 2010, Tshibaka was not in the office for 215 hours she claimed to have been there.

At that point, Tshibaka’s office recused itself from the matter.

In February, the ODNI inspector general asked the National Reconnaissance Office inspector general to look into the complaints to “avoid any question of partiality,” NRO Inspector General Lanie D’Alessandro wrote on June 29., 2011. The people Tshibaka worked with did not investigate her.

The National Reconnaissance Office inspector general report on Tshibaka’s case, with her name and nearly every other name redacted, was released to the public in 2018 after a Freedom of Information request.

Despite the redactions, there is no doubt the investigation was of Tshibaka.

She told friends that August she had been investigated because of allegations that she had falsified time and attendance reports. The unredacted details about work history, job titles and the timeline match Tshibaka’s.

Plus, it appears that whoever redacted the document failed to do so thoroughly, as a Google search for the terms “Tshibaka” and “NRO” leads to results that include this link to the redacted June 29, 2011 investigation.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute, but forwarded the case for possible disciplinary action.

Tshibaka wrote to her friends six weeks after the June 29 memo to say, “I have been completely exonerated!!!”

She said she was vindicated and “offered the choice to work anywhere else in my agency.” She said the Lord “delivered me from the toxic work environment in which I had been working.”

She said her supervisors did not agree with the investigation at all.

She said she had been “falsely accused by a ‘friend’” and that the NRO investigation had concluded she was guilty before considering her evidence. Tshibaka wrote that the five months of the investigation had been the “worst of our lives.”

In September, she wrote on her blog that she had been vindicated and given the job she wanted.

Tshibaka said the investigation had been finished “without receiving my exculpatory evidence and concluded I was guilty.”

But her claim doesn’t match the text of the report by the NRO inspector general.

She submitted an affidavit saying that most of the 596 questioned hours were those during which she worked remotely. She her supervisor approved her working remotely 20 hours a month, but the inspector general said her supervisors did not substantiate that statement.

The investigation mentions interviews with Tshibaka in the presence of her attorney and evidence that she provided during questioning. She referred to “37 days of badge machine errors” and said she had taken comp time for physical fitness activities no more than 7 times, a lower number than she had given in an earlier interview.

The NRO inspector general said her “supervisors were unable to substantiate all of the compensatory hours for which she claimed to have received approval to work outside the office.”

At the time of the investigation, Tshibaka and her husband were co-pastors of the Mount Vernon Foursquare Fellowship in Washington and had three small children.

A 2015 article about Tshibaka said, "Kelly feels her leading assignment is to pastor people at the agency where she works.”

“Though emphasizing she avoids being obnoxious, she is still vocal about her Christian identity while at work. That includes leading discipleship groups at work, reading the Bible and discipling people,” the Foursquare church article said.

In 2011, the NRO investigators asked her how much time she spent on Bible studies, Agency Christian Fellowship and meeting or praying with friends in the cafeteria or elsewhere. “We’re allowed to talk to people,” the report quoted her as saying.

“She had no idea how much time she spent a week in these activities,” the report said.

The 596 disputed hours did not include the unknown amount of time during office hours that she spent on Bible studies, conducting interviews for a book and other church activities. There were dozens of personal folders and documents about her church activities on her Agnecy Internet Network. She said at first she did 20 interviews for her book, a project she never finished, and later revised that number to 11, conducted over five months.

The investigation concluded that from March 2008 to February 2011, she claimed 596 hours for which she should not have been paid. This did not include the 25 work days in which she had received the OK to work at home.

When Tshibaka received phone calls at home, she was tracking the time to count as comp time, the report said. She also went running at the end of the work day at times and charged that as comp time, though a person who appears to have been her supervisor said he was not aware that she was doing either of those things. He also said he was not aware that she had taken excused absences for physical fitness activities.

The Office of Inspector General briefed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia on May 17, 2011, but that office “declined prosecution in favor of agency administrative action.”

The inspector general recommended that the chief management officer of the national intelligence agency “review the facts of this case and determine any appropriate disciplinary action.”

Tshibaka’s transfer took place shortly after the report recommending “administrative action” was completed.

Tshibaka’s campaign should release the administrative findings that led to her 2011 federal job transfer. That’s one way of confirming whether she was exonerated or if the specifics detailed in the report were accurate.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673