MEMORANDUM To: Officers and Directors; Dan Henderson (CONFIDENTIAL) From: Chris Imlay Re: Update on Laura Smith and FCC Special Counsel Position Date: January 21, 2009 Greetings. Yesterday, we heard that Laura Smith had informally started work at FCC Gettysburg. Today, she apparently has formally started work. We are preparing an announcement for release at the appropriate time, which will hopefully itself re-create some of the deterrence value of finally having a Riley replacement in the chair. Attempts to reach her failed yesterday, but we were able to call her at FCC Gettysburg this morning. We had a pleasant, though relatively short conversation, and renewed our prior acquaintance through participation in the Land Mobile Communications Council meetings in Washington. The reason the conversation was short was that she can’t really say (or do) much, apparently, until her meeting with Kris Monteith, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau, which is scheduled for next week. She said that Kris was busy with cleanup items due to Martin’s departure from FCC (which must be like shoveling out a horse barn), and=2 0that is the reason for the delay in the meeting. There will not be a news release from FCC until that meeting occurs, apparently. I asked Laura for a quote for ARRL to work into the story (for release at the proper time) but she apologetically said that she couldn’t really do that until her meeting with Monteith next week. She was in the meantime familiarizing herself with the backlog of Amateur enforcement items that were pending when, and after, Riley left. She is also meeting with Riley in Gettysburg on Friday, in order to get some teaching time from the master about the program. I told her that we were very much looking forward to: (a) having her visit ARRL headquarters at an early date in order to introduce the people at headquarters who had worked closely with Riley in the past, and (b) assisting her, as the organization that speaks for Amateur Radio, by use our information dissemination methods to re-create the deterrence value of her presence, which was developed by and worked so well for Riley. She understands that we want to splash the press with her appointment as soon as possible, hopefully in advance of other media, and at least contemporaneously with the FCC news release about the appointment. Finally, I told her that if her visit to ARRL Headquarters was to be delayed for any reason, it would be good to have a chance to visit with her in Gettysburg at her early convenience, and she agreed. 0 What she said last was unsettling, however, and the principal reason for this memo. In the course of our discussion about deterrence, she said that Amateur enforcement had been “moved to the field” and would be headed up by Mike Moffitt, the FCC Regional Director for the Northeast Region. She said that she would be “reporting to Mike Moffitt” and he would be “overseeing the entire thing”. I asked what she meant, and indicated my surprise at hearing this. She said that what Riley really did was to work with the field offices. Riley would do jawbone letters and gather information, but if his informal contacts with rule violators were not sufficient to resolve an enforcement matter, then the field offices would get the case and work it from there. She billed this as a good thing, because she said that the field offices are not as regulated in what they could do as are the “headquarters” staff (by which she apparently meant both Washington and Gettysburg). She said that she would be “reporting” to Mike Moffitt. Though Moffitt is the Northeast Regional Director, he is nonetheless apparently heading the Amateur enforcement effort nationwide. I don’t know him at all. This is neither good nor bad necessarily, but it is surely at variance with what Kris Monteith told me during our meeting in early December; she indicated that Riley9s replacement would be a “one-for-one” replacement. Now, it seems, there is some variation on that theme; perhaps not operationally from our perspective, but this potentially creates a barrier between the FCC decisionmaker on our issues, and ARRL staff. Or, perhaps, we will have a facilitator in Laura Smith. We will have to see how this plays out. Perhaps after Riley meets with Laura on Friday, we will be able to have a clearer picture of the organizational plans. She is a very pleasant person to talk to, and we will continue to hope for the best. More when we know it. 73, Chris W3KD Christopher D. Imlay BOOTH, FRERET, IMLAY & TEPPER, P.C. 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD@ARRL.ORG