WASHINGTON-In an effort to clear his name and to retain his personal communications services C- and F-block licenses, Quentin Breen, principal of Westel Samoa Inc. and Westel L.P., asked a Federal Communications Commission administrative law judge for a summary decision regarding his role in the PCS 2000 L.P. bidding-error.
The commission’s investigation into Breen, a former director of PCS 2000, and his suitability to be a FCC licensee was scheduled for a Feb. 10 hearing, but that proceeding was stayed Jan. 30 as a result of Breen’s petition. The other witness in this case-Anthony Easton, another former PCS 2000 principal-will not be participating following his decision Oct. 20 to “waive or forfeit his hearing rights,”which prompted Breen to petition for a summary judgment.
“As a result, the Westel parties now find themselves in the awkward position of having the burden of demonstrating that Mr. Breen did not make misrepresentations or lack candor with regard to alleged actions of Mr. Easton, which are no longer subject to being examined in this proceeding,” the companies wrote.
Westel and Breen (through citings of Breen’s past depositions in this case) say in the petition that information given by Easton to FCC auction personnel regarding the C-block Round 11 bidding error “now may be considered to be inaccurate” but through no fault of Breen’s.
The FCC has been investigating what Breen knew of an alleged attempt to cover up PCS 2000’s bidding error.
PCS 2000, now known as ClearCom L.P., was charged a penalty for its bidding error, bidding $180 million rather than $18 million for a Virginia PCS license.
Breen and Easton since have resigned from PCS 2000.
Allegations against Breen and Easton arose when a former Easton employee, Cynthia Hamilton, told the FCC’s Auction Division and General Counsel that Easton made the bidding error and submitted false documents following the discovery to make it look like the error was the commission’s fault. Hamilton said she transmitted the original Round 11 documents, which had been discarded by Easton, to the FCC in hopes that she would not be blamed for the mistake. She resigned from Easton’s company, The San Mateo Group, Jan. 23, 1996, the day after the mistake was made.
According to the petition and Breen’s depositions, Breen and Easton both were designated bidding agents for PCS 2000, with Easton performing and submitting the bids from California while consulting with Breen in Oregon.
Breen was headed to Easton’s office the day the mistake took place. The bidding error itself was discovered by Hamilton’s co-worker Ronit Milstein. In her deposition, Hamilton charged that Easton then recreated spreadsheets with the real numbers on them, faxed them to the FCC and alerted Breen and PCS 2000’s hierarchy and attorneys.
According to Breen, following his arrival at Easton’s office, “he discussed the bidding error with Mr. Easton. They also prepared PCS 2000’s bids for the next day’s Round 12.” When Breen put copies of Round 12 in the bidding records binder, he saw Round 11 documents that showed an $18 million bid for the Norfolk, Va., market, “a dollar amount inconsistent with the $180 million bid amount recorded by the FCC … In any event, Mr. Breen had no reason to doubt that the bidding spreadsheet in the binder for Round 11 was anything other than a legitimately created record of PCS 2000’s Round 11 bidding activity.”
Breen also was part of a telephone conversation the next day when it was determined that PCS 2000 would withdraw its erroneous bid, that it would ask that the penalty for the mistake be waived, that Easton and attorney Michael Sullivan would prepare the paperwork, and that PCS 2000 would acknowledge that it made the mistake. Breen agreed to be named as having the principal bidding responsibility for PCS 2000.
What the Westel paperwork seeks to accomplish is to show that Breen did not know prior to submitting bidding-mistake paperwork that Easton may have been the instigator of a cover up, and that he did not know that Hamilton may have been trying to tell him about the cover up.
“By recognizing those correlating disparities, one must come to the conclusion that Mr. Breen simply was not given enough new and precise information or evidence as to cause him to understand that Ms. Hamilton was imparting, or attempting to impart, any information of decisional significance,” Westel wrote. “Such a realization also must lead to the conclusion that, if Mr. Breen did not perceive he received information of decisional significance by virtue of his meeting with Ms. Hamilton, he could not have known he had an obligation to disclose any information to the commission, much less develop an intent to deceive through a failure to disclose.”
