Former Oak Ridge Counterintellligence Chief Suing FBI Over Dismissal

Richard Lambert, who headed up the Knoxville FBI office before serving as the head of counterintelligence for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Field Office, is suing the Department of Justice and the FBI for $2.5 million, alleging that an FBI lawyer cost him his Oak Ridge job. In the lawsuit, filed April 2 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee, Lambert said he was falsely accused of violating ethics rules when he became the top counterintelligence official at the Oak Ridge Field Office upon his retirement from the FBI. Lambert retired from the FBI in 2012, took a job with DOE shortly thereafter, but left the DOE job in 2013. The lawsuit was first reported by the Knoxville News Sentinel.

He said a FBI lawyer “issued a grossly negligent and erroneous legal opinion which falsely alleged that Plaintiff was violating the criminal conflict of interest provisions,” triggering a criminal probe and stirring up rumors that he would be indicted. In particular, Lambert was accused of violating a one-year “cooling off” period for federal employees, which would have prevented him from speaking with FBI employees detailed to DOE’s Oak Ridge Field Office. “Due to the notoriety and stigma surrounding defendants’ erroneous legal opinion and its plain implication that he is a federal felon, Mr. Lambert is currently unemployed and unemployable,” Lambert said in the lawsuit, which he filed himself. Oak Ridge National Laboratory declined to comment.