Longtime Director of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs, Nikolao Pula of American Samoa was reportedly forced out of his job recently, after President Biden didn’t nominate Pula to be OIA Assistant Secretary.
KHJ News Washington DC correspondent Matt Kaye reports…
Pula had been with OIA for some three-decades, dealing with numerous US island issues and relations with island states as Director, for much of that time.
But Pula’s long and respected career came to an unceremonious end in July, knowledgeable sources say, after he opposed President Biden’s nomination of Carmen Cantor of Puerto Rico as Assistant Secretary.
Pula the sources say, requested to work remotely or as a consultant to OIA from his new home in Montana, instead of in DC.
But the request was denied after Pula wrote what the sources describe as, an angry email complaining he was passed over for Assistant Secretary.
The letter was copied to Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, though it’s unclear who effectively forced Pula out. But the tone of the November email is seen as the reason for his departure.
Those with knowledge of the letter say Pula wrote ‘we had one Puerto Rican and it was a disaster, and we don’t need another Puerto Rican’–apparently referring to Trump OIA head, Doug Domenech.
And while Pula may have had a point that Puerto Rico is not under OIA’s jurisdiction, the email didn’t say that.
OIA officials were not immediately available to comment.
But one source says, Pula’s opposing a nominee to head the very agency he was working in may be unprecedented…and those who saw the email felt Pula must have had a ‘political death wish.’
What’s surprising, the source says, was Pula survived from November until July. But more than that, they say, this was someone who should have “gone out the front door…but instead, went out the back door.”
Separately, the US House was on track to pass a bill by Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata and others, to expand Peace Corp funding and support for its volunteers…and require a report to Congress on expanding the Peace Corps’ presence in the Pacific islands.
Amata was a Peace Corps staffer in the 1960s and is now, Pacific Islands Caucus Co-chair.
