Page 6 - profiles in civil service program 2018 version

journals to assist scientists and the public. Nearly all of the horticultural and
agronomic crops grown in the United States today evolved in other countries

and were brought here as the U.S. became inhabited. Today, it is an important
program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture begun around 1900. More
than 600,000 samples, all of which are documented in Official Records and

published in some 50 volumes, are available to the public. In the early days,
the process inadvertently brought to the U.S. thousands of insects and diseases
new to the U.S. For example, a fungus in elm logs imported from the

Netherlands became established in our native elm trees and has killed nearly
all elm trees East of the Mississippi River and is known as Dutch Elm
Disease. An imported bacterium from the Near East kills apple and pear trees.
An imported fungus has caused billions of dollars in losses to our cereal crops

and continues to be a major problem. To reduce losses caused by imported
diseases and insects, the Department of Agriculture now holds imported plants
in quarantine to ensure they will not harm our crops.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, received a Bachelor’s in Agriculture
Education in 1958 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant and in 1962

earned a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology. There were no wars in 1962, but there was a
draft, so I ended up in Berlin, Germany, where a wall had just been built
nd
through the middle of the city. As 2 . Lt., I was in charge of operations at
“Checkpoint Charlie,” the crossover point on the wall between East and West

Berlin. For the past six years, I have been a volunteer at the National Archives,
restoring WWI records.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

I am Edward Holland, a retired Supervisory Special Agent who was
assigned to the National Security Programs Division (NSPD), Office of
Export Enforcement (OEE), Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), U.S.

Department of Commerce. I still maintain a TS/SCI clearance. The Bureau
of Industry and Security supports U.S. national security, foreign policy and
economic interests by ensuring an effective export control and treaty
compliance system and by promoting continued U.S. strategic technology

leadership. BIS is the “tip of the spear” in the U.S. government’s efforts to
maintain the technological edge for our warfighters on future battlefields,

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