The Comeback Trail

hris Ross wanted to help the federal government respond to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A retired career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Algeria and Syria, Ross speaks excellent Arabic. So when the FBI put out a call for Arabic translators last fall, Ross went on the Internet and applied to be a contract linguist for the bureau.

He didn't hear back from the FBI. But he did get a call from officials at his old agency, the State Department. Through a special authority that lets agencies rehire retirees, Ross became the main face of American diplomacy on Al-Jazeera and other Arab television networks, responding to al Qaeda statements and explaining U.S. policy to the Arab world.

"After Sept. 11, the State Department decided it needed to beef up its defense of American policy in the foreign media, particularly in Arabic language media," he says. "They needed to find people who speak Arabic well enough to appear on Arab television. So they cast about and found me in retirement."

Ross isn't the only retired fed who has come back to work for Uncle Sam since Sept. 11. The State Department, the FBI, the CIA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Defense Department and other agencies have re-hired hundreds of retirees over the last year. Twenty percent more retirees are back at work for Uncle Sam today than before Sept. 11. At Defense, for example, 697 rehired retirees were on the job on Sept. 10, 2001. As of Sept. 30, 2002, 984 were back.

The retirees bring with them decades of experience. They don't need training, so they can go to work on problems immediately. They often have skills that are in short supply in the workforce. For example, strong Arabic speakers were few and far between at State when Ross returned.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are near retirement age, starting to think about life after government. If you got a call from your old agency to return from retirement, would you heed it?

RETURN TO SENDER

Federal law actually discourages retirees from coming back to work for the government. Under normal circumstances, the law requires agencies to deduct the value of retirees' pensions from their salaries. The "dual compensation" penalty prevents hordes of workers in government from retiring as soon as they are eligible, starting to collect their pensions and then getting rehired in their old jobs and "double dipping" by taking home both their salaries and pensions. As a result, most federal employees work beyond the point they become eligible to retire and most retirees don't come back to work as federal employees.

But in times of trouble, the law lets agencies bring back retirees without docking their pensions or salaries. Agencies can waive the dual compensation penalty if they are having extreme problems filling critical positions-such as when they needed COBOL computer programmers for the Y2K technology problem-or when they are facing an emergency, such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Office of Personnel Management oversees such waivers, making sure agencies don't abuse them.

Thanks to the waivers, retirees are pitching in across government in the fight against terrorism. Retired law enforcement officers are helping train air marshals. Intelligence and language specialists have rejoined the Defense Department. A few hundred retirees from the Central Intelligence Agency have been called back to jobs similar to the ones they held when they were active employees.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has been using retirees for several years to help meet its goal of recruiting 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents each year since 1996. The agency also has used retirees to help with its numerous reorganization plans.

The INS caught some public flak this summer after lawmakers and OPM officials questioned the service's extensive use of rehired retirees. In 1996, OPM gave the INS special authority to bring back retirees without docking their salaries. But lawmakers tallied up the salaries and pensions of some of the reemployed annuitants and found they were making more than $200,000 a year.

OPM asked the Justice Department to clamp down on the INS, so Justice has put it and other agencies within the department under heavier scrutiny. FBI officials, in fact, declined to comment for this column because of the heat generated by the INS controversy.

Despite the problem at INS, most federal officials say re-employed annuitants are a great asset, albeit one they can use only on a limited basis.

DOUBLE STANDARD

When it comes to re-employed annuitants, the law isn't exactly consistent. At the State Department, for example, retired Foreign Service officers are allowed to come back to work for the government without taking a financial hit, even in nonemergency situations. They are, however, limited to working only six months a year, and State puts them to use only on projects that require firsthand knowledge of past events, such as processing requests under the Freedom of Information Act, or that require special skills, such as speaking fluent Arabic.

Similarly, military retirees can collect their pensions and work as federal employees with no major penalty. In 1999, Congress eliminated the dual compensation restrictions on highly paid retired military officers working for the government. The lack of restrictions makes post-retirement federal employment much more attractive to military retirees than to civilian retirees. Some 79,474 military retirees are working as federal employees, compared with 3,373 civilian retirees, according to June statistics from OPM.

Unless there's an emergency situation, federal civilian retirees have to be hired as contractors to avoid the dual compensation limits. Some federal officials say hiring civilian retirees as contractors is more expensive than it would be to treat them like military retirees or Foreign Service officers. Retirees typically work under the auspices of private firms that charge fees for their services, and the administrative costs of setting up such contracts is higher than the cost of reactivating a retiree as an employee.

The State Department, for one, would like to see the rules change for civil service retirees. "Retirees can hit the deck running," says Linda Taglialatela, State's deputy assistant secretary for human resources. "We would certainly like greater flexibility."

But the rules are unlikely to change any time soon. In the grand scheme of 1.8 million federal retirees, few go back to work for Uncle Sam. And the issue of appearances means few politicians take an interest in the subject. Allowing many more retired civilians to collect their pensions and federal salaries could cause a minor scandal.

Because of the financial disincentive, the number of reemployed annuitants is likely to stay low. But for retirees who do return to government, the rewards are more than financial. They get to contribute to the nation's well-being again, without the worries of office politics. "You're not caught up in the considerations of what's good for your career that people in active duty get caught up in," says Ross.