Ed Parkin on Mike Rinder

Mike Rinder was extremely arrogant. He was a nasty, nasty person to work with. One experience that I encountered with him in my Legal Branch was, we’d had an impromptu meeting around one of the preparations tables and he was asking questions. He was talking, and then suddenly, he launched physically across the table and lunged at another person to whom he was speaking and started screaming and shouting at him to his face, while he grabbed his shirt in front of him like that. And that is, that conduct is completely antithetical to what we stand for. And, in fact, Mike Rinder’s doing that is the only time or the last time that I’ve seen anybody do that.

Mike Rinder had the art of hiding behind others who would do hard work, while he himself did none. That’s how he was able to exist around here. Others around him did generate competence, were competent, were good at what they, what they did, and he hid behind their work.

I can tell you, my wife was his communicator for a number of years, and she would do work for him in the office, just outside of his office, would turn around and see him fast asleep, but in such a way that it looked like he was working at his computer, but he would actually be asleep. When those around him were doing the work, he would be off to the side, out of the limelight, but actually asleep, making it appear that he was doing some work, when he actually wasn’t. It’s just part of his dishonest make-up. The man was a dishonest individual. And because others around him worked hard and worked exactly on policy, he would then use that to his own advantage to make it appear that he was successful and he was worth keeping.

I hold him in the greatest contempt. There is nothing decent about that individual from the head to the toe. Nothing.