I spoke twice today to Richard R. Hine, the assistant attorney general who recently reported that his boss, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, had lied to him about his military service.

I didn't reach Hine Wednesday night while working on a story about the two times he was suspended from his duties in 1993 and 1995 for what his superiors said was misconduct on the job. But I was calling a home phone listing that Hine doesn't use; he reached out this morning on his cell phone, and discussed his tenure at the attorney general's office at length.

Hine concedes that the second of his suspensions, a three-week unpaid leave in 1995, occurred in part because he was battling a prescription drug addiction. That started, he said, after he injured his knee in his office, becoming entangled in a phone cord, falling and slamming the knee onto a metal drawer pull, so hard he says he screamed and then threw up from the pain.

Hine says he was compelled to keep working through the injury by his superiors at the attorney general's office.

"I freely admit I overused prescription drugs," Hine said, "and they were also making me work."

He says he remains in significant physical pain and will eventually need a knee replacement, but has been off prescription pain killers since entering treatment after the 1995 incident.

"They tried to fire me and I fought them," he said of the two disciplinary scrapes, which are described in memos obtained Wednesday by The Day from the Office of the Attorney General, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. "There was no question that they were trying to get rid of me."

Among the complaints laid out in the documents, which can be viewed in full as a pdf attachment on Thursday's story (here), are allegations that Hine was absent from the office during work hours, misused state phones and improperly used his attorney general's business cards during the period in which he said he was struggling with prescription drugs.

In the 1993 incident, Hine's superiors charged that he had been lax in preparing for cases, including instances where he failed to properly depose or interview witnesses before trials in which he was defending the state, did not secure or fully prepare expert witnesses, and on at least one occasion needed another attorney to step in to complete one of his cases.

One of the cases cited in the memo stemmed from the 1989 murder, by an escaped state mental patient, of nine-year-old Jessica Short, whose parents eventually sued the state for negligence in allowing the murder to wander off.

Hine, who was representing the state and said he was working closely with Blumenthal at the time, said he had successfully negotiated key details of the suit with an attorney for Short's family, but was called to boot camp at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Trouble with his superiors started after other attorneys took over the case and took a different strategy with the case, questioning Hine's decisions, he said, while Hine was in North Carolina training and waiting to hear if he would be deployed abroad to the Gulf. (He was not deployed.)

After numerous discussions with an attorney from the plaintiffs and with his colleagues in the attorney general's office, he said, "I told them to get (expletive) bent," Hine said Thursday.

In a 1993 memo, a superior charges that one month before the trial, Hine had failed to depose any of the plaintiff's witnesses, secure an expert to testify on behalf of the state, and to raise "through appropriate pleadings, legal claims which could ... limit the issues in the case."

After Hine's first two-week unpaid leave, he was transferred to the Workers Compensation unit, and Hine said he has had limited contact with Blumenthal ever since. Hine works outside the office, taking depositions, making visits and appearing in court, most days of the week, and said he sees Blumenthal only rarely.

"I don't owe him anything," Hine said. "I've had no contact with him since I went to workers' comp. My contact with him is seeing him in the hallway, and he doesn't even recognize me."

But Hine said the two disciplinary actions shouldn't overshadow the work he has done since then in the attorney general's workers compensation and labor unit. Despite being forced out on leave two times, Hine was later promoted and has remained an assistant attorney general for 15 years.

"If I'm an idiot, why'd you promote me?" he said. "And why'd you keep me on the job?"

Hine also said he believed staff at the attorney general's office might have violated internal office policy when they responded to The Day's document request without giving notice to him, or conducting a longer review of the material provided.

But that account is disputed by a spokesman for the office.

"The policy of the Office of the Attorney General with respect to the release of public documents is to comply with the Freedom of Information Act," said a statement provided by Blumenthal's press office. "Consistent with FOIA, our policy has always been immediate disclosure of requested documents when they are readily available. In some cases, such production may take minutes. In some cases, days or weeks may be required to review extensive documents to protect against the release of confidential financial, health and other statutorily protected information."

Meanwhile, Hine is sticking by his story that Blumenthal lied about having served in Vietnam, a statement Hine says the attorney general made to him in a private conversation in 1991, when he was worried that he would be called up from the Marine Reserves to serve in Operation Desert Storm. At the time, Hine said, his marriage was failing, and he feared the effect that his deployment to the Middle East would have on his daughter.

In a letter sent to several Connecticut media outlets, and later obtained by The Day, Hine said he had kept silent for years about Blumenthal's allegedly remarking that he had served in Vietnam out of gratitude for the attorney general's gesture to him and his family.

But after Blumenthal's U.S. Senate campaign was rocked by a scandal over videotaped remarks in which Blumenthal states falsely that he had served "in Vietnam," Hine said he was disgusted by what seemed to be an insufficient apology and explanation from the attorney general.

"They can do whatever they want, I'm not moving," he said. "I do not think that he should be in any higher office or this office. Why? One, because he has a serious character flaw and two, he's a situational liar."