(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is blasting the U.S. Postal Service over a whistleblower’s claims that a registered sex offender got a job as a letter carrier, even though he revealed his status on the application. Grassley says the postal service has refused his request for a list of letter carriers who are registered sex offenders, and he can’t say yet how many there are, or if any of them may be in Iowa.

“No, we haven’t got the list yet, and my speech yesterday made it clear how idiotic their reasoning is for not giving us a list,” Grassley says, “and maybe they will end up giving us a list.” Congress is entitled to the information, Grassley says, but postal officials won’t supply the employee list, saying: “They have a personal privacy interest in protecting the fact that their name appears on a sex offender registry.”

Grassley says, “They don’t have any reason to withhold the list, but we don’t have any of that information at this point.” He says the investigators on his staff asked the postal service for a list of all letter carriers on the payroll, to which the reply was: “Current employees’ names, titles and duty stations are generally considered to be public information and releasable,” but then refused to provide the information. Grassley says it’s infuriating and calls the situation “a disgrace.”

“Isn’t it odd that you make an application for a job and you say you’re on the registered sex offender list and you still get the job?” Grassley says. “We asked, are they delivering mail near schools, homes, places where young people are, and they don’t seem to have that concern.”

Grassley says the whistleblower told his office, once the Postal Service figured out what happened, the employee was placed on paid leave. He says, “our communities deserve much better.”