Report: Millions Wasted on Government Travel
From AP via the Raleigh News Observer
Excerpt: Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say.
A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees.

The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or their employees, worth at least $146 million, was unauthorized or otherwise unjustified.

Among the worst offenders: the State Department, whose employees typically fly abroad on official business.

Many of the cases involved high-ranking senior officials or political appointees who claimed exceptions to federal travel rules by citing old medical records or questionable approval from a subordinate employee.

Investigators found that senior officials often flew business- or first-class because they felt entitled to the perk. Report: Millions Wasted on Government Travel

Labels: agency, spending

US agencies disobey 6 laws that president challenged
From the Boston Globe
Excerpt: Federal officials have disobeyed at least six new laws that President Bush challenged in his signing statements, a government study disclosed yesterday. The report provides the first evidence that the government may have acted on claims by Bush that he can set aside laws under his executive powers.

...

Bush's signing statements have drawn fire because he has used them to challenge more than 1,100 sections of bills -- more than all previous presidents combined. The sample the GAO studied represents a small portion of the laws Bush has targeted, but its report concluded that sometimes the government has gone on to disobey those laws.

For example, one law requires the Customs and Border Patrol to relocate its illegal immigrant checkpoints near Tucson every seven days to prevent smugglers from being able to predict where they are, but the agency failed to do so. The border patrol told the GAO that the law is flawed because it "diverts resources," and it characterized the requirement as "advisory."

In his signing statement of Oct. 18, 2005, Bush instructed the border patrol to view the "relocation provision as advisory rather than mandatory" on the assertion that only the president has the constitutional authority to decide how to deploy law enforcement officers.
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Labels: agency, bush, immigration

Contracting head illegally political
From USA Today
Excerpt: The head of the main federal contracting agency, a longtime GOP supporter, should be "punished to the fullest extent" for violating a ban on political advocacy on government time, a watchdog agency concluded.

The Office of Special Counsel, in a letter to President Bush released late Monday, said General Services Administrator Lurita Doan engaged in "the most pernicious of political activity" banned by the 1939 Hatch Act when she asked, at a meeting of General Services Administration political appointees, how they could help Republican candidates.

Doan‘s attorney, in a June 1 response to Bloch also released Monday, rejected the office‘s conclusions, saying Doan was only peripherally involved in the January 26 PowerPoint presentation by a senior White House political adviser at GSA headquarters on helping Republicans in coming elections.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said they had received the Bloch letter and it was under review. The White House previously acknowledged conducting about 20 meetings over the past several years for federal employees on GOP election prospects while insisting that such informational briefings are neither unlawful nor unusual.
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Labels: agency, corruption, politics

Bush Administration Fights Mad Cow Testing
From AP via the Witchita Eagle
Excerpt: The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Labels: agency, bush, health

DEA teaches meth-cooking 101
From the Denver Post
Excerpt: Cooking methamphetamine takes only a few hours and requires simple household ingredients, like striker plates from matchbooks, the guts of lithium batteries, drain cleaner.

"It's pretty gross," said Matt Leland, who works in career services at the University of Northern Colorado and who recently helped cook the drug in a lab. "If someone was truly interested in manufacturing meth, it would not be that hard."

The Drug Enforcement Administration invited Leland and other citizens - such as software engineers, a teacher, a pastor and a school principal - to make methamphetamine last week in a lab at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

"At first, I thought, 'Man, I cannot believe they showed us how to do

Scott Grabendike listens to DEA chemists, who try to keep up with the latest changes in meth production so they can testify against makers of the illegal drug. it.' But you can find the recipe on the Internet," Leland said. "It just goes to show anybody who really wants to do it probably could."
The class was held as part of the DEA's first Citizens Academy in order to give the public a close-up view of what the agency does to keep drugs off the street.

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Labels: agency, DEA, War on Drugs

I.R.S. Agents Feel Pressed to End Cases
From the New York Times
Excerpt: The head of the Internal Revenue Service faces questions in Congress today about auditors’ complaints that they are being forced to close corporate cases prematurely, allowing billions in tax dollars to go unpaid.

In interviews, these revenue agents warned that unless they were free to pursue what their instincts tell them, their focus would end up being only on known abuses, and new ones created by the tax advice industry would go undetected.

The agency countered that it had increased the number of companies whose tax returns it examined by a fourth since 2001, even though the number of auditors was virtually the same.

Agency officials said this was accomplished by cutting back slightly on audits of the very largest companies, which produce more than 80 percent of all corporate profits, while increasing audits of those with assets of $10 million to $250 million. At the same time, the officials say, they have shortened the average time to complete an audit from almost two years in 2001 to less than 18 months last year.

I.R.S. officials say the auditors who are complaining are mostly older agents unwilling to adopt new approaches.

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Labels: agency, irs

FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug
Cattle Antibiotic Moves Forward Despite Fears of Human Risk
From the Washington Post

Excerpt: The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.

The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.

The American Medical Association and about a dozen other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals would probably speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotics, as has happened with other drugs. Those super-microbes could then spread to people.

Echoing those concerns, the FDA's advisory board last fall voted to reject the request by InterVet Inc. of Millsboro, Del., to market the drug for cattle.

Yet by all indications, the FDA will approve cefquinome this spring. That outcome is all but required, officials said, by a recently implemented "guidance document" that codifies how to weigh the threats to human health posed by proposed new animal drugs.
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Labels: agency, FDA, health

FDA Budget Malnourished
From the Los Angeles Times
Excerpt: WASHINGTON — When scientific advisors urged the Food and Drug Administration in February to put a strong warning about suspected cardiovascular risks on attention-deficit drugs taken by millions of children and adults, agency officials said more clinical evidence was needed.

Now, the FDA-funded study meant to authoritatively answer questions about the drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder may be halted in midstream. The reason: The agency doesn't have the money to finish it.

The threat to the study, as revealed in documents and interviews, stems from chronic shortchanging of the nation's drug safety program. It is one symptom of a federal agency increasingly constrained by a budget that has failed to keep up with costs. This crunch is even more dire in the food division, which tries to keep tainted foodstuffs from supermarket shelves.

Even as concerns grow, the agency has budgeted only $1.6 million for such safety studies of medications already on the market, and that number is scheduled to drop to $900,000 in the coming year. Outside experts estimate that the agency needs $20 million to $100 million a year to conduct such studies.

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Labels: agency, drug safety, FDA, food, health

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon. ...

...O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

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Labels: agency, bush, corruption, CPA, gop, iraq, reconstruction

Inner Circle Taking More of C.D.C. Bonuses
From the New York Times
Excerpt: Top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received premium bonuses in recent years at the expense of scientists and others who perform much of the agency's scientific work, agency records show. Those inside the office of the centers' director, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, have benefited the most, the records show....

From 2002 through mid-2006, William H. Gimson III, the agency's chief operating officer, received bonuses totaling $147,863, which included seven cash awards of more than $2,500. Mr. Gimson's bonuses were about twice the amount granted to any other C.D.C. employee, the agency's records show...

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Labels: agency, CDC, health

ATF Director Resigns Amid Spending Probe
From
Excerpt: The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced his resignation yesterday, six months after the launch of an internal investigation into questionable spending on a new headquarters and other items during his tenure.

Carl J. Truscott, a 22-year veteran of the Secret Service who took over as ATF chief in 2004, was under fire for his spending and management practices at a time when the agency was considering sharp cuts in the number of new cars, bulletproof vests and other basics it provides agents. ...

...Sources familiar with the project told The Washington Post earlier this year that Truscott planned to buy, among other things, nearly $300,000 in extras for the new director's suite, including a $65,000 conference table and more than $100,000 worth of hardwood floors, custom trim and other items.

These sources described Truscott as overly focused on the building's details, from soap dishes to tile colors, and said he wasted valuable time with innumerable project meetings and field trips to the site.

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Labels: agency, atf, corruption, spending

Report: IRS to Cut Audits on Wealthiest
From UPI
Excerpt: The Bush administration plans to cut nearly in half the number of auditors who review tax returns of some of the wealthiest U.S. taxpayers.

Plans call for eliminating 157 of the Internal Revenue Service's 345 estate tax lawyers, The New York Times reported. The cuts will affect audits of taxpayers who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer assets to their children and others, the newspaper said.

IRS Deputy Commissioner Kevin Brown told the Times he ordered the staff cuts because the number of Americans who are subject to the estate tax has fallen under the Bush administration.

However, six IRS estate tax lawyers whose jobs are at risk told the newspaper the cuts are part of a behind-the-scenes move at the IRS to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.

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Labels: agency, bush, irs

CIA Disbands Unit Set Up to Hunt for Bin Laden
From Reuters via ABC News
Excerpt: The CIA has disbanded a unit set up in the 1990s to oversee the spy agency's hunt for Osama bin Laden and transferred its duties to broader operations that track Islamist militant groups, a U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday.

The bin Laden unit, codenamed Alec Station, became less valuable as a separate operation as counterterrorism operations eliminated top al Qaeda operatives and the movement's focus shifted more to regional networks of militants, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.


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Labels: agency, bin Laden, CIA

Security issue kills domestic spying inquiry
From MSNBC
Excerpt: The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program. ...

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NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
From USA Today
Excerpt: The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews...
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Labels: agency, NSA, privacy

Ex-official's firm receiving VA fees
From the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
Excerpt: A California company headed by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi could get fees exceeding $1 billion from the Veterans Affairs, much of it on contracts approved and amended while he ran the agency, records show. ...
...During his tenure as VA secretary, Principi's past and future corporate home in Diamond Bar, Calif., collected about $246 million in fees, according to VA records. And Congressional Budget Office projections show that the VA contracts could be worth as much as $1.2 billion to QTC if fully funded by Congress through 2008.

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From the Contra Costa Times: A QTC hearing exam, for instance, averaged $495.55 compared to $89.80 for an in-house exam. Even with an adjustment for possible hidden VA costs, the difference exceeded 400 percent. For a general medical exam, QTC's average cost was $393.52 compared to a VA average of $225.58, the consultants found...
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Labels: agency, contractors, corruption, spending, veterans

FDA Tries to Limit Drug Suits in State Courts
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: People who believe they were injured by drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration should not be allowed to sue drug companies in state courts, the agency said yesterday in a formal policy statement. ...
... "It's a typical abuse by the Bush Administration -- take a regulation to improve the information that doctors and patients receive about prescription drugs and turn it into a protection against liability for the drug industry," he said in a statement.

The Bush administration has intervened in a number of state liability cases against drug and medical device manufacturers with friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the companies. Yesterday's policy statement was just a way to make the same points on a broad and general basis, Gottlieb said. More

Labels: agency, bush, FDA, health, law

Chertoff Delayed Federal Response
From Knight-Ridder via PA Times Leader
Excerpt: The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show... More

Labels: agency, FEMA, katrina

FAA Manager Destroyed 9/11 Tape
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: "Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by Federal Aviation Administration managers...
...Instead, the second manager said he destroyed the tape between December 2001 and January 2002 by crushing the tape with his hand, cutting it into small pieces and depositing the pieces into trash cans around the building, the report said."
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Labels: agency, FAA, September 11

CIA team traveled Italy in style
From the Chicago Tribune
Excerpt: When the CIA decides to "render" a terrorism suspect living abroad for interrogation in Egypt or another friendly Middle East nation, it spares no expense.
...
First to arrive in Milan was the surveillance team, and the hotels they chose were among the best Europe has to offer. Especially popular was the gilt-and-crystal Principe di Savoia, with acres of burnished wood paneling and plush carpets, where a single room costs $588 a night, a club sandwich goes for $28.75 and a Diet Coke adds another $9.35.

According to hotel records obtained by the Milan police investigating Abu Omar's disappearance, two CIA operatives managed to ring up more than $9,000 in room charges alone. The CIA's bill at the Principe for seven operatives came to $39,995, not counting meals, parking and other hotel services.

Another group of seven operatives spent $40,098 on room charges at the Westin Palace, a five-star hotel across the Piazza della Repubblica from the Principe, where a club sandwich is only $20.

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Also see:

Covert CIA program is expanding despite furor
From the Houston Chronicle

Labels: agency, CIA, spending

EPA Looking at Using Tests on People
From the Associated Press
Excerpt: In setting limits on chemicals in food and water, the Environmental Protection Agency may rely on industry tests that expose people to poisons and raise ethical questions.
The new policy, which the EPA is still developing, would allow Bush administration political appointees to referee any ethical disputes. Agency officials are putting the finishing touches on a plan to take a case-by-case approach. ...

... Citing ethical concerns, EPA earlier this month also temporarily suspended a planned government study into how children's bodies absorb pesticides and other chemicals.

EPA scientists and environmentalists said the two-year study, with $2 million in backing from a chemical makers' trade group, might encourage poor families to use more pesticides. Families that participated were to get $970 each plus a camcorder and children's clothes.
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Labels: agency, EPA, health

Bush Battles over Sick Workers
From the Associated Press
Excerpt: The Bush administration is locked in a rare election-year fight with fellow Republicans in the Senate over a troubled program for tens of thousands of weapons plant workers who got sick building nuclear bombs.

The lawmakers say they don’t understand why the administration is blocking a Senate-passed amendment to the defense bill that would overhaul a compensation program bogged down by delays and other problems.

"I can’t fully understand what their resistance is," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is in a tough re-election battle in Alaska. "We’ve been hammered by our constituents.”...

..."These people are sick and dying," said Terrie Barrie of Craig, Colo., whose husband was sickened while working at the former Rocky Flats plant near Denver. "The administration, the Department of Energy, is just refusing to listen." ...
...The lawmakers complain the Energy Department has squandered much of the $95 million it received since Congress created the program. As of the end of July, the agency has paid only 31 claims out of about 25,000 filed. The $700,000 in paid claims amounts to an average benefit of roughly $22,500... More

Labels: agency, bush, DOE, health, spending