WASHINGTON - A third or more of the government property Halliburton Co. was paid to manage for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq could not be located by auditors, investigative reports to Congress show. Halliburton's KBR subsidiary "did not effectively manage government property" and auditors could not locate hundreds of CPA items worth millions of dollars in Iraq and Kuwait this summer and fall, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen reported to Congress in two reports.
Bowen's findings mark the latest bad news for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, which is the focus of both a criminal investigation into alleged fuel price gouging and an FBI inquiry into possible favoritism from the Bush administration...read
Ok, in a war situation, stuff happens, but to lose a third of the total inventory..does the word incompetent come to mind?
So an SEC whistleblower contacts the agency, and is assured by the enforcement attorney working on JP Morgan that it's a "confidential" investigation. The attorney then turns around and dimes the guy out to his employers.
Where do the Republicans find these candidates? Do they vet them carefully for moral and ethical problems, and then recruit the ones who don't pass?
More importantly: Why didn't the SEC stand up for whistleblowers by throwing the book at this sleazebag? Maybe the answer lies in the description of Demos as a "politically wired" Republican attorney:
George Demos is a Republican Congressional candidate from Eastern Long Island whose Web site bears the slogan "Fighting for Freedom," and touts his service as an enforcement lawyer in the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A bio says that he "handled some of the SEC's most significant investigations," including that of Ponzi scheme artist Bernard Madoff, and "worked tirelessly on the cases that never made the headlines."
But one case that never made headlines was his own: Demos' campaign Web site and public statements omit any reference to a report last March of the SEC's Inspector General (IG), which found he had improperly disclosed protected, nonpublic information about a whistleblower to the counsel for that whistleblower's employer, a major Wall Street bank, JPMorgan Chase. The IG's charges of misconduct grew out of an SEC probe that began in 2003 of JPMorgan and other big financial institutions suspected of illegal market practices.
Demos has denied he did anything improper, and his campaign declined to comment on the matter. But documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) -- a non-partisan non-profit based in Washington -- confirm that Demos was the staff attorney who was cited in the IG report for violating SEC rules. The IG referred the case to the agency's management for possible disciplinary action, but the SEC took no action. Soon after that, Demos quietly resigned from his job and launched his bid for a seat in the House of Representatives.
But the confidential information that Demos disclosed was used by a JPMorgan lawyer against one of the bank's own employees, a whistleblower who had alerted the SEC to possible wrongdoing by his employer, according to the report and other documents, some released under the Freedom of Information Act.
WASHINGTON — A new report finds that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a poor job of screening medical experts for financial conflicts when it hired them to advise the agency on vaccine safety, officials said Thursday.
Most of the experts who served on advisory panels in 2007 to evaluate vaccines for flu and cervical cancer had potential conflicts that were never resolved, the report said. Some were legally barred from considering the issues but did so anyway.
In the report, expected to be released Friday, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, found that the centers failed nearly every time to ensure that the experts adequately filled out forms confirming they were not being paid by companies with an interest in their decisions.
The report found that 64 percent of the advisers had potential conflicts of interest that were never identified or were left unresolved by the centers. Thirteen percent failed to have an appropriate conflicts form on file at the agency at all, which should have barred their participation in the meetings entirely, Mr. Levinson found. And 3 percent voted on matters that ethics officers had already barred them from considering.
Really, it gets harder all the time to tell the Democrats from the Republicans, doesn't it?
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill Thursday that would renew portions of the USA Patriot Act in an effort to address administration concerns about protecting terrorism investigations.
But several Democrats and civil liberties advocates said the legislation would do little to strengthen privacy protections. And some Republicans said the bill, despite amendments worked out with the administration, would still unduly burden investigators.
By a vote of 11 to 8, the committee sent to the Senate floor a measure that would extend until 2013 three surveillance provisions set to expire Dec. 31. They would allow investigators to use roving wiretaps to monitor suspects who may switch cellphone numbers, to obtain business records of national security targets, and to track "lone wolves" who may be acting alone on behalf of foreign powers or terrorist groups.
The bill would also slightly tighten the legal standard for the FBI's issuing of administration subpoenas known as national security letters (NSLs), which allow the bureau to obtain phone, credit and other personal records, and which the Justice Department inspector general has said are subject to "serious misuse."
Oh, I feel much better now, knowing it will be "slightly" more difficult for the feds to abuse constitutional rights.
The Bush Administration sure had a knack for letting criminals get away with it, didn't they? They failed to stop 9/11, never caught bin Laden, and now we're learning about the total incompetence of the SEC in responding to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly missed chances to catch Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion fraud over 16 years by assigning inexperienced investigators and accepting “implausible” explanations after catching him in lies, the agency’s internal watchdog said.
At least six warnings from sources including a money manager, a “respected hedge-fund manager” and a firm that studied Madoff’s business failed to spur a “thorough and competent” probe, Inspector General H. David Kotz wrote in a summary of a report released today. Madoff, in an interview with Kotz, said even he “was astonished” when investigators failed to check trading records that would have exposed his scam.
“Despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madoff’s trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme,” Kotz wrote.
This is not only an incredible report, it plays into a larger truth about the conservative conception of regulation as a needless bother rather than a diligent effort to protect the consumer. One incredible moment, referenced above but covered in detail by Zachary Roth, shows that Madoff basically thought he was caught and the scheme had been discovered by federal regulators, only to find himself safe once again.
The agency's biggest screw up, says the summary, was the fact that examiners never verified Madoff's trading through an independent third party.
The details of that failure are more astonishing still. Madoff at one point told examiners that all his trades were cleared through his account at the Depository Trust Company (DTC), a clearing agency -- and he gave the examiners his DTC account number. At that point, Madoff told Kotz in an interview, "I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they'll call DTC and this will be over." Amazingly, the SEC never followed up with DTC. Madoff said he was "astonished."
The summary almost makes clear that the SEC's right hand didn't know what the left was doing. It notes with astonishment that at one point, two Madoff examinations were going on at the same time within the agency, without either being aware of the other. It was Madoff himself who informed one team of the other's existence [...]
The final, failed Madoff investigation of 2006 -- triggered by a detailed Markopolos complaint -- was perhaps the most egregious. According to the summary, most of the investigative work was done by a staff attorney "who recently graduated from law school and only joined the SEC nineteen months before she was given the Madoff investigation. She had never previously been the lead staff attorney on any investigation, and had been involved in very few investigations overall. The Madoff assignment was also her first real exposure to broker-dealer issues."
According to the summary, that inexperience helps explain why, when Madoff told the examiners that he got such unprecedentedly good return simply because he had a good "feel" for the market, they took that nonsensical explanation at face value.
Bush's SEC didn't bother to check up on Madoff's dealings, and they took his explanations as good enough for them, because their attitude toward regulation was "don't mess with a good thing." Indeed, the entire stock market during the Bush years was kind of operating under a false reality in its own right. Madoff was a crook, but at least an honest crook. And even he couldn't get caught.
This is not just the story of one agency's embarrassing failure. The failure lied in the theory of government, existing to make profits for cronies and lay off the connected and the powerful. The failure to catch Madoff and the failure of conservatism are essentially the same stories.
TPM Election Central: Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling. Even a Hess office manager and her husband, an Amtrak employee, donated $28,000 apiece. Hess must be exceedingly kind to its staff.
POGO Blog: According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General, Blackwater may have improperly received numerous contracts set aside for small businesses.
This isn't an especially political story, but I was nevertheless amazed by what we learned at a hearing late last week of the House Transportation Committee. We're not allowed to fly with more than a few ounces of shampoo in a carry-on, but you might be amazed at what airlines can get away with.
In startling disclosures to Congress, federal inspectors overseeing Southwest Airlines say they were repeatedly thwarted by senior government officials from reporting critical problems that compromised the safety of passengers.
Federal whistle-blowers, other federal aviation inspectors and the independent investigator for the Department of Transportation testified Thursday that problems at Southwest were far more widespread than has previously been reported.
Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel said investigators in recent months found violations at the airline in addition to the breaches last year that prompted a $10.2 million fine against the carrier. Southwest violated four different crucial safety requirements on eight occasions since December 2006, including five this year, Scovel said.... Southwest knowingly flew 46 jets that had not received required inspections for cracks in the fuselage. When the inspections were finally completed, mechanics found cracks on six of the jets. Similar cracks caused a fatal air disaster on a jet in 1988 in Hawaii.
If this were simply a story of an airline trying to cut corners, and in the process putting passengers at risk, it would be startling enough. But in this case, we're talking about federal inspectors who were pressured by their superiors to allow an airline to put passengers at risk.
State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, under scrutiny for his brother's link to the Blackwater security firm, has decided to resign, U.S. officials said on Friday. Krongard, the State Department's top investigator, has been accused by current and former subordinates of thwarting probes into waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq, including alleged arms smuggling by Blackwater.
"We thank him for his dedication to public service and wish him well in the future," State Department spokesman Gonzo Gallegos said. Read more...
With all due respect, Gonzo, we hope the door hits his hiney on the way to a full-fledged Congressional investigation.
Does anybody have a scorecard of how many Bush appointees whose understanding of how to do their job was actually the exact opposite of what everyone else understood their job to be?
Let's add another name to the wall of shame: Julie MacDonald.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found the actions were tainted by political pressure from a former senior Interior Department official.[..]
The rulings came under scrutiny last spring after an Interior Department inspector general concluded that agency scientists were being pressured to alter their findings on endangered species by Julie MacDonald, then a deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service.
MacDonald resigned her position last May.
Rahall in a statement said that MacDonald, who was a civil engineer, "should never have been allowed near the endangered species program." He called MacDonald's involvement in species protection cases over her three-year tenure as an example of "this administration's penchant for torpedoing science."[..]
Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists said the acknowledgment of seven instances of wrongdoing "does not begin to plumb the depths of what's wrong" at the wildlife agency and its implementation of the Endangered Species Act.
Most Attorneys General, upon stepping down, move to private-sector legal work. Some take on faculty positions at respected law schools. And then there’s Alberto Gonzales, arguably the worst Attorney General in U.S. history.
Since resigning in disgrace, Gonzales has retained a high-powered DC criminal-defense lawyer to represent him. Given that the U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal charges against Gonzales, it was probably a good move.
It’s reached the point at which Gonzales’ friends have had to create a legal defense fund for the embattled former AG.
Supporters of former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales have created a trust fund to help pay for his legal expenses, which are mounting in the face of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales committed perjury or improperly tampered with a congressional witness.
The establishment of a legal defense fund for the nation’s former chief law enforcement officer underscores the potential peril confronting Gonzales, who is one of a handful of attorneys general to face potential criminal charges for actions taken in office.
If criminal charges against Fredo come quickly enough, maybe he can get the special Scooter Libby get-out-of-jail-free card?
