Word: contempts
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Burford herself lately became the highest-ranking official ever to be cited for contempt of Congress when she refused to hand over documents concerning the Superfund. Various news sources suggest that some of the papers may have been shredded and computer disks erased to keep them from Congress. Investigators also hope to learn why money from the Superfund, which was set up to clean up sites whose polluters cannot be identified, have only trickled out, though the EPA managed to lose $53.6 million through bookkeeping errors...
...White House, which had reacted slowly at first, moved to stanch the political damage. With EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch facing a contempt-of-Congress citation, the Administration acquiesced to a plan to give a subcommittee of the House Public Works Committee full access to toxic-waste-enforcement files that Gorsuch had refused to yield. The subcommittee agreed to follow certain safeguards when reviewing the documents so that sensitive material will not leak out. The White House had claimed that the documents subpoenaed by Congress were protected by Executive privilege, but was prodded into a "compromise" by mounting public pressure...
...Capitol Hill, members of the House Public Works Committee listened incredulously as a parade of EPA employees tried to explain why two paper shredders had suddenly turned up in the agency's hazardous-waste section just a few weeks after Gorsuch was held in contempt for refusing to yield documents from that office. Offering testimony studded with contradictions, they displayed EPA press releases titled "Second Shredder Response" and "Shredder Update." Gene Lucero, an assistant to Rita Lavelle when she ran the section, said that the agency had mistakenly ordered two extra shredders and a "helpful clerk" offered them...
...administrator, Anne Gorsuch, attracted the attention of two congressional subcommittees, which began investigating charges that the EPA had made "sweetheart" deals with polluting companies and delayed cleanups for political reasons. When Gorsuch refused in December to turn over subpoenaed documents pertaining to 160 Superfund sites, she was cited for contempt of Congress-the first time in history for a Cabinet-level official...
...embarrassed White House moved to contain the image spill, launching its own probe of the EPA and proposing a compromise to try to settle the contempt case against Gorsuch. But it could do little to muffle the echoes of earlier Capital scandals: whining paper shredders, charges of lying under oath, mysterious erasures on subpoenaed documents, leaked memos and harassment of whistle blowers. Problems began for Lavelle soon after she assumed the $67,200-a-year EPA post ten months ago. Ambitious but short on administrative skills, "she came into the agency like a Mack truck," said one former EPA official...