Word: interiority
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...watchdog group's beef with Interior is tepid compared with the blast delivered a day earlier by the department's own inspector general, Earl Devaney. In scorching testimony before a House Government Reform subcommittee the no-nonsense Devaney charged that during his seven years as Interior's IG his revelations of misdeeds and foul-ups have been routinely "disregarded by the department." Numerous IG reports on regulations circumvented, procurement irregularities, project failures and bureaucrats being awarded bonuses despite their failures have been met with "vehement challenges" by Interior officials "to the quality of our audits, evaluations and investigations," he told...
...past $36 a barrel. (Oil currently sells for more than $60 a barrel.) But because of a foul-up in drafting the deepwater leases, 1,000 of them issued in 1998 and 1999 didn't contain the language lifting the exemption for higher prices. And, Devaney says, mid-level Interior bureaucrats kept their superiors in the dark about the omission for five years. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the mistake has so far cost taxpayers $2 billion in lost royalty revenue and that number could eventually soar to $10 billion...
...Rather than heads rolling for infractions, the Cabinet agency has become a fault-free zone, Devaney claims. "Short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of Interior," says the former Secret Service agent. "Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials-taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism, and bias-have been routinely dismissed with a promise 'not to do it again.'" In numerous instances top officials who leave the department under a cloud, said Devaney, "are sent off with a party paying tribute to their good service...
...case Devaney found particularly troubling was that of Steven Griles, Interior's deputy secretary in George W. Bush's first term. Devaney in 2004 referred 25 possible ethics violations by Griles to the Office of Government Ethics outside of Interior. That office cleared Griles of 23 of the violations but referred the remaining two to then-Secretary Gale Norton for a decision. Devaney says Norton refused, over his objections, to take any action against her deputy...
...Meanwhile, Dirk Kempthorne, who replaced Norton as Interior Secretary last July, insists he's taking Devaney's "allegations concerning issues dating back to 1998 very seriously." Kempthorne points out that his first day on the job he sent a letter to Interior employees titled "Our Ethical Responsibilities." Since then, the new Interior chief says he's been preaching to his workers that when they're unsure whether something is ethical or not, "if in doubt...