Undoing The Damage DoneOf all the unqualified political hacks that the Bush Administration has placed in government positions, Julie MacDonald, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the Interior Department, has always held a special place in my heart.
While in her position, where she was charged with overseeing policy decisions on endangered species and other wildlife, MacDonald did what she could to make industry lobbyists happy. If government scientists produced inconvenient data, she just changed it. And while she didn’t trust scientists all that much, she had no problem sharing interior agency documents with an “online friend” she met “through internet role-playing games.” She told the Interior Department’s inspector general that she’d shared the documents because she felt “frustrated at times” and wanted “to have another set of eyes give an unfiltered opinion of them.”
Unfortunately, the inspector general’s report made life difficult for MacDonald. And rather than explain herself, she resigned before a scheduled Congressional hearing in May.
After her departure, the Department underwent a review of a number of her decisions at the request of House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-WV). And today, the Department told Rahall that seven of the eight decisions the Department reviewed will be overturned.
