WASHINGTON (AP) — A unit run by President Barack Obama’s political staff inside the Environmental Protection Agency operates illegally as a “rogue law enforcement agency” that has blocked independent investigations by the EPA’s inspector general for years, a top investigator says.
The assistant EPA inspector general for investigations, Patrick Sullivan, was expected to testify Wednesday before a House oversight committee about the activities of the EPA’s little-known Office of Homeland Security. The office is overseen by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s chief of staff, and the inspector general’s office is accusing it of impeding independent investigations into employee misconduct, computer security and external threats, including compelling employees involved in cases to sign non-disclosure agreements.
“Under the heavy cloak of ‘national security,’ the Office of Homeland Security has repeatedly rebuffed and refused to cooperate with the OIG’s ongoing requests for information or cooperation,” Sullivan wrote in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press. “This block unquestionably has hamstrung the Office of Inspector General’s ability to carry out its statutory mandate to investigate wrongdoing of EPA employees.”
EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe was expected to tell Congress that the agency’s employees work cooperatively with the inspector general and support its mission, according to his prepared testimony.
“Unfortunately, some have recently questioned the agency’s commitment to ensuring that the program offices within EPA provide timely, complete assistance to the Office of the Inspector General,” Perciasepe wrote in testimony. “I can assure this committee that the EPA remains committed to ensuring that our Office of Inspector General is successful in its efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse in every program office across the agency.”
The EPA allegations are the latest under the Obama administration to question the effective independence of the government’s inspectors general, which ostensibly operate on their own to investigate wrongdoing inside federal agencies. Two weeks ago, the Homeland Security Department secretary put the agency’s former inspector general on administrative leave after senators said he was too cozy with senior agency officials and improperly rewrote, delayed or classified some critical reports to accommodate Obama’s political appointees.
Last year, the Defense Department’s inspector general removed material from a draft report that concluded then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had improperly disclosed classified information about the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden to a producer for the movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”
EPA’s Office of Homeland Security was set up in 2003 by an administrative order, and has no statutory authority to conduct investigations or enforce the law. But since July 2012, in an agreement with the FBI, it has been the primary contact on all investigations with a connection to national security.
The dispute between the inspector general’s office and the Homeland Security office came to a head last year, as Republicans in Congress investigated the agency’s handling of John C. Beale, a former deputy assistant administrator who pleaded guilty in federal court last fall to stealing a total of $886,186 between 2000 and April 2013, falsely claiming he was working for the CIA. The Beale case was initially investigated by the Homeland Security office months before the IG’s office was made aware of it.
Another inspector general investigator, Elisabeth Heller Drake, will testify that McCarthy asked the inspector general’s office to halt a probe into a homeland security office employee after he allegedly assaulted her, according to her prepared testimony. The EPA says that claim is a mischaracterization and that McCarthy only asked that the dispute between the two offices be settled safely and efficiently.
___
Follow Dina Cappiello on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dinacappiello
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I smell another fake scandal.
i hope so because this one actually would be a scandal if true as presented here. At the very least, it’s far more substantive grist for the Repub mill than Benghazi ever was.
But the GOP would not likely pursue this one, because the malfeasance, if it occurred, resulted in the suppression of EPA core activities — activities which the GOP vehemently opposes on principle (lousy principle, but there it is).
It’s hard to tell from the article what the issues really are. It sounds like a bit of a bureaucratic turf war rather than a case of good guy vs. bad guy.
This article is a dogs’ breakfast of weird vomit. It looks like it’s cobbled together from random sentences copy-pasted from Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann speeches.
I’ve read through this three times, slowly, and can barely even make out what it’s supposed to be about. The constant switching between different Inspector Generals and different Homeland Securitys and the inconsistent capitalization and proper names for the entities involved makes it almost impossible to diagram who is being talked about and who is doing the talking … and which actual departments they are.
“The EPA allegations” isn’t about any allegations the EPA has made. It seems to be about allegations made about some entity in the EPA.
The “EPA’s Office of Homeland Security was set up in 2003 by an administrative order” was established 6 years before President Obama took office. It’s alleged that this office is packed with political appointees, implied they were appointed by Obama and yet no information proving that is presented.
Then goes on to say that this “unit” (not “office”) is being “run by President Obama’s political staff” … again, without the slightest evidence. It’s aggressively conspiracy-couched language dripping with implication but no substance.
Somehow “things came to a head” .??? What? Explain that? “Things came to a head” “as Republicans in Congress investigated” …??? What? What the fuck is even being talked about here? It sounds like a Fox News histrionics sound bite being spewed out by KKKarl Rove.
_______ [ EDIT: ]
Oh, holy God damned fuck.
Click through on Dina Cappiello’s twitting feed. She’s a climate change denialist and a frothing at the brain TeaBagger-level loony toon.
No. REALLY click through on her twitting feed and read through her twits. Completely fucking incoherent argle bargle. Just like this “article.” She appears to have trouble using English as grammatical form of communication and substitutes with random buzzwords and “clever” derogatory “witticisms” devoid of content.