Readers Write
I'm happy to say that some of you have been contributing to Government Inc.
A posting concerning allegations about General Services Administration Inspector General Brian Miller drew heated response from several different perspectives. (The office's former legal staff filed complaints that Miller was mismanaging the office, abusing hiring rules and mistreating employees who complain.)
One personal, from someone called TW, said: "Put It On The FRONT PAGE!!!"
Some writers suggested that the criticism of Miller ought to undermine his recent claims that GSA leaders ignored waste and abuse in some contracts, particularly one involving Sun Microsystems. Here's one that could have come from someone who had been the focus of Miller's scrutiny, but who knows?
"Now we learn that the IG's own entire legal team has admitted that IG Miller has been fast and loose with facts, dismissing his own legal advice, mounted political inspired investigations, and then shredding evidence to cover up the facts."
Here's a breathless entry from someone who didn't quite get the spelling of my name right:
"You are now suggesting that Harrow will admit he was bamboozeld by the IG and rushed to judgement. In short you want his to admit he was wrong and the DC scandal machine never does that , it just moves on in search of another victim..."
An item about a former federal contracting officer in Texas who took bribes drew some attention. With tongue gently in cheek, I said it was hard not to wonder whether that kind of corruption was flourishing elsewhere.
"Perfectly obvious it does," one poster wrote.
"I've been in contracting more than 30 years, and it's always the little fish that get caught. The big guys get away because they have the friends and lawyers to escape punishment. How many contractors or corporate CEOs or CFOs were prosecuted? I'll bet there were few, if any!" said J. de Palma.
"The culture of corruption is everywhere," began a long post by CaptainQ.
An item about a botched census contract for handheld devices (which cited a $12 billion budget for the census in 2010) stimulated this response from LALA:
"TWELVE BILLION!!!? TWELVE - BILLION ??!!
"I'm sorry the 'B' word still makes my eyes go googly, but can anyone actually justify that amount of money, present an itemized estimate, explain WHY NOTHING THAT COMES OUT OF D.C. CAN COST LESS THAN A BILLION?"
The year began with a short item about USASpending.gov, a new Web-based system for looking up federal procurement data. I urged readers to look around and tell me what they find, something that a couple of readers found offensive.
"Do your own homework Bob. That's why we buy the paper," said someone going by the name JerseyBoy.
Oh well. I'll try to be brave. Please keep the thoughts and tips coming. I'm all ears.
By Robert O'Harrow |
January 23, 2008; 7:00 AM ET
Readers Write
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The comments to this entry are closed.
You don't seem to get it. This case of the GSA IG is analogous to the ugly situation with rogue prosecutor Nifong in the Duke Lacrosse case. Both abused their authorities by using investigatory and prosecution powers to score personal political points, running roughshod over those that stood in the way. When the heat got turned up, both shredded documents, covered up their efforts, and doctored up evidence to try to save their own skins. Miller and Nifong could get away with this because so many are blindly wedded to the false idea that an IG or a prosecutor must always be trusted, especially if they issue "allegations" that fit so neatly with conventional wisdom.
But the warning signs were all there, Sun told everyone that would listen that the IG was wrong, so too did the contracting officer, multiple levels of GSA management to include the head of the agency. That's the interesting part of mythology, even when all the facts come out, many people will rather cling to the more comfortable illusion than be forced to admit they were wrong. So let me tell you what every federal contracting officer already knows. Despite the fact that Miller's entire legal team has filed for whistleblower status with chapter and verse on mismanagement, incompetence and venal practices by the GSA IG, absolutely nothing will be done. Oversight and accountability might be great buzz words but they are never to extend to the IG's own mismanagement. Watch, the PCIE (composed of IGs) will never investigate any of this, Senator Grassley the great lover of whistleblowers and accountability, will never acknowledge these four whistleblowers and admit that his early outbursts were based on faulty assumptions, and the Washington Post, so very eager to trumpet allegations about alleged violations of procurement policy by a contracting officer, will never publish a word about gross mismanagement within the IG's office. And so, the myth endures.