How Did ATF Lose 420 Million Cigarettes?
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | September 27, 2013
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is in trouble again, this time for losing more than 400 million cigarettes.
ATF agents failed to properly account for 2.1 million cartons containing 420 million cigarettes as part of the agency’s undercover operations, according to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (IG). The missing cartons had a retail value of $127 million.
The IG’s office also reported that ATF paid an informant more than $4.9 million without requiring him to account for his expenses.
“We found a significant lack of oversight and controls to ensure that cash, cigarettes, equipment and other assets used…were accurately tracked, properly safeguarded and protected from misuse,” IG Michael E. Horowitz said in his report (pdf).
The mistakes were discovered after the inspector general’s office reviewed 20 undercover operations targeting cigarette smugglers that generated $162 million in income for ATF over a five-year period.
Like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, ATF is allowed under the law to use proceeds generated from certain investigations to make up for gaps in the agency’s budget.
When asked about the millions of missing cigarettes, ATF spokeswoman Ginger Colbrun told The Washington Post that the inspector general’s numbers were wrong. Colbrun insisted only 447,218 cartons were unaccounted for, not 2.1 million, after ATF conducted its own internal probe of the matter.
ATF has been under fire during the past few years for having lost more than 2,000 guns that it used as part of a Mexican drug cartel sting operation called “Fast and Furious.”
To Learn More:
ATF Lost Track of 2.1 Million Cartons of Cigarettes in Sting Operations, Report Finds (by Sari Horwitz, Washington Post)
ATF ‘Lost 420m Cigarettes’ in Churning Investigations (BBC News)
Audit of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Use of Income-Generating, Undercover Operations (U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division) (pdf)
Is This the Most Bungled ATF Sting Operation Ever? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
ATF Program Let Hundreds of Guns go to Drug Cartels (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Largest Seizure of Illegal Cigarettes in History (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Inspector General Alleges High-Level Interference in USAID Contract Rigging Investigation
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | January 27, 2013
The second in command at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been accused of interfering with an inspector general’s probe into alleged contract rigging by the agency’s top lawyer.
The investigation was launched after the inspector general (IG) learned that former USAID general counsel Lisa Gomer had helped former chief financial officer David Ostermeyer develop a contract for a “senior government-to-government assistance adviser” that would go to Ostermeyer after he retired. The bidding was later cancelled.
While conducting the probe, the IG’s office was told by Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg, USAID’s No. 2 official, that the investigation was “inappropriate” and that the U.S. Department of Justice should not have been told about the case.
“When people are slapping badges down, reading rights and monitoring who is calling who as it relates to career people, it is a mistake,” an IG memo quoted Steinberg as saying to investigators.
USAID spokesman Kamyl Bazbaz told The Washington Post that none of the agency’s top officials interfered with the inspector general’s probe.
Gomer’s attorney claimed the Justice Department has dropped its own investigation into the alleged contracting rigging. But a Justice spokeswoman declined to confirm this assertion when asked by the newspaper.
Related article
- Justice Department Investigating USAID for Allegedly Rigging Contracts (voicerussia.com)
Nepotism prevalent at Justice Department, says Inspector General report
By Jordy Yager – The Hill – 07/26/12
The Justice Department’s inspector general found at least seven instances of federal employees engaging in illegal attempts to hire family members at the agency, according to a report issued Thursday.
The report is the third investigation in less than a decade that has found numerous examples of illegal hiring practices, amounting to nepotism, within the DOJ.
The latest series of nepotistic attempts came after Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) alerted the IG to complaints he received in 2010 from a former DOJ employee-turned-whistleblower.
Wolf said the report was “alarming” and called on the DOJ employees, whose attempts at hiring relatives are exposed in the IG’s report, to be punished by the department.
“The report issued by the Department of Justice Inspector General today is alarming, especially given that the department has twice been warned about these illegal practices before,” said Wolf, the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the DOJ’s budget, in a statement.
“I expect for the employees involved in this nepotism ring to be punished under full extent of the law. I also expect the department to move quickly to enact the necessary reforms to prevent this from happening again.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the DOJ in the wake of the IG’s report, saying that the agency is running “wild.”
At an executive committee meeting on Thursday, Grassley called on Attorney General Eric Holder to take legal action against the employees cited in the report. Grassley has butted heads with Holder for most of the attorney general’s time in office, saying that the DOJ constantly “stonewalls” his requests for information and action.
“This is another example of the Justice Department run wild,” said Grassley. “It is troubling to me how employees within the Department colluded and schemed to hire one another’s relatives in order to avoid rules against nepotism.
“At the very least, the Attorney General needs to hold these employees accountable — with more than just disciplinary action,” he said. “Laws were broken and false statements were made. The Department can’t simply sweep this under the rug. Employees need to be punished.”
The IG’s report found seven examples of employees within the DOJ’s Justice Management Division (JMD) attempting to hire the family members of their fellow employees.
According to the IG’s report, in two separate instances a pair of employees, who worked in different sections of the DOJ, engaged in schemes to hire the other’s child. In another example, a DOJ employee tried to secure employment for his cousin and nephew.
The IG released two prior reports on nepotistic hiring practices in 2004 and again in 2008, in which they found that employees manipulated the DOJ’s hiring process to favor certain candidates.
In 2008, the IG recommended that the department conduct ethics training and establish a “zero-tolerance” policy for future attempts at illegal hiring.
In a memorandum issued earlier this week, Assistant Attorney General for Administration Lee Lofthus wrote the IG to say that he would strengthen and clarify training for employees, with particular attention on the agency’s nepotism rules.
Lofthus also said that by Friday his office would be implementing a three-prong set of disclosure forms that would require DOJ employees to disclose any family member who they are aware of applying for a job within the agency. It would also require any DOJ applicant to reveal a family member who works for the department.
Lofthus said, according to the IG report, the actions of illegal hiring were a result of intentionally “bad behavior” and not ignorance of the rules or a lack of training on the DOJ’s part.
“The OIG report concludes by saying most of the misconduct identified in the report did not stem from ignorance of the rules, but rather was the result of bad behavior by individuals insufficiently impressed with the principles of fair and open competition.”
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From the Archives
The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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