Defrauding Taxpayers of Nearly $1 Million

Several EPA officials are currently under investigation for involvement in former EPA official John C. Beale’s defrauding of the government of nearly $1 million in salary and benefits. Beale, one of the EPA’s top experts on climate change, pretended to be working as an undercover agent for the CIA so he could avoid doing his actual work at the EPA.

Beale’s misconduct could have been caught much sooner. Reports show that Beale’s bosses “enabled” his misconduct—they failed to verify his CIA cover stories and failed to check out the hundreds of thousands of dollars he was paid in bonuses and travel expenses. Beale even charged first-class trips to London where he stayed in five-star hotels on the taxypayers’ dime.

A report from the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General found that from 2003-2011 Beale charged the government $266,290 for 33 airplane trips, travelling in first class 70 percent of the time and charging twice the allowable per diem limit. Though this should have raised red flags, his expense vouchers were routinely approved by another EPA official currently under investigation.

EPA Assistant Inspector General Patrick Sullivan doubted such gross misconduct could have gone unnoticed at other federal agencies:

There’s a certain culture here at the EPA where the mission is the most important thing. They don’t think like criminal investigators. They tend to be very trusting and accepting.

In other words, Sullivan places certain institutional blame on the agency for failing to mitigate the problem.

Culture of Intimidation

In another instance of misconduct, EPA political appointee Stephanie Owens was written up for verbally attacking a union employee at least twice. A memo by the American Federation of Government Employees Local explains that “this is just one of many incidents involving Owens that have created a ‘climate of fear’ in the department.”

A former EPA official elaborated on the cultural problems within the EPA to the Daily Caller:

Lisa Jackson has a coterie of people around her who are very arrogant, and think they know how the place should be run and do not include very many other folks in the process, and just seem to kind of run roughshod over everybody. And so when folks heard this, yeah that’s just in keeping with how Lisa Jackson has been running EPA since she came on board.

This is far from an isolated incident. The EPA under President Obama has taken such aggressive positions that the Washington Post published an editorial titled, “The EPA is earning a reputation for abuse.” The Post criticized the agency both for remarks by a top EPA administrator likening his enforcement strategy to the Romans “crucifying” victims and for the EPA’s harassment of a couple trying to build a home in an existing subdivision.