This is stunning, yet not surprising. We know people get caught up in “the cause”, and that there are massive egos involved in some of the more visible climate advocates that lead them to irrational excesses of word and deed, but this one takes the cake.
This NBC News (coverage of the EPA internal*) investigation reveals that the highest paid individual at the EPA, John C. Beale, bilked the agency out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade.
The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors.
Beale perpetrated his fraud largely by failing to show up at the EPA for months at a time, including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did “absolutely no work,” as Kern, Beale’s lawyer, acknowledged in his court filing.
What was he doing? Galavanting around the world first class and staying in 5 star hotels at taxpayers expense, that’s what.
The two sentencing memos, along with documents obtained by NBC News, offer new details about what some officials describe as one of the most audacious, and creative, federal frauds they have ever encountered.
When he first began looking into Beale’s deceptions last February, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, How could this possibly have happened in this agency?” said EPA Assistant Inspector General Patrick Sullivan, who spearheaded the Beale probe, in an interview with NBC News. “I’ve worked for the government for 35 years. I’ve never seen a situation like this.”
And of course, here’s the “anything for the cause” blindness that allowed it all to happen:
Sullivan said he doubted Beale’s fraud could occur at any federal agency other than the EPA. “There’s a certain culture here at the EPA where the mission is the most important thing,” he said. “They don’t think like criminal investigators. They tend to be very trusting and accepting.”
Translation: he’s doing good work for “the cause”, so there’s no need to look further.
More here: http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/16/21911592-climate-change-experts-fraud-was-crime-of-massive-proportion-say-feds?lite (h/t to WUWT reader Martin Rettig)
While this is a massive fraud of salary and benefits, one has to wonder what sort of fraud this man may have perpetrated in his role as a climate official. According to the story,
These include helping to rewrite the Clean Air Act in 1990, heading up EPA delegations to United Nations conferences on climate change in 2000 and 2001, and helping to negotiate agreements to reduce carbon emissions with China, India and other nations.
In this EPA document, they don’t seem to be looking into any of those things, only his travel abuse. I think they have “team blinders” on since I haven’t found anything where they look into the quality of his climate work.
The culture of corruption in Washington will be the death of the republic if it isn’t reined in soon. Already our government feels like that of a third world country.
Related articles
- Climate Change Expert’s Fraud Was ‘Crime of Massive Proportion,’ Say Feds (freepatriot.org)
- Feds charge EPA’s climate-change guru with fraud (wnd.com)
- Third EPA Official Implicated in $900K Scam (freebeacon.com)
- REPORT: EPA knew for years of illegal salary going to ex-official… (washingtonpost.com)
- EPA’s Christmas Gift to the Nation: 134 More Regulations (politicaloutcast.com)
* edited for accuracy
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Well, morally and mentally they are all AWOL at EPA. It just takes time when auditors are the main management system after the fact.
According to this article: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/01/fake_spys_900000_fraud_leaves_congress_gobsmacked
Beale’s boss shares a vacation home with Beale and secured a $9,000 discount on his Mercedes via some form of ‘lobbying’ activity.
So – the general shock over this incident may be overstated.
To be fair to the EPA they where probably so grateful that he was not following the normal procedure of screwing everything up , that they felt the best thing they could do was to not ask to many questions In case he started to.
What’s with EPA officials going mad with power? First “Ms. Richard Windsor”, now John C. Beale, CIA super agent and undercover Michelin guide inspector.
Life is imitating pop-art –
And I never thought there could possibly be an appropriate use for the following link, but the case of John C. Beale demands it –
I suspect the take away message is this – When the President of the US is a liar, and you are the highest paid official in a US agency enforcing what you know to be lies, then the world has clearly gone mad. Who cares what you do? Just go crazy with power and other peoples money!
SET HIM FREE
The man should clearly be set free. I hope that he had a good lawyer.
As the climate change expert of the EPA, he had to deal daily with made up, imagined stuff.
For instance sea levels rise by the same 3mm/year for 150 years now, as everyone can check with NOAA. Yet this fellow had the EPA blame our utilities for producing catastrophic sea level rises.
Same for global temperatures. They didn’t rise for 16 years, yet the EPA is blaming utilities for causing catastrophic global warming.
A million dollars is what we spend every half hour to make up such climate stories.
A billion dollars is what we spend every day based on those stories.
So clearly someone working for the EPA loses the distinction between what is real and imagined, as well as the true value of money.
In fact that appears to be a job requirement.
Believing that you are James Bond and living like him, while you man a desk,
comes natural in the fictional world of man made climate change.
So Beale took the EPA for the fools we know they are. Classic.
anthony –
u agreed to edit your comments based on Brandon Shollenberger saying the story isn’t new. however, Brandon Shollenberger also said:
“I get this story may be new to a lot of people, and there’s definitely a story to be told about how little attention this has gotten”
do a google search on the fake climate expert – john beale epa – and click “news”. i get 206 results & almost none are major MSM.
then do a search – fake interpeter mandela – 152,000 results – every MSM in the world.
anything that might undermine the CAGW narrative in any way is given short by the MSM.
How did this Administration let this (the investigation) slip by its Privilege Filter? At least they’re keeping the distortion of the treaties and EPA regs by politicos from exposure. So far.
“Only solution I can think of is term limits, so that these guys are not constantly needing to raise money to run for reelection. One term and out. But that discussion seems to have gone away.”
That would merely encourage them to trough as fast as possible, since they’ll only get one chance.
The only real solution is to radically cull the size of the trough. A government limited to the few things the Constitution allows it to do would be of little interest to troughers, because it would have so little money to spend.
Beal is a natural product of years of “service” in the bureaus.
Term limits for bureaucrats, never more than 5 years maximum employment on the public purse.
Currently these career clowns are completely divorced from reality, to ensure civil service becomes that again, no hires without real work experience and no career employees or pensions.
What we have helping us right now can best be described as a Kleptocracy, taking wealth by force and fraud, to benefit the crew.
If anyone is looking to get into the EPA and work up to Beale’s level, my wife came across some online courses (free!) that may teach you all you need.
At https://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/law-2723-fall-2008-uc-berkeley/id354822467?mt=10
Berkeley, so you know it’s good, and iTunes so us all-I-can-afford-is-Linux folk are excluded, it has course titles:
These are all from 2008, so you’ll need to look elsewhere for courses like “Keeping the Faith after Copenhagen,” “International Travel and Outreach to Climate Scientists,” and “Climate Funding – Your Slice of the Pie.”
Based on climate gate, the team as revealed in “Hiding the Decline”, the deep culture of misrepresentation and deceit inherent in AGW,and the [revelations] in the paper this [weekend], this individual is [doing] nothing unusual.
Lights attract flies. So ironic.
Why is NBC news just reporting it? I google John Beale and see that Huffington Post, Fox News, and Think Progress reported it at the end of September.
Note to this lawyer dude: if your client needs to engage in “reckless” behavior, a hooker in Bangkok would be plenty risky, and a whole lot cheaper.
Go to jail, do not pass go, and most assuredly do NOT collect $200.
So you’re telling me the top climate change dude at the EPA is a con artist?
No WAY!!!
Is there a list of EPA officials who hobnobbed at Enron?
And if you can’t afford your fraud, the government will subsidize you. Fraud for every Man, Woman, Child, Cat, Dog, Parakeet, and even Chihuahuas.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone in government were honest, hard working and trustworthy? No let me rephrase that: wouldn’t it be nice if anyone in government were… etc.
I think Sen. Jim Inhofe will be all over this like stink on, well, you know, biomass!
The other ones at the EPA / the entire government are smarter than him. They don’t say they work for the CIA; they don’t vanish for months, they just come in every day, sit in their cubicle, watch kitten videos on the Internet, take their paycheck, and continue to do so every day from here to kingdom come. And that’s all legal.
And we will have to cull them all when they make energy so expensive that we can’t afford that parasitic sector anymore; well actually we can’t now.
Roy Spencer says:
December 16, 2013 at 8:56 am
Roy,
You’ve got a point there.
While he was out playing, he wasn’t writing up any new regulations.
Hmmm…
Why don’t we send all the EPA folks off on perpetual ‘research’ trips. We’ll just keep them too busy to propose any new regulations.
“… including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did “absolutely no work,””
So either his job was completely unnecessary or (supposedly) necessary work wasn’t being done properly and nobody questioned why not.
Someone in power should be pressing for an explanation, but I’m not holding my breath.
When I was at work we had quarterly and annual reviews of performance. Or is that somewhat passé these days?
Where were the regulators?