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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
And the culture of secrecy and fear that has been cultivated in the US aids that. Mention the terrors you fight and everybody agrees, a real danger! How can you endanger the security of the United States of America by asking nosey questions and being skeptical?
(Any parallels between the fight against terror, and the fight against climate change, are purely coincidental, by the way. And while we are at it: after all the data collecting by both the government and private corporations, and after all the cases where data has been leaked, lost or stolen, after all that I am not going to give you my email-address – bad enough that everybody is tracking everybody as is.)
[No, site policy requires a valid email address for commenting. No address, no (future) comments. Mod]
If the EPA thought he was undercover for the CIA, they should have let the CIA pay his salary and benefits.
Well, in all fairness, it’s hard to tell that any climate expert has done any actual work. In fact, for many, the object is to avoid actual science in the first place. Compounded with the EPA’s cause of stopping work, you got a blind spot the size of — the federal government.
He was just riding the “Global Warming Gravy Train” like most other climate scientists.
Other agencies of the government often supply funds and people to the C.I.A. It is standard procedure to cover up the actions and costs. This guy merely took advantage of standard procedure for a personal gravy train. I am sure he is not the only one. Just one that got caught. pg
Update:
Beale was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison on Wednesday in Washington.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/18/the-epa-s-million-dollar-con-man.html
Good, he can say “hello” to some of our Illinois politicians! Good riddance, he deserves more.
We sure he’s NOT a CIA spy in Pakistan, now creating a cover story that he was an incompetent EPA official to throw off the Taliban?