Days Before Scandal, Interior Got Ethics Award

[denem]

Source: Washington Post

Oh, the irony. Just before the Department of Interior's inspector general released reports that laid bare the oil-and-sex scandal in the department's oil royalties office this week, Interior won an annual award from the federal Office of Government Ethics, The Post's Mary Pat Flaherty and Derek Kravitz report.

The inspector general said Wednesday that federal officials in the Mineral Management Service's royalty-in-kind program allegedly were plied with alcohol and expensive gifts from industry representatives, and in some cases had sex and did drugs with them. The Denver-area office takes in roughly $4 billion each year in oil and natural gas reserves from companies drilling on federal and Indian land and offshore.

But, on Monday, the Interior Department was praised for "developing a dynamic laminated Ethics Guide for employees" that was a "polished, professional guide" with "colorful pictures and prints which demand employees' attention." The guide, the award noted, was small enough for employees to carry. Interior also was lauded for having held a four-day seminar for its ethics advisors nationwide.

It isn't known if those seminars included the royalty office, where investigators found that a former program director was paid more than $30,000 for improper outside work, bought cocaine using a personal check from his office and engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with a subordinate; employees accepted gifts, including sports tickets and vacations, from industry executives; and two former officials, with the help of a supervisor, arranged to get themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting work after they retired.

Read more: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/09/day_before_oil_sex_scandal_eme.html

---

Awarded two days in fact before the scandal broke on Wednesday by the federal Office of Government.

...the Interior Department was praised for "developing a dynamic laminated Ethics Guide ... small enough for employees to carry ... with their condoms. :)

[mucifer]

1. seems to be pretty much a media blackout on this story

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. But the Ethics Guide was Laminated!

and colorful! If only the INterior Dept. officials has seen it before they took bribes!

[denem]

3. Laminated AND Dynamic

and gibberish.

[annabanana]

9. "Laminated for your pleasure" apparently. . . . n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Heckuva job !

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Solly Mack]

5. the ethical way to fuck your way to cash, coke, and contracts

call it government

[radfringe]

6. and by wednesday bush will give them the medal of freedom... n/t

[tabasco]

7. The corrupt oil cabal gives awards to their most loyal, crooked cronies.

Anything that furthers the fascist agenda is rewarded by the traitorous Bush/Cheney regime.

[annabanana]

8. "a dynamic laminated Ethics Guide "

Get those puppyies UP ON EBAY!!


There's fortunes to be made, guys...

[theothersnippywshrub]

10. How very republican.

[tanyev]

11. When the Obama administration goes back to review all of GWB's executive orders,

they can also review all awards given by that gang of thugs.