-Caveat Lector-
GAO to Investigate FBI Travel Vouchers
By George Lardner Jr. and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 7, 2001; Page A06
The Senate Judiciary Committee has ordered a special investigation to
determine how many FBI officials submitted fake vouchers for travel
expenses to cover their attendance at a 1997 retirement party for former
deputy FBI director Larry Potts.
The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and one of its
high-ranking Republicans, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), also directed
the General Accounting Office -- Congress's investigating arm -- to find
out whether an earlier, internal inquiry by the FBI was "adjudicated fairly
and fully and without any conflicts of interest."
Approximately 140 people attended the retirement bash for Potts in
Arlington on Oct. 9, 1997. After the party was scheduled, the FBI announced
it would hold an Oct. 10 conference on ethics in Quantico. Some agents from
around the country allegedly used the conference, or other meetings in the
Washington area, as a reason to get the FBI to pay for their travel to the
party for Potts. Only five people attended the ethics forum.
John E. Roberts, the agent who led the internal inquiry by the FBI's Office
of Professional Responsibility, told the committee last month that
"numerous senior executives were involved in voucher fraud." But he said
the findings were treated as trivial by a Senior Executive Service board
that was more interested in protecting colleagues than in meting out
discipline.
Roberts said he already had been subjected to threats and retaliation for
leading an aggressive inquiry into the 1992 Ruby Ridge tragedy. He pointed
out that two SES employees who submitted questionable vouchers for the
party for Potts "were also two of the SES employees who were responsible
for the flawed Ruby Ridge investigation."
"Of equal importance," Roberts told the senators in responding to written
questions following an FBI oversight hearing, "is that one of the
individuals received substantial cash awards while under investigation."
Another longtime investigator for the Office of Professional
Responsibility, John Werner, now retired, told the committee that
management problems at the bureau "begin with the Senior Executive
Service."
The SES is an elite cadre of 178 officials, including assistant directors
and special agents in charge of the FBI's 56 field offices. Most work out
of FBI headquarters and are paid a minimum of $119,700 a year, plus a 10
percent adjustment for the cost of living in the nation's capital.
Werner said most are sincere and dedicated, but that there is a "vocal
minority . . . often referred to as 'the Club' by street agents, who are
motivated by self-preservation and self-interest at any cost. . . . They
use intimidation and retaliation against anyone who would be so impertinent
as to challenge their interests."
An FBI study in 1999 said the dinner for Potts was known throughout the
bureau as "Pottsgate," and was one of a series of events that has convinced
many employees that there is a double standard of discipline -- one for
senior executives and another, much stricter one for rank-and-file
employees.
The FBI's internal inquiry into the party found both voucher fraud and a
"lack of candor" on the part of several special agents in charge who
attended the dinner. Under standards set by FBI Director Louis Freeh in
1994, both offenses warranted dismissal, but the SES board issued only four
letters of censure after reducing the misconduct to "inattention to detail"
and "inappropriate travel."
The internal inquiry focused on nine senior officials, but five retired and
were not punished.
The FBI will cooperate with the GAO probe, bureau spokesman John
Collingwood said.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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