-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. 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