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GSA Official Reinstated


Guest Vern Edwards

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Perhaps I read the document incorrectly, but it seems to me that the judge said the impermissive costs of the confernence were the responsibility of Neely in District 9 and not Prouty in District 8. It's kind of hard to be responsible in Denver for what is spent by a separate, non-reporting office in Sacramento.

In the end, I think the public should be happy if they fire the guy in the tub drinking a glass of bubbly with Las Vegas in the background. Going after everyone who was associated with the conference is, according to the judge, not appropriate unless they had some very strong role in the malfeasance.

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I especially appreciated Judge Miller's notes that "there are evidentiary issues with the OIG deficiency report..." and "the OIG's report constitutes multiple levels of hearsay..."

Too many were driven by the "optics" of the situation rather than a reasonable analysis of the facts of the situation.

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I especially appreciated Judge Miller's notes that "there are evidentiary issues with the OIG deficiency report..." and "the OIG's report constitutes multiple levels of hearsay..."

Too many were driven by the "optics" of the situation rather than a reasonable analysis of the facts of the situation.

Sad, but, too often this is the case when people don't wait for the "facts"!

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IGs are supposed to gather facts to support their conclusions. However, many times their facts are nothing more than rumor, suspicion and innuendo. It seems that the GSA IG suffers from the same lynch mob mentality that the DoD IG did in regard to the Tailhook episode. In that case, a U.S. district judge called the IG report on the incident inherently unreliable and refused to permit it to be admitted into evidence. Despite this, it is amazing that congress seems to give IGs an aura of infallibility.

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IGs are supposed to gather facts to support their conclusions. However, many times their facts are nothing more than rumor, suspicion and innuendo. It seems that the GSA IG suffers from the same lynch mob mentality that the DoD IG did in regard to the Tailhook episode. In that case, a U.S. district judge called the IG report on the incident inherently unreliable and refused to permit it to be admitted into evidence. Despite this, it is amazing that congress seems to give IGs an aura of infallibility.

I think that sometimes agencies and Congress treats IG offices like they were attack dogs, with the same amount of intelligence as those K9s. They attack on demand, with little thought to reasonableness or research. They fill documents with, as in the Prouty decision, hearsay and rumors, and do what they are expected to do, and if some judge reverses the decisions, it will be years later and the message will still be sent to all; creating displeasure for the ruling class will have consequences. Our government is acting more like a middle ages kingdom than a representative government these days.

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The IG offices certainly aren't the only ones who are fallible. I've seen some very badly botched investigations by the Office of Special Investigations (AF) and the Criminal Investigation Command (Army). In one case, the investigators interfered with and ruined our chances of recovery of over $700,000 under TINA "innacurate" cost or pricing data. In another case, the investigator ruined the career and reputation of a very good and innocent project manager, who was finally vindicated a couple of years later - after having to hire a lawyer and a private investigator to clear his name. The problem is that they often seem to be incompetent in matters of government contract administration or contract law.

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  • 3 weeks later...

why is it that the Special IG's appointed to look at contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan only found fault with individuals in small matters of waste, fraud and abuse, and the big cahunas got away ?

Oh, yeah. IG's were appointed by a particular political party.

As far as this GSA Conference, I can't see what the big deal was.

I worked at HQ USAF Space Command in the 1990's, and they wasted at least $800K on unneeded conferences every month.

Folks traveled needlessly all the time.

The Commanding General would fly his wife and his girlfriend around the world, to the same destinations, on separate Air Mobility Command aircraft, as if they didn't know about each other.

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