Starting Points

Apr 17, 2012

Panetta said he regretted cost to taxpayers for trips home to California

J. Scott Applewhite/AP - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says he regrets the cost to taxpayers of his weekend trips to his California home, which cost about $32,000 for reach round trip.

By Craig Whitlock, Published: April 16

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Monday that he regrets that his frequent flights home to California on a military jet have cost taxpayers more than $800,000 since July. He gave no indication, however, that he would end the weekend commutes.

“For 40 years that I’ve been in this town, I’ve gone home because my wife and family are there and because, frankly, I think it’s healthy to get out of Washington periodically just to get your mind straight and your perspective straight,” said Panetta, who maintains a residence with his wife, Sylvia, on their walnut farm in Monterey, Calif.

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Flying home wasn’t an issue for Panetta when he served in Congress from 1977 to 1993 and built a reputation as a deficit hawk. Like many lawmakers who returned to their districts for the weekend, he took commercial flights and paid the bill himself. He followed a similar routine when he served as budget director and White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, although the demands of the latter job made it tougher to escape Washington.

Panetta resumed his cross-country commutes when President Obama plucked him from retirement to lead the CIA in 2009. Given the nature of the spy business, Panetta’s whereabouts usually weren’t public knowledge.

Since becoming defense secretary in July, however, his travels have attracted more attention, in part because Pentagon leaders say they are scraping by to adjust to a new era of austerity. Under a defense budget that will shrink slightly next year for the first time since 1998, Panetta has proposed closing military bases, cutting the number of active-duty troops and raising health insurance premiums for military retirees.

Under government rules established by President George W. Bush, the defense secretary is required to fly on military aircraft, which are outfitted with secure communication links to the White House and Pentagon.

Under the same rules, Panetta must reimburse the government for what it would cost for a round-trip commercial flight to the same destination — usually a fraction of the expense of operating a military plane.

The Associated Press reported this month that Panetta had reimbursed the government about $17,000 for 27 personal trips since becoming Pentagon chief. The AP calculated that the expense of operating Panetta’s military aircraft — usually an Air Force C-37A — totaled about $860,000 for those trips.

It costs the Pentagon about $3,200 per hour to operate a C-37A on Panetta’s trips, according to the AP. Defense officials said the expense of Panetta’s individual flights can vary, depending on the number of staff and crew members who accompany him and the itinerary. The defense secretary often schedules stops for official business at military bases while en route to California or on the way back to the Pentagon.

The C-37A is similar to a Gulfstream business jet. It is considerably smaller than the Air Force’s E-4B, or National Airborne Operations Center, a modified Boeing 747 that Panetta flies when traveling overseas. He does not use that aircraft when going home for the weekend.

Although Panetta said he regrets the cost to taxpayers, he told reporters that he is open to “alternatives here that I can look at, that might possibly be able to save funds and, at the same time, be able to fulfill my responsibilities not only to my job but to my family.”

George Little, a Pentagon spokesman, said Panetta was “always concerned about costs” and has asked defense officials whether there are cheaper options that would enable him to travel with secure communication links.

“No one wants the secretary of defense making decisions on classified military operations from the middle seat on a crowded commercial jet,” Little said.

At a joint news conference with Panetta, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, volunteered that the defense secretary is hardly slacking off back home on the weekends.

“Let me help the boss here,” Dempsey said. “He doesn’t get much rest in California, based on the number of times I know that I’m in contact with him.”

GSA inspector general is investigating possible bribes, kickbacks

By Lisa Rein and Ed O’Keefe, Published: April 16

The inspector general for the General Services Administration said Monday that he is investigating possible bribery and kickbacks in the agency, as lawmakers accused the former GSA administrator of allowing a Las Vegas spending scandal to erode taxpayers’ trust in government.
Inspector General Brian Miller told a congressional committee scrutinizing an $823,000 Las Vegas conference that his office has asked the Justice Department to investigate “all sorts of improprieties”surrounding the 2010 event, “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.” He did not provide details.
Miller’s revelations of possible further misconduct by organizers of the four-day event, coming on the heels of a highly critical report, enraged Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The lawmakers put GSA officials on the defensive during a tense four-hour hearing, with some Republicans loudly rebuking former administrator Martha N. Johnson and her colleagues.
GOP lawmakers argued that the excessive spending proves their case for smaller government. Taxpayers picked up the tab for a mind reader, bicycles for a team-building exercise and a slew of private parties at the conference.
“There are those who believe government’s reach should be expanded,” committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in his opening statement. “What has come to light surrounding GSA’s activities should give pause to anyone who has opposed cutting government size and spending.”
But Democrats joined him in condemning the outsized tab for the conference, with Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, calling it “indefensible” and “intolerable.”
“It’s not your money, it’s the taxpayers’ money,” Cummings scolded agency officials.
Johnson, speaking publicly for the first time since her abrupt resignation last week, called the biennial Western Regions Conference a “raucous, extravagant, arrogant, self-congratulatory event that ultimately belittled federal workers.” Closing her testimony, she said, “I will mourn for the rest of my life the loss of my appointment.”
Seated next to her was Jeffrey Neely, the senior executive in the GSA’s Pacific Rim region who organized the event. Neely, 57, who had received a subpoena from the committee, asserted his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself and left the witness table.
Neely, who earns a salary of $172,000, is one of five senior managers who have been placed on paid administrative leave pending further discipline. Several lawmakers said it galled them that the managers are still receiving their full salaries. As civil servants, they have more protections than political appointees.
Johnson’s replacement, Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini, told lawmakers that he has canceled almost every conference scheduled for GSA employees for the rest of the fiscal year. He also sent letters last Friday to Neely, former Public Buildings Service commissioner Robert Peck and Robert Shepard, Neely’s chief of staff, demanding repayment for private parties they threw in their rooms at the M Resort Spa Casino.
Peck has been summoned to appear Tuesday at the second of four congressional hearings on the scandal.
Tangherlini also wants repayment from an audiovisual company that was given hotel rooms as part of its $59,000 contract for the conference but that Tangherlini said double-billed the government.
Asked if the GSA has a “culture” problem that led to the freewheeling spending, which included poolside entertainment by a clown and a “Red Carpet” talent show, Tangherlini replied, “We definitely have a culture problem in Region 9,” referring to the four-state Pacific Rim office. “I can’t say I know enough to say we have a culture problem” in the rest of the agency, he said.
The officials’ apologies did little to satisfy lawmakers, who were outraged that top agency officials allowed the spending to take place, then waited to take action even after the inspector general briefed them midway through his year-long investigation.
Issa and others questioned how Johnson could have signed off on a $9,000 bonus for Neely last year over the objections of a committee that reviews bonuses for members of the Senior Executive Service.
In an e-mail released by the committee, Johnson wrote “yes on a bonus,” in part because Neely had to serve as regional administrator in an acting capacity “forever and a day.” She told lawmakers Monday that the reward was for his job performance. Pressed on whether she would deny the bonus knowing what she knows today, she said she could not say.
Johnson said she received a briefing on the preliminary findings in May 2011. She decided not to launch her own investigation, “as such action would have entailed a terrific duplication of government resources.”
Johnson said she believed that Miller would quickly conclude the investigation, but “the deadline slipped repeatedly from October to November to December.” She said her office received a final report last month — 15 months after it was requested.
“I personally apologize to the American people for this entire situation,” Johnson said.
Also at Monday’s hearing, David E. Foley, a former deputy commissioner at the Public Buildings Service, repeatedly apologized for poking fun at the lavish spending during the conference’s talent show, comments that were captured on video. But Foley stressed that he was not involved with planning the event.
Most of the contracts for the conference, including for an event planner, the audiovisual company and the bike-building exercise, were not competitively bid, as federal rules require.

Secret Service, military personnel brought as many as 21 prostitutes to Colombia hotel, investigators say

Video: A scandal involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents widened Saturday when the U.S. military confirmed five service members staying at the same hotel in Colombia may have been involved in misconduct as well.

By Ed O’Keefe and David Nakamura, Updated: Tuesday, April 17, 2:00 PM

Investigators now suspect that as many as 21 prostitutes were brought by U.S. Secret Service and military personnel to the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia, last week during a night of carousing, a dramatic increase in the number of women previously disclosed by government officials.

Officials said that 11 Secret Service and nine military personnel are suspected of the misconduct that took place in advance of President Obama’s trip to the country for an international economic summit. Initially reports suggested that the military personnel, some of whom were confined to their rooms after the scandal broke, had merely violated curfew, while the Secret Service members had engaged with prostitutes.

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But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Tuesday that Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told her that 20 to 21 women were brought to the hotel by agents and military personnel last Wednesday night. She added that Sullivan agreed to provide her and other lawmakers with regular updates on the agency’s investigation.

Two of the Secret Service personnel are senior agents paid at the top levels of the federal government’s pay scale, according to a congressional official with knowledge of the investigation. The two agents, who the official referred to as “GS-14s,” are at the top of the General Schedule, the system used to compensate federal employees. Depending on where the agents are based and other factors, they earn as much as $110,000 annually, if not more.

At his daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama has “confidence” in Sullivan and will await the results of an internal investigation before weighing in further on the future of the agency.

“Sullivan acted quickly in response to this incident and he’s overseeing an investigation as we speak,” Carney said. “This incident needs to be investigated, and it is being investigated. We need to see what the investigation reveals. We’re not going to speculate about the conclusions it might reach.”

Collins, ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Sullivan told her “the most important quality for a Secret Service officer is character. If the facts prove to be as reported on this, this is an incredible lack of character and breach of security and potentially extremely serious.”

The accusations are triggering scrutiny of the culture of the Secret Service — where married agents have been heard to joke during aircraft takeoff that their motto is “wheels up, rings off” — and raising new questions at both the agency and the Pentagon about institutional oversight at the highest levels of the president’s security apparatus.

“We are embarrassed,” Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in a briefing at the Pentagon on Monday. “We let the boss down, because nobody is talking about what went down in Colombia other than this incident.”

At the same time, details emerged about the night of partying Wednesday that led to the scandal. People in Cartagena familiar with the matter said that some of the Secret Service agents paid $60 apiece to owners of the Pleyclub, a strip club in an industrial section of Cartagena, to bring at least two of the women back to the Hotel Caribe, where Obama’s advance team was staying.

The following morning, one of the women demanded an additional payment of $170, setting off a dispute with an agent that drew the attention of the hotel, the Cartagena sources said.

According to the Pleyclub’s registry at the local chamber of commerce, one of the club’s owners is named Michael Adam Hardy, whom chamber officials described as either American or Canadian.

On Monday, the Secret Service moved to revoke the top-secret security clearances of all 11 men from the agency who are under investigation, spokesman Edwin Donovan said.

The revocation of such clearances is not uncommon, he emphasized, and security clearances can be reinstated after internal investigations are complete, depending on the findings.

All of the Secret Service personnel recalled from Colombia flew commercial flights back to Miami before being sent to Washington for interviews with agency officials on Saturday, according to congressional officials familiar with the investigation. At least one additional Secret Service official was interrogated in Colombia in the hours after the incident, but it was determined this official was not involved and he was permitted to stay in the country, said the congressional officials said, who were not authorized to speak publicly on details of the investigation.

In a letter to all agency employees, Sullivan, the director, stressed that it is “imperative . . . to always act both personally and professionally in a manner that recognizes the seriousness and consequence of our mission.”

Egypt’s election commission ejects front-runners from presidential race

By Leila Fadel, Tuesday, April 17, 3:01 PM

CAIRO — Egypt’s presidential electoral commission permanently disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including three front-runners, on Tuesday, upending the election just weeks before next month’s vote.
The commission announced Saturday that it had disqualified the candidates from the election, the first since the ouster last year of President Hosni Mubarak. With its Tuesday decision, the commission rejected appeals filed by ultraconservative preacher Hazem Abu Ismail, who is popular among followers of a puritanical form of Islam known as Salafism, as well as appeals from the Muslim Brotherhood’s top strategist, multimillionaire Khairat el-Shater; Hosni Mubarak’s controversial former spy chief and vice president Omar Suleiman; and seven other candidates, according to state television.
The move by the commission of Mubarak-era judges could draw destabilizing protests, especially from ultraconservative voters who feel the law was manipulated to disqualify their preferred candidate. Outside the commission on Tuesday, rowdy supporters of Abu Ismail staged a sit-in in protest and chanted “God is great.”
“The committee started rigging the elections today,” Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud, a lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood, told al-Jazeera after the announcement.
Shater was disqualified because he had been a political prisoner during Mubarak’s rule. But the lawyer said the country’s military rulers pardoned Shater after his release from prison last year and there was no reason to remove him from the race. “The committee is choosing what serves its interests, and this is an apparent and daring forgery of the coming election before it even starts.”
With several top contenders out of the race, the front-runners for the vote are Amr Moussa, the former Arab League chief who has consistently polled on top; Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a progressive Islamist; and the Brotherhood’s backup candidate, Mohammed Mursi.
The commission said Abu Ismail was disqualified because his late mother held dual Egyptian and American citizenship, a violation of Egyptian law. Abu Ismail has denied that his mother was a U.S. citizen and has cast the disqualification as a conspiracy against him.
Suleiman was disqualified because of troubles with the signatures he collected to support his nomination, the commission said.

TMR Victor; provisional results Second Round Presidential Election

Tuesday, 17 April 2012 18:20Written by Venidora Oliveira, TDW

6. Preliminary results released by STAE of the second round of Presidential election show TMR as the victor with 61.23% of the total votes and runner Francisco Guterres ‘Lu-Olo’ with 38% of the vote.

STAE (the Secretariat for the Administration of Elections) posted the preliminary results of the second round of Presidential Election today (17/4) at 10:00 a.m. with 100 per cent of votes counted from all 13 Districts giving

an unofficial victory to Taur Matan Ruak (TMR) with 61.23 percent of the vote; and Francisco Guterres (Lu-Olo) with 38.77 percent of the vote.

No District                Lu- Olo                 Taur Matan Ruak (TMR)
1    Aileu                  29.24 %                70.76 %
2    Ainaru                32.81                    67.19 %
3    Baucau              52.07 %                47.95 %
4    Bobonaru           29.99 %                70.01 %
5    CovaLima          37.42 %                62.58 %
6    Dili                   34.21 %                65.79 %
7    Ermera             32.94 %                67.06 %
8    Lautem            49.60 %                50.40 %
9    Liquisa             35.81 %                64.19 %
10    Manatutu       26.45 %                73.55 %
11    Manufahi       45,82 %                54.18 %
12    oecusse       24.08 %                 75.92 %
13    Viqueque      66.08 %                 33.92 %
Total                 38.77 %                   61.23%

Josh Trinidade, one of the Coordinators of TMR’s Success Team, said he was very pleased with the provisional results.
“I am very satisfied with the results. Not only me, but also the whole success team. It validates the hard work we did thus far and we received good results for it,” said Coordinator Trinidade, at Hotel Timor, Dili.
According also to Coordinator Trinidade, the most important thing is that TMR holds on to national unity, peace and stability, listens to the people and gives priority to the Timorese. “The Timorese have to hold on to the reins for themselves.”

Indonesia: The Fading Star of SBY

Indonesia: The Fading Star of SBY:
Tom McCawley is a Jakarta-based journalist and analyst.
Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono must look back nostalgically on his landslide re-election in 2009. Voters rewarded his promises to fight corruption and create jobs with a 60% landslide victory in a direct election. He was feted abroad, with bold pledges to catch and punish terrorists winning him allies in Canberra and Washington.

In the last year, however, Yudhoyono's star has faded on the realities of multi-party politics and governing the world's fourth most populous country. Yudhoyono has struggled to manage both a rebellion within his ruling coalition and a series of internal corruption scandals that have damaged his own popularity and his party's chances of winning reelection. The polls predict the woes of Yudhoyono and his Democrat Party could clear the way for an election victory for rivals in the next parliamentary and presidential polls in 2014.
The most recent bad news came in late March when a cabinet ally defied the Government and voted against a controversial plan to slash subsidies and raise fuel prices by 33%. The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the largest Islamist party in the 560-seat parliament, sided with the opposition to vote against the fuel price hike.
Indonesia has some of Asia's lowest fuel prices and the subsidy bill is forecast to rise to between 15-20% of the budget this year, draining funds from education, health and infrastructure. Yudhoyono's aides claim the PKS's defiance broke the coalition deal made in 2009. Building support for unpopular legislation was a major reason for forming the coalition in the first place.
In a private speech to his party, leaked last week, Yudhoyono railed against the PKS and the opposition, claiming they were trying to destroy the Government. 'Basically they expect the government to collapse ASAP,' he told Democrat leaders in a meeting on 1 April.
Despite the outburst, Yudhoyono has prevaricated over whether or not to eject the PKS from the ruling coalition. Speculation over whether Yudhoyono would fire the three serving PKS ministers has dominated the media in the last week. His hesitancy has added weight to frequent criticisms of the President: that is he timid and in spite of his military background cannot take fast decisions.
Yudhoyono and the Democrat Party's standing had already been falling over the past year, opinion polls say, on the back of internal corruption scandals and a sense of public disappointment over failed reforms.
The Democrats' former treasurer and fund-raiser Muhammad Nazaruddin has been on trial since late last year for siphoning funds earmarked for the South East Asian games. Nazaruddin has vowed not to go down alone. His court revelations have implicated senior members of the President's inner circle, including Sports Minister Andi Mallarangeng and Party Chairman Abas Urbaningrum. Both had been named as possible presidential candidates for 2014. Now it is unlikely either will be able to run. Yudhoyono has not been personally implicated and currently only serves as party 'patron'. He has vowed not to intervene and to let the law run its course.
Voters have taken notice, according to survey organisations. A flurry of polls have concurred that Yudhoyono's personal popularity – and that of the Democrat Party – was falling. The widely cited LSI reported Yudhoyono's personal popularity had fallen from 63.1% in January 2010 to 46.2% in October last year. LSI reported in February that the Democrats had fallen to a 13.7% approval rating from 20.5% a year earlier. Voters said they would prefer former ruling party Golkar, followed by the PDI-P, over the Democrats. Researcher Barkah Pattimayu said a range of factors, including the Nazaruddin scandal, had driven down the Democrats' approval rating.
The next elections are two years away and Yudhoyono cannot constitutionally serve another term. It has certainly been a stressful job. But Yudhoyono has found an outlet in his hobby of singing and guitar playing, releasing three albums in his tenure so far. 'In my spare time from running the people's mandate as a president, I like to express my feelings into works of art,' he says on the album cover of 'I'm Certain I'll Get There' (2010). The album contains songs about love, friendship, and school holidays. Sports Minister Andi Mallarangeng, who testified in Nazaruddin's corruption trial, sang back-up for Yudhoyono in his anthem to the environment, 'Save the Planet', at an international meeting in Oslo.
The ups and downs of politics will certainly give Yudhoyono plenty to sing about in his post-political career.
Photo by Flickr user World Economic Forum.