The Center for Public Integrity

Reading First was established under the No Child Left Behind Act as a six-year, $1 billion initiative to help students achieve reading proficiency by the end of third grade, but the Department of Education’s own inspector general has criticized it for favoritism and ineffectiveness. Under the plan, appointed board members would give grants to states, which in turn would award sub-grants to school districts to establish reading programs for kindergarten through third-grade students. But allegations that program directors and board members pressured states to adopt particular reading programs prompted the first of six investigations by the Inspector General. The IG’s conclusion: Department officials were playing favorites, giving grants for certain programs over others.

The Department of Education contended that it screened board members for conflicts of interest. But the inspector general in 2006 deemed the process ineffective, noting that the department failed to look at applicants’ resumes, which clearly indicated potential conflicts. The following year Senator Ted Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued a report concluding that four regional program directors maintained ties with educational publishers while they were under contract with the department for Reading First. The directors were paid to promote certain publishers while simultaneously advising schools to adopt the company’s products. Regardless of the scandal, the program failed to meet its objectives. An April 2008 study revealed the general ineffectiveness of Reading First and found that students in schools receiving funds for the program had no better reading skills than children in schools that did not.

On the Bush administration’s watch, China — and other nations — have succeeded in penetrating countless sensitive and “secure” U.S. facilities, ranging from Congress to military sites, intelligence programs to critical industrial centers, using largely untraceable cyber attacks. Beijing denies the allegations, but U.S. officials have revealed classified information identifying the sources of the attacks within China. Before September 11, 2001, the Bush administration demonstrated little regard for funding the nascent cybersecurity initiatives, and other counter-terrorism efforts, undertaken in the waning 18 months of the Clinton administration. Those efforts were designed to stem vulnerabilities in America’s critical information infrastructure: data services involving transportation, energy, government, finance communications, public safety, health and the military. The list of nightmare scenarios included phone systems crashing and financial records disappearing. “Our information infrastructure . . . increasingly is being targeted for exploitation and potentially for disruption or destruction by a growing array of state and non-state adversaries,” Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell reported to Congress in February 2008. Among the adversaries, McConnell said, were Russia and China. China alone has downloaded from the Pentagon 10 to 20 terabytes of information from “sensitive” computer networks, according to Major General William Lord of the Air Force's Office of Warfighting Integration. In 2007, there were more than 80,000 attacks against Department of Defense computer systems, which “reduced the U.S. military’s operational capabilities,” according to congressional testimony in March 2007 by U.S. Strategic Command Chief General James E. Cartwright.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has often been unresponsive or slow to react to the needs of soldiers and Marines on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in the United States when they return. “A lesson I learned fairly early on was that important elements of the Department of Defense weren’t at war,” and thus failed to support those who were in a wartime posture, said Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. Instead, he explained, they were “preoccupied with future capabilities and procurement programs, wedded to lumbering peacetime process and procedures, stuck in bureaucratic low-gear. The needs of those in combat too often were not addressed urgently or creatively.” According to The New York Times, “In Iraq, Army officers say the Air Force has often been out of touch, fulfilling only half of their requests for the sophisticated surveillance aircraft that ground commanders say are needed to find roadside bombs and track down insurgents.” The DOD press office did not respond to a request for comment, but Gates has criticized the Pentagon’s slow initial procurement of MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles), saying, “I believe that one factor that delayed the fielding was the pervasive assumption . . . that regimes could be toppled, major combat completed, the insurgency crushed, and most U.S. troops withdrawn fairly soon.” Gates sees a lack of accountability at the root of the problems, citing as an example Walter Reed Army Medical Center: “Over a year ago, The Washington Post broke the story about inadequate out-patient care at Walter Reed. I was disappointed by the initially-dismissive response of some in the Army’s leadership, who went into damage-control mode against the press and, in one case, blamed a couple of sergeants. Wrong move. I concluded responsibility lay much higher and acted accordingly.”

During an administration in which all three branches of government debated greenhouse gas regulation, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) was busy suppressing references to a landmark 2000 national assessment on climate change and delaying the congressionally-mandated update of that document. In 2005, Rick Piltz, a senior associate at CCSP, blew the whistle and resigned over politicization that he felt “undermine[d] the credibility and integrity of the program” — a 13-agency research effort overseen by the White House. Piltz testified in an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that reported White House officials heavily edited scientific documents and controlled which climate scientists could speak to the media. Philip A. Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, spearheaded the editing for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) — including 181 edits made to CCSP’s 2003 strategic plan. CEQ deleted nine references to the national assessment — a document that sought to identify key climatic vulnerabilities in the United States. The oversight investigation highlighted other reports by CCSP and the Environmental Protection Agency in which material on climate change was significantly edited or deleted altogether. Cooney resigned after the revelations of his edits (and then went to work for Exxon-Mobil), but the administration called it normal procedure for political appointees to edit work by government scientists. Officials said it was done to echo a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report, but the oversight committee characterized the practice as cherry-picking science. Meanwhile, CCSP failed to meet a required November 2004 deadline to update the national assessment, electing instead to wait and issue 21 separate reports over a multi-year period. Those delays prompted criticism from the Government Accountability Office and the National Research Council.

Ever since Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force took up the issue in 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has looked for ways to loosen the New Source Review (NSR) rules that require old power plants to meet modern pollution standards. NSR amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1977 exempted existing power plants, allowing them to maintain their pollution levels until they were retired, expanded, or significantly modified. In 1999, the EPA and the Department of Justice launched an enforcement campaign after discovering that 70 percent of coal-fired power plants in the United States had violated this arrangement by modifying their facilities while passing it off as “routine maintenance.” This allowed the aging plants to emit tens of millions of tons of pollutants that pose health risks such as respiratory problems and heart disease.

After Cheney’s task force examined the NSR, the EPA proposed a series of rules in 2002 and 2003, which critics say undercut the NSR rules and related enforcement cases. The new rules called for power plants to be reviewed only at higher emission levels than previously established, while simultaneously widening the definition of routine maintenance. The U.S. Court of Appeals struck down that routine maintenance rule in 2006. By then, the EPA had proposed further changes allowing power plant operators to “modify” their facilities as long as maximum hourly emissions do not rise — while making no requirements for annual emissions. Internal documents revealed the Air Enforcement Division of the EPA strongly opposed the proposal.

The Highway Trust Fund — the funding source that pays for most of the nation’s highway improvements — received an emergency infusion of $8 billion from Congress in fall 2008, but the program still faces a long-term cash crisis. The problem, say government watchdogs, is an outmoded revenue-raising model that relies largely on a federal gas tax that has not been adjusted since 1993. This has allowed inflation to eat away at the available money while also leaving the fund short of money when Americans drive less, as in the current economic environment. Overall spending out of the fund has topped revenue since 2002, and the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the trust fund would need transfers of a whopping $100 billion from general fund revenues from 2010 to 2018 to cover projected spending unless reforms are made. In 2008 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) listed transportation financing as a “high-risk area” and reported that the Highway Trust Fund “faces a fiscal imbalance at a time when both congestion and travel demand are growing.” The Department of Transportation (DOT) has repeatedly warned Congress to change a funding approach that is now “ineffective and unsustainable.” In January 2008, a National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission recommended increasing the gas tax over the short term, and focusing long-term on a variety of user fees such as “congestion pricing,” for vehicles traveling at peak times in crowded metropolitan areas. A gas tax hike — never an easy sell politically — is likely to face even tougher going in hard economic times, but clearly new funding streams are needed. “It’s not too late, but we’re running out of time,” said a DOT communications official.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has failed to adequately safeguard the nation’s drug supply, according to various studies and watchdog groups. The agency’s most glaring failure: its lack of action against the popular arthritis and pain medication Vioxx despite clear and convincing evidence that the drug posed a threat to thousands of heart patients. Instead, the FDA — which is responsible for guaranteeing “the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices,” as well as America’s food supply — waited for the drug’s manufacturer to act on its own. In September 2004 the pharmaceutical giant Merck voluntarily withdrew Vioxx after it became evident that the drug increased the risk of cardiovascular events and may have caused tens of thousands of heart attacks. After the tragic failure, FDA whistleblower David Graham testified before a Senate committee that “the FDA, as currently configured, is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx. We are virtually defenseless.” The incident raised troubling questions about the adequacy of the FDA’s safety-monitoring and the agency’s record on safety issues. A 2007 report issued by the Institute of Medicine, a center under the National Academies, blamed the FDA’s problems on “a lack of clear regulatory authority, chronic underfunding, organizational problems, and a scarcity of post-approval data about drugs' risks and benefits.” In the past decade, more than a dozen drugs have been withdrawn from the U.S. market, and around the world, because of risks to patients.

As the most industrialized nation, the United States has been the largest historical contributor to the fossil fuel emissions that have placed the planet in peril of dangerous warming. Yet the government has failed to lead the way to a national or international solution. The Clinton administration participated in the 1997 U.N. negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, for a treaty that would begin to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the developed world. But faced with tough Senate opposition, the Clinton White House never brought up the treaty for a ratification vote. President Bush rejected Kyoto early on as “fatally flawed,” but did not work to negotiate an alternative. Instead he advocated for further scientific research and emphasized that progress could be made with voluntary cutbacks. A Climate Leaders program was established, now involving 232 companies, many of which have reduced carbon emissions through energy efficiency measures — but most have set no goal at all. And the United States, which has seen no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2000, is on track for a 16 percent increase through 2030.

President Bush's military commissions for trying suspected terrorists have fought legal challenges for years, and they have only produced three convictions so far. Before 9/11, terrorists such as Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were routinely tried in U.S. criminal courts. Two months after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush issued an order setting up the commissions, saying it was “not practicable to apply . . . the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts.” In 2002 the Department of Justice advised that Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war did not extend to members of Al Qaeda. This set off a series of battles among the executive branch, Congress, and the courts. After defeats in the Supreme Court, Bush enlisted the help of Congress, which passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006, reestablishing many of the provisions in the president’s original order. But the Supreme Court declared parts of it unconstitutional. In 2007 David Hicks, an Australian who converted to Islam and served with the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty and was returned to Australia. In 2008 military commissions finally convicted Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, bin Laden’s personal secretary. The Department of Defense’s website lists 13 additional cases, one including all six “Sept. 11 Co-Conspirators.” Among the defendants is 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who, seven years after the attacks, still has not been fully tried.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has long been plagued with cost increases and delays in buying new weapons, but an already bad situation became worse over the course of the Bush administration. In 95 weapons programs that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed in 2007, costs grew by nearly $300 billion over the initial estimates, and weapons deliveries were behind schedule by an average of 21 months. The GAO testified before Congress in September 2008 that: “Since fiscal year 2000, DOD significantly increased the number of major defense acquisition programs and its overall investment in them. During this same time period, the performance of the DOD portfolio has gotten worse.” As costs rose, DOD typically bought smaller quantities of new weapons. Meanwhile the need for new equipment has grown more dire, as conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have used up the supply of ground vehicles and aircraft faster than expected. The GAO stated that the Pentagon's "implied definition of success" is whether it gets funding for programs, not how well it manages programs. The DOD "cannot continue to view success through this prism," the GAO stressed.

Follow-up:
DOD Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics John Young has changed some policies in response to the GAO’s criticisms, such as linking award fees to contractors more closely to their performance. The GAO noted, however, that these policies will have to be “adopted and implemented,” and only then may “provide a foundation” for addressing key problems. The DOD press office did not respond to a request for comment, but James Finley, a high-level Pentagon procurement official, told Congress in April 2008 that although Pentagon’s acquisition process was “not broken,” there is a need “to add discipline into the process.” He also noted that DOD was more than two years into a plan to address acquisition problems.