The Center for Public Integrity

As far back as the 1980s, studies warned that the collection of levees, walls, and floodgates that surrounded New Orleans might not withstand a storm as strong as Hurricane Katrina. Despite this, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers neglected to update a system that, in retrospect, appears to have been destined to fail. And so when Katrina hit in 2005, storm surges broke down the walls and flooded the city, causing a level of death and destruction that shocked the nation. “This is the first time that the Corps of Engineers has had to stand up and say, ‘We had a catastrophic failure in one of our projects,’” conceded then-corps chief Lieutenant General Carl Strock. As John McQuaid reported in City Adrift, the Center’s investigation into Hurricane Katrina, federal and state panels traced, respectively, 70 percent and 88 percent of the flooding to errors in design of the hurricane protection system. A federal panel, the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET), called the barriers “a system in name only.” Corps scientists knew in the 1980s that the New Orleans levees could not repel category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Robert Bea, who helped lead an investigation of the levee system by University of California at Berkeley engineers, told McQuaid that the Corps’s resistance to change slowed the adoption of new technology. After the storm, the Corps restored flood protection in New Orleans to its pre-Katrina levels, relying in some places on temporary fixes.

A series of audits by the Department of Justice (DOJ) has documented stunningly lax security for laptop computers owned by federal law enforcement agencies. A 2007 report by DOJ’s Inspector General pegged the number of laptops lost, missing, or stolen from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at 160 over 44 months. In many cases, the FBI “could not determine whether the lost or stolen laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information.” A 2008 DOJ audit of the Drug Enforcement Administration found 231 laptops went missing over 66 months. Another audit that year of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) found 418 laptops gone over 59 months. The reports are strewn with examples of missing or stolen computers that went completely or partly undocumented, making it difficult to determine if the laptops held secure information. And in many instances, the missing laptops had not had encryption technology installed that would keep someone from accessing sensitive information — on criminal targets or government informants. According to a 2008 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, about 70 percent of laptops and handheld devices across the major government agencies lack recommended encryption software. Ultimately, these missing, unencrypted laptops increase the risk that national security might be compromised or that Americans might have their identities stolen.

Follow-up:
The GAO reported in June that agencies are working on installing appropriate encryption software, though “none had documented comprehensive plans.” As a result, said the report, “federal information may remain at increased risk of unauthorized disclosure, loss, and modification.”

The National Security Agency (NSA), the government agency responsible for collecting electronic data on threats to the United States, encountered major problems in managing its information systems and providing timely intelligence. A joint congressional inquiry found that the NSA apparently held relevant intercepts prior to the 9/11 attacks that were not processed until after the terrorists had already struck. In another case, the NSA failed to pass on Al Qaeda-related information gathered in 1998 to other intelligence agencies until 2002, due both to the agency’s missteps and its “deficiencies” in keeping up with modern communications. In the aftermath of 9/11, the NSA launched several secret initiatives to avoid such problems. One of these, called Trailblazer, became so plagued by problems that NSA expert Matthew Aid branded it potentially “the biggest boondoggle going on now in the intelligence community.”

In a tag-team move that shortchanged the public’s knowledge of environmental hazards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) loosened reporting requirements on the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Congress created the TRI database in 1986 to allow the public to track toxic chemical emissions. The 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, and a subsequent West Virginia chemical plant leak inspired a system in which facilities discharging or disposing of at least 500 pounds of toxic chemicals per year were required to report totals to a public database. The system seemed to work for two decades. But despite American Chemistry Council data showing a near three-quarters reduction in toxic emissions since the program was enacted, in 2005 the EPA proposed raising the reporting threshold tenfold, while allowing facilities to report only every other year. The EPA said it was aiming to reduce the burden on industry to gather and report data on roughly 650 chemicals. The proposal met opposition from a dozen state attorneys general and health groups such as the American Lung Association and the Breast Cancer Fund. Even the American Petroleum Institute expressed doubts that the agency’s approach would achieve its goal of reducing the burden on industry. In addition to a critical letter from its own Science Advisory Board, the EPA received an overwhelming public response, with comments from 122,420 individuals and groups — all but 34 of whom expressed disapproval. Despite these objections, the EPA formally changed the rule in December 2006. The rule did stop short of the proposed 5,000-pound threshold, instead quadrupling the old reporting requirement from 500 to 2,000 pounds of annual toxic emissions. The Government Accountability Office found that more than 3,500 facilities would no longer have to report detailed information about their toxic chemical releases as a result.

The Clinton administration departed with an unprecedented $127 billion budget surplus, but two prolonged wars and a plummeting economy under President Bush have left the country reeling with a record-setting $455 billion deficit for fiscal year 2008. At a hefty $12 billion per month during 2008, the war in Iraq is one factor that accounts for the runaway red ink. The overall jump in annual defense spending, which ballooned from $295 billion in 2000 to $547 billion in 2007, was another factor. Meanwhile, the rising cost of health care, the economic downturn, and the Bush administration’s 2001 tax cuts have compounded the problem. (Without the tax cuts, for example, the nation would have had a budget surplus as late as 2005.) During Bush’s first year in office, the deficit stood at $32 billion; by 2002, the deficit had skyrocketed by nearly 1,000 percent to $317 billion.

In historic terms, the deficit remains a comparatively modest 3.2 percent of gross domestic product — as opposed to the deficits of the mid-1980s, which hit a record 6 percent of GDP after President Reagan’s tax cuts. But that’s scant comfort for citizens who have watched record surpluses turn into historic deficits, with more bad news likely on the horizon. In September, Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle blamed the deficit on “the slow economy and the bipartisan decision to enact a stimulus package.” The solution, said Nussle: growing the economy “by keeping spending in check.”

Follow-up:
In October 2008, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit for FY 2009 could reach up to $700 billion. But that was before the full impact of the slumping economy and the financial bailout became clear; now some experts say the deficit may rise to a staggering $1 trillion in 2009. That sort of deficit could reach a record-breaking 7 percent of GDP. And it could well constrain the scope of President-Elect Barack Obama’s ambitious agenda.

Though federal records laws make clear that the official records of the president and vice president are public and must, in general, be preserved, the Bush administration has not always done so. The Executive Office of the President must document all “activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies” that reflect the president’s duties, says the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the president may dispose of records “that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value,” only after clearing the decision with the Archivist of the United States. Rather than using government e-mail addresses, which would be archived automatically, 88 Bush administration officials were given Republican National Committee (RNC) e-mail addresses. Of those, the RNC preserved no e-mails for 51 officials and preserved only some of the e-mails of the 37 other officials. By using these external addresses for official business, White House officials circumvented requirements of both the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act and, as a result, oversight committees, litigators, and historians will be denied a chance to get a full and accurate view of the administration’s actions and decision-making processes. The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment, but, when this failure came to light, the White House conceded the error: “I will admit it,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “We screwed up.”

Follow-up:
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform continues to investigate the missing e-mails. A federal judge has ordered the White House to preserve all hard drives, tape backups, servers, and other media that may contain the missing e-mails, in response to a lawsuit by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute at The George Washington University.

The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), the agency responsible for ruling in federal employee labor disputes, has been swamped by a backlog of cases arising from low morale and lack of staffing. In 2007, the agency ranked dead last in the Partnership for Public Service’s listing of the “Best Places to Work” among small government agencies. An independent agency led by three full-time members appointed by the president, the FLRA is responsible not only for setting policies on federal labor-management relations, but also resolving disputes among federal agencies and unions who represent 1.9 million federal employees. The agency’s inspector general (IG) has consistently found issues with staffing levels and management practices, including unresponsive to issues raised by the IG. In its most recent report, issued in April 2008, the IG found that a backlog of 175 issues and suggestions dating back to 1998 were not acted on until January 2008.

The FLRA’s case-writing staff is down to half of what it was five years ago. Carol Pope, one of the members of the FLRA's three-person governing board, referred to the agency’s “human capital issue” as a “crisis.” Adding to the troubles, in 2008 the board was forced to stop work when it suddenly found itself down to one member after the chair stepped down — denying it the quorum required to make any decisions. Because of this, a backlog of over 400 cases was reported in October 2008. At the same time, the agency lacks a general counsel and so the FLRA has also been unable to issue any rulings on unfair labor practices. Newly-confirmed Chairman Thomas Beck told the Center that he was aware of the agency’s problems and that he has both short-term and long-term plans for increasing staff numbers and morale.

A Clinton-era initiative to combine civil and military meteorological programs into one massive new satellite system has been complicated by structural failures, delays, and cost overruns that could potentially hinder the nation’s ability to monitor climate. The National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) — an interagency effort of the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — is supposed to launch four new satellites to replace an aging set that provide data to weather forecasters, climatologists, and the military. The $6.5 billion price tag for the system in 1995 kept climbing until DOD was forced to completely restructure the program in June 2006; as part of that restructuring, the number of new satellites envisioned was reduced from six to four. The Department of Commerce Inspector General — which has jurisdiction over NOAA — found that the project suffered from “poor management oversight and ineffective incentives.” After the program was restructured, the price tag jumped to an estimated $12.5 billion, with a three- to five-year launch delay, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that both the funding picture and the schedule could continue to get worse. The restructuring forced DOD to prioritize space weather monitoring over climate monitoring for the new program, which led to a reduction in the number of satellites and sensors that will monitor the climate. NPOESS has taken steps to mitigate the loss of those climate sensors, but the program still faces a number of hurdles, including problems in quality control and testing delays.

On September 28, 2002, President Bush proclaimed: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons . . . The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are Al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." Just over a year after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the president and his administration used these two fears — unconventional weapons and terrorism — to win public approval for going to war in Iraq. But the premises proved to be false. The chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concluded that President Saddam Hussein had no such weapons or the means to produce them, and the U.S. intelligence community determined that there was no meaningful connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. These conclusions came too late, however. On March 20, 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom began in an attempt to kill the Iraqi president and overthrow his regime. The Center for Public Integrity found that Bush and seven members of his administration made 935 demonstrably false statements in the lead-up to the war, from September 2001 to September 2003, as reported in Iraq: The War Card. The failure of the commander in chief and his administration to gather solid intelligence before sending U.S. troops to war has cost thousands of American and Iraqi lives, billions of tax dollars, and the trust of not only of U.S. allies abroad, but also of a majority of the American people. When asked about the War Card study, a White House spokesman responded: “The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world."

Seven years after the attacks of September 11, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a better idea of who’s coming into the United States, but it cannot say if the visitors are overstaying their welcome. On average, more than 30 million “nonimmigrant” travelers stream in and out of the country each year; DHS estimates that 3.6 million people currently residing in the United States came here on travel visas and overstayed the visas’ limits. Among those numbers, in 2001, were three of the 19 September 11 hijackers. Post-9/11 homeland security measures include US-VISIT, an entry-exit system that is supposed to track travelers in the United States. DHS has invested more than $1.7 billion in the program. Originally, it required immigration officials to collect two fingerprints from visa applicants. Upon a visitor’s entry into the U.S., officials check the prints against databases of “known criminals and suspected terrorists.”