The Center for Public Integrity

When victims of Hurricane Katrina said goodbye to their homes in 2005, they didn’t realize their health might be next. A 2008 examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that thousands of trailers purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for those displaced by Katrina emitted levels of formaldehyde high enough to cause coughing, chest tightness, nausea, skin rashes, and other adverse effects. The thousands of American families forced into these temporary homes were being exposed to what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration calls “a suspected human carcinogen that is linked to nasal cancer and lung cancer.” And according to the committee chairman, California Democrat Henry Waxman, field staff alerted FEMA to the problem, but the agency refused to conduct tests.

A FEMA attorney instructed: “Do not initiate any testing. . . . Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond.” FEMA officials feared that authorizing testing would shift the burden of responsibility to the agency itself, according to the oversight committee. Gulf Stream Coach Inc. won $500 million alone in FEMA contracts within days of the storm and quickly began work on 50,000 trailer homes using low quality engineered-wood products manufactured with formaldehyde, according to published reports. One trailer resident informed Gulf Stream by e-mail in March 2006: “It burns my eyes and I am getting headaches every day. I have tried many things, but nothing seems to work.” In response to a request for comment, a FEMA spokeswoman sent a statement that read, “FEMA neither knowingly, nor willingly, purchased manufactured units from dealerships and manufacturers that contained levels of formaldehyde above existing construction standards, nor did FEMA’s specifications encourage non-compliance with such standards.”

Keeping weapons of mass destruction (WMD) out of the hands of terrorists is cited as the top priority for America’s national security, but efforts to prevent WMD proliferation have not met the challenge, according to government and nonprofit watchdogs. The 9/11 Commission wrote that “the greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United States will materialize if the world’s most dangerous terrorists acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons.” In 2005, in a follow-up progress report, WMD nonproliferation programs scored a “D” on the report card released by the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, led by 9/11 Commission chairs Thomas H. Kean and Lee Hamilton. “Preventing terrorists from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction must be elevated above all other problems of national security because it represents the greatest threat to the American people,” the report warned. In 2008, the Partnership for a Secure America, a bipartisan national security group supported by the 9/11 Commission leaders, followed up on the work of the Public Discourse Project. The partnership’s overall grade for “WMD Terror Prevention” was a “C.” The weakest spots in WMD prevention, according to the report: integration of U.S. programs to prevent nuclear terrorism and the uncertain long-term prospects for those programs; U.S. efforts to recognize chemical threats; detection of covert bioterrorism preparations and U.S. disengagement from the international Biological Weapons Convention. As part of its package implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, Congress created a senior White House position with the title coordinator for the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism. But the Bush administration has yet to appoint someone to the position. Experts say that the threat of terrorists obtaining WMD is very real.

American weaponry intended for Iraqi security forces may have ended up in the hands of insurgents attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, due largely to oversights at the Department of Defense (DOD), according to government auditors. At least 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols disappeared between 2004 and 2005, some 30 percent of all weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces during that time, reported the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in an August 2007 study. While security assistance programs are traditionally operated by the State Department, the Pentagon — as it has in operations throughout the Iraq war— asserted control of the program early on, saying that it could provide greater flexibility. Until December 2005, neither the Pentagon nor Multinational Force-Iraq maintained any central record of equipment distributed during Iraqi security force training (then led by General David Petraeus). The GAO also found that 135,000 pieces of body armor and 115,000 helmets went missing during that time. A subsequent New York Times investigation found that Kassim al-Saffar, an Iraqi businessman Americans entrusted to supply Iraqi police cadets, turned the U.S. armory into a “private arms bazaar” selling weapons to anyone with cash in hand — meaning more U.S. resources wasted in Iraq and greater danger for American troops serving there.

Follow-up:
The DOD reports that it has developed various procedures to address the GAO’s concerns, including soldier-by-soldier collection of biometric data linked to serialized weapons, and weapons inventories conducted by the Multi-National Security Training Command and Iraq Ministries of Defense and Interior. In July 2008, the DOD’s inspector general completed a follow-up report that noted significant improvements in the weapons tracking systems. In the coming months, the GAO also plans to release a follow-up report on missing weapons in Afghanistan.

To compile this list of the most important federal failures of the past eight years, a team of 13 reporters sifted through hundreds of inspectors general reports, Government Accountability Office assessments, congressional oversight investigations, and news stories. The team interviewed dozens of experts, congressional staffers, and leaders of government watchdog organizations and sent e-mails to more than 4,800 federal government employees to solicit nominations for inclusion in this project. Some 250 failures were nominated, from which editors selected more than 125 — those that elicited some level of bipartisan criticism, but also had a discernible impact on ordinary people.

The Team

Editorial Team:
Bill Buzenberg, executive director
David E. Kaplan, editorial director
Gordon Witkin, managing editor
Josh Israel, project coordinator
Tom Stites, consulting editor
Michael Zuckerman, consulting editor

Reporting Team:
Katherine Aaron, Sara Bularzik, Te-Ping Chen, Caitlin Ginley, Andrew Green, M. Asif Ismail, Josh Israel, Sarah Laskow, Marianne Lavelle, Matt Lewis, Aaron Mehta, Nick Schwellenbach, Kate Willson

Fact-checking:
Laura Cheek, Joe Eaton, Caitlin Ginley, Aaron Mehta, Peter Smith

Copy-editing:
Sara Bularzik, Andrew Green, Ariel Olson Surowidjojo

Web Design:
Stephen Rountree, www.rountreegraphics.com
Top Dead Center Design, www.tdcdesign.com

Technical Team:
David Donald
Andrew Green
Tuan Lee
Jeremy Lewis
Ariel Olson Surowidjojo

Media Team:
Steve Carpinelli
The Hatcher Group, www.thehatchergroup.com

George W. Bush is the 43rd president of the United States.

Richard "Dick" Cheney is the vice president of the United States. As the secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush, he directed the U.S. military effort in the 1991 Gulf War. After leaving the government Cheney became the chairman and chief executive officer of Halliburton Company. He was President Gerald Ford's chief of staff from 1975 to 1977. From 1979 to 1989, he served as a U.S. Representative from Wyoming.

Ari Fleischer was the White House press secretary from January 20, 2001, to July 14, 2003, serving as President Bush's principal spokesperson and conducting daily news briefings. Prior to his White House appointment, he served as the senior communications adviser and spokesman for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign.

Scott McClellan was the White House press secretary from July 15, 2003, when he succeeded Ari Fleischer, to May 10, 2006; before that he was the principal deputy White House press secretary. During the 2000 presidential campaign he was George W. Bush's traveling press secretary.

Colin Powell was the secretary of state from January 20, 2001, to January 26, 2005. His 35-year army career included assignments as national security adviser to Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 until 1993, when he retired as a four-star general.

On September 8, 2002, Bush administration officials hit the national airwaves to advance the argument that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes designed to enrich uranium. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney flatly stated that Saddam Hussein "now is trying through his illicit procurement network to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium."

Condoleezza Rice, who was then Bush's national security adviser, followed Cheney that night on CNN's Late Edition. In answer to a question from Wolf Blitzer on how close Saddam Hussein's government was to developing a nuclear capability, Rice said: "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know there have been shipments going into . . . Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to—high-quality aluminum tools that only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."

In April 2001, however, the Energy Department had concluded that, "while the gas centrifuge application cannot be ruled out, we assess that the procurement activity more likely supports a different application, such as conventional ordnance production." During the preparation of the September 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research stated their belief that Iraq intended to use the tubes in a conventional rocket program, but the Central Intelligence Agency's contrary view prevailed.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence subsequently concluded that postwar findings supported the assessments of the Energy Department and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

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