Washington accountability

One of the noticeable characteristics of America’s government in recent years is that there is little or no accountability in Washington. When government officials violate the law, nothing happens. No heads roll. Nobody goes to jail. Nobody get fired. Nothing – nada – happens!

I note that FBI Director Muller testified to a Congressional committee on March 5, 2008, that in 2006, for the fourth year running, the FBI improperly and illegally accessed the telephone records, credit reports, and internet traffic of Americans, using national security letters (basically a request backed up with no legal or valid warrant). He had made essentially the same report to Congress the previous two years. Yet nothing has happened.

I note that Representative William Jefferon (D-La) is still in Congress, even though in 2005 the FBI recovered almost $90,000 in marked bills from his home freezer as part of a sting operation, for which he was indicted in 2007 on 16 criminal counts.

I note that Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to abide by Executive Order 12958 as amended by Executive Order 13292, which requires executive branch officials to submit annual reports to the Information Security Oversight Office to ensure that classified information is properly secured, and yet there seems to have been no consequences.

Here in our town of Los Alamos, Former Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Peter Nanos, in a gross overreaction and with DOE concurrence, closed down the entire Laboratory in 2004 for seven months, at a cost to the taxpayers in excess of $360 million, over what turned out to be a simple clerical error (the two “missing” bar codes had never be put on anything). This despite the fact that it was clear within a few days of the event that it had been a simple clerical error. Yet no one in government (or in the University of California, who managed the lab, or in the direct laboratory management) was ever held accountable. Indeed, the DOE subsequently even awarded the new contract back to essentially the same management team that had made this blunder.

Watch the news and you will see similar violations almost every week, and nothing ever happens!

Why do we, the American people, let this go on? Does anyone care? Does anyone even notice?