DoD catalogs hundreds of pages of ethical lapses
Pick up the paper these days and you’re likely to read about the latest military scandals. The Navy is dealing with bribery, lavish trips, and prostitutes, the Air Force and Navy have cheating scandals in nuclear training, the Army National Guard is explaining improper recruiting bonuses, and more. All the usual and appropriate noises are being made in reply. Defense Secretary Hagel is appointing an ethics officer, investigations are being started, blue ribbon panels are being appointed, blah, blah, blah. This would be just another sad litany of beaurocratic malfeaseance if not for one stand-out response… The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure (EEF). Written in everyday English rather than Pentagon-speak, the EEF documents hundreds of case studies of Federal workers, military and civilian, whose ethical senses inexplicably went on vacation. As you might expect, it makes some good reading…
The (EEF) was prepared by the Standards of Conduct Office of the Department of Defense General Counsel’s Office, with the intent of “provid[ing] DoD personnel with real examples of Federal employees who have intentionally or unwittingly violated the standards of conduct.” The goal is “ultimately to motivate federal employees to contact their agency’s ethics counselors when in doubt about the right way to handle a situation.” While it was prepared for DoD personnel and uses many examples from the military, the EEF could be uses by any governmental or private organization as an excellent guide to what NOT to do.
Cautionary tales in the EEF are organized by categories like “Abuse of position”, “Bribery”, “Gambling violations”, “Misuse of government equipment”, etc. Here’s two samples to get you started, but the rest… the rest, you’ll just have to read for yourself.
Employees Fail to Profit from Red Tape
Two workers at the Veterans Affair’s Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy, which mails prescriptions to veterans, were charged with taking kickbacks for purchasing a product from a supplier at more than twice the normal price. The product? Red tape. The employees were charged with purchasing 100,000 rolls of the tape, which is stamped with the word “security” and is meant to deter tampering, at $6.95 a roll rather than its $2.50 retail value. In return, they received kickbacks of more than $1 per roll. The duo will have plenty of time to appreciate the irony of their situation, as they face a sentence of 15 years in jail.
“And they even pay me for doing this.”
The Merit Systems Protection Board affirmed the decision by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to remove a criminal investigator for willful misuse of a Government vehicle. The former official was engaged in a social and sexual relationship with a confidential source of information, who was also the wife of a convicted drug trafficker. The former official received daily gifts from the confidential source. He used his official Government vehicle to travel to the residence of the confidential source, and to transport her from her residence to the Miami airport and to the Café Iguana for purely social reasons. He even gave her some DEA-owned ammunition for use in her own gun.
