The Spook that Never Was

How an EPA employee stole $900K by pretending to be a CIA agent

BY: CJ Ciaramella — Free Beacon
October 2, 2013 12:24 pm

The strange and sordid saga of John Beale, a top Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official who defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000, has by turns outraged, flabbergasted, and sickened members of Congress, but on Tuesday it achieved something even rarer: It left them speechless.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), the head of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had asked one of Beale’s former supervisors, Robert Brenner, if he had seen Beale lately.

“I’ve seen Mr. Beale,” Brenner testified, pausing to chew over his next sentence. “Well, I’ve seen him a lot over the last two weeks. He’s renting out his home, so he’s staying in my guest house right now.”

For a brief moment, the oversight committee, usually full of bluster, was left gob smacked.

Over the course of two congressional hearings Monday and Tuesday, new details emerged about Beale, a former top EPA official who over the course of 13 years bilked the agency out hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent travel vouchers and illegal bonuses. Along the way, Beale falsely claimed to be an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, a Vietnam War veteran, and remained on payroll for over a year after a retirement party on a Potomac dinner cruise.

Overall, Beale spent two and a half years absent from work while still getting paid. According to investigators, he committed time card fraud, travel fraud, impersonated a federal agent, and misused a government passport, among other crimes.

In the House oversight hearing, Issa noted that if Beale had actually retired, he would have gotten away scot-free.

“That is 100 percent correct,” Sullivan replied.

“I guess we should be happy he got greedy,” Issa said.

http://freebeacon.com/the-spook-that-never-was/

What a sordid affair and going on for decades. What does it take to get to the bottom of things?

Obama: EPA is the gate to the climate

From NRO :

If only President Obama simply had cried wolf. Instead, the president announced that, on behalf of “all of humankind,” he is in effect directing the EPA to take over the American economy. New power plants will be subject to emissions controls, and existing plants will have to be retrofitted to comply with new standards. New restrictions on heavy trucks will affect the movement of freight and goods across the country.

New subsidies will be handed down for politically connected energy firms, and federal lands will be set aside for their use. New federal impositions will affect the construction of factories, commercial buildings, and private homes.

The president says that this is all enabled by the “overwhelming judgment of science.” It certainly has not been enabled by something so mundane as the law. We rather suspect that the overwhelming judgment of Congress would be against the president’s program of regimenting the entire American economy under the management of a newly empowered EPA. But the president has made it clear that he intends to act largely through administrative fiat, subverting the democratic process and the people’s elected representatives. Unhappily, the Supreme Court has abetted this ambition by misconstruing the Clean Air Act as a warrant of action on global warming.

Every economic activity involving energy or transportation — which is to say, every economic activity — will be affected by the president’s global-warming program.

More: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352025/obamas-radical-climate-agenda-editors

Barry-‘Ozone’-Obama lays out his second term “climate” strategy:

(it reads something like this, no matter what he says or promises — a little satire)

“I will continue laying out scandals. The air in DC will become extremely inhospitable, putting air conditioning and filtration at a premium. You all will continue to try to make me look bad. I will continue to lie… I mean you all are so gullible.

The political pollution in DC will reach a historical high. Clouds of chaos and confusion will slow even traffic to a crawl. Never let a storm go to waste. I will continue to demonize my opponents or anyone in my way.

I will use any… and I mean any, extraordinary and unconstitutional means to achieve my ends to extort the climate for every political and geo-political opportunity I possibly can. And there won’t be a damn thing you can do about me using executive power and regulation to accomplish it. Oh, like what are you going to impeach me or something? Like I said, you people are so gullible.”

Yet during Barry’s glorious Georgetown address, another controversy erupted because all the networks cut away – even MSNBC. That prompted a tweet from NYT reporter that you could turn to one network covering the entirety, the Weather Channel. (good thing he wasn’t upstaged by a storm..) Wolfy Blitzer just talked over it. No loss there.