Editorial: A polluted culture

Saturday, Sept. 16, 2006 | 8:15 a.m.

In scathing testimony before a congressional committee earlier this week, the Interior Department's inspector general accused top department officials of ethical failures, favoritism and cronyism.

"Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior," Inspector General Earl E. Devaney on Wednesday told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy.

Devaney had been asked to testify regarding the Interior Department's "bureaucratic bungling" of 1,000 oil and natural gas leases that could result in billions of dollars worth of lost royalties revenue for the federal government. He also was asked to comment on the department's overall culture of "managerial irresponsibility and lack of accountability."

He described the arrogance of upper-level Interior Department officials who summarily dismissed dozens of inspector general's reports that detailed the department's widespread ineptitude.

People awarded bonuses after their programs failed, massive project collapses and "indefensible failures to correct deplorable conditions in Indian country" - all were reasons that Devaney called for work to "disassemble the troubling culture."

He was particularly angered by the department's dismissal of some two dozen alleged ethical missteps by J. Steven Griles, a former lobbyist who served as deputy interior secretary during President Bush's first term. Griles resigned amid allegations that he promoted policy decisions that favored, or sought contracts for, his former oil and gas industry clients.

Troubling, indeed. Devaney's testimony should not be the last public discussion of the polluted culture that the Bush administration has allowed to exist within the Interior Department. Congress should call for a full investigation of this broken department.