Lobbyists became involved and began selling machines that were less effective than canines. The dogs are friendly. They’re mobile. They scare terrorists because the latter don’t know what the dog is sniffing for—bombs, drugs, cash, or something else. You can use them everywhere from the parking lot all the way to the plane. And they are amazingly effective.
I once went to Afghanistan, visiting Camp Leatherneck. The plane that landed just before unloaded kennels for dogs. I had my picture taken with them. Jokingly I asked the guys, “Hey—where are those WBI machines?” (WBI stands for “whole-body imaging.”) What? “How come you don’t import those WBI machines to find these IEDs?” When I explained, they started laughing.
“This is life-or-death. We’re not going to use some stupid machines that we know how to beat. We like our German shepherds,” they said.
You don’t see these machines at the White House. Or on Capitol Hill. They would never use them at the White House because they don’t work. When it’s serious, they don’t use them.
The Conflict Gets Personal
A USA Today story I read highlighted the fact that these machines could see the bead of sweat on your back. I insisted that the TSA show me how these machines work. I wanted to go behind the scenes and see people getting scanned.
Remarkably, the TSA refused to do it. I pushed and pushed and pushed. They said that for privacy reasons they couldn’t let me look at these machines. I said, Why not? In the back room, a TSA person is sitting at a large television monitor. When they finally let me go back in that room in Salt Lake City, they weren’t doing any scanning. They just showed me where the screen was. This was hardly showing me how the screening worked and what level of invasiveness it entailed. I did the same thing at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., to see if this obstruction was just a Salt Lake City problem.
It wasn’t.
In both circumstances, the TSA legislative liaisons became, shall we say, highly engaged. A number of them flew out to Utah so they could be there to supervise me looking at this process. But they wouldn’t let me witness a live session where people were being scanned. That was a flashing red light. They said that because of privacy concerns I could not watch someone doing their job.
Think about that. The TSA was willing to allow regular TSA employees to look at countless people via this machine and they claimed there was no problem. But it was too sensitive for a member of Congress on the Oversight Committee to look at the scans of anonymous people because of the privacy concerns. I had a top-secret security clearance and was elected to do oversight, but that wasn’t good enough for Homeland Security.
This is a theme we will return to again and again in the book: departments and agencies doing their very best to prevent a member of Congress from coming in and looking around.
When I spoke privately to the TSA personnel, they told me, “If I really wanted to, I could read the date on a coin.” If that was true, that would show that these people could look at men and women in the most intimate ways. (If you think this is a silly concern, you will be especially interested in a later chapter covering Deep State employees spending hours every day downloading pornography.)
The TSA was insistent that no images were taken or transmitted. That is a lie. I finally obtained the actual request for proposal, as such are known, from the TSA to the potential manufacturer. The machines are built with USB ports and storage capacity, and obviously they are transmitting what was taken as a picture and sent to another room for analysis! The machine was built to transmit photos. Even though they testified publicly, under oath, it was a flat-out lie. When I got too technical in my questions, they feigned ignorance.
Media reports also indicated that U.S. marshals had ten thousand of these images stored in Florida. Word got out pretty quickly, particularly in Salt Lake City, that I was a problem for the TSA. Despite my being a frequent flyer and a member of Congress, it became more than a coincidence that I was routinely pulled out of line and asked to go in the scanning machine, which I refused. That meant I had to have a very invasive pat-down.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had such aggressive pat-downs. But it was part of the price the Deep State wanted me to pay for looking under the hood.
In September 2009, I had a major run-in with the TSA at the Salt Lake airport. I’d gotten in line to go through a metal detector. But when I got to the front, I was directed to go to the machine scanner. I refused. I’d gotten in line for the metal detector.
In truth, other than being treated rudely and confronted by a TSA supervisor who refused to give me his badge number, nothing happened. A TSA officer later nastily claimed that I had said things and acted exasperated. Fortunately, Thomas Burr from the Salt Lake Tribune asked for the video through a Freedom of Information Act request. It took weeks to come out but the video backed up my story.
The union representing TSA employees got involved, criticizing me even before they had seen the video. Interesting.
The good that came from my aggressively questioning the TSA tactics and investment in these machines led to a huge change where an algorithm would produce a stick figure that would highlight anomalies for further consideration. It changed the equation dramatically. The drama and various hearings continued throughout 2011 and 2012. Despite assurances that TSA representatives would testify, they often backed out at the last minute.
The FAA Modernization and Reform Act, passed in 2012, required that all full-body scanners operated in airports use “automated target recognition” software, which replaces the picture of a nude body with a cartoonlike representation. As a result of this law, all backscatter X-ray machines formerly in use by the TSA were removed from airports by June 1, 2013.
The TSA said it was because Rapiscan, the backscatter machine manufacturer, did not meet their contractual deadline to implement the software.
The TSA opted instead for “millimeter-wave” scanners. Besides being less invasive and generating fewer health concerns, the TSA claims millimeter-wave scanners also move passengers through faster.
That software also allows for more privacy by generating the images with a generic outline, not the “nude” outline I and others objected to. According to Wired magazine, “Rapiscan came under suspicion for possibly manipulating tests on the privacy software [the automated target recognition software] designed to prevent the machines from producing graphic body images.”
By 2016, the Department of Homeland Security issued a 157-page final report on passenger screening using Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT). DHS stated that AIT is the most effective way to screen passengers. AIT is what they’re calling the full-body imaging technology now.
The story illuminates how the Deep State is not bashful in pushing back against Congress. And today? Though the TSA claimed to up their investment in canines, they are now claiming there is a shortage of bomb-sniffing dogs.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Chapter 3
Money, Sex, and the EPA
The competition for worst-managed agency in the federal government is pretty stiff, as you might imagine. But in my opinion, the winner hands down is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It’s not even close. Words like overreach don’t even begin to describe the abuses perpetrated by this rogue agency. The level of mismanagement we saw during the Obama years is a classic example of what happens when accountability is nonexistent. Without oversight, the agency itself became toxic. Even as people and business are suffering from the abuses, the agency steadfastly resists further scrutiny.
But as you will see, those who are part of the Deep State don’t have to worry about incompetence or mismanagement. They pay no consequences for either.
The EPA was formed in 1970 to safeguard the cleanliness of our air and water and ensure safety in the use of chemicals. Today it is an agency with about 15,000 employees and a budget of $6.14 billion. (And that’s after President Trump has called for a 23 percent budget reduction.)
Here’s o
ne small example of the kind of EPA program President Trump is cutting:
Reduce Risks from Indoor Air (FY 2018 Annualized CR: $13.386 M, 40.7 FTE)
This program addresses indoor environmental asthma triggers, such as secondhand smoke, dust mites, mold, cockroaches and other pests, household pets, and combustion byproducts through a variety of outreach, education, training and guidance activities. This is a mature program where states have technical capacity to continue this work.
Yes. You read that right. President Trump is saving taxpayers $13 million by eliminating a program that seeks to educate people on how to cope with cat hair and cockroaches.
Now let’s talk about former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy. Before she became the EPA top dog, she was assistant administrator from 2009 to 2013. So, let me share a story about somebody she directly supervised. I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to be able to resist giving you all the details of this case. It’s that outrageous.
You can judge for yourself.
Did You Hear the One About John C. Beale?
He’s not a Super Bowl star or the newest winner of The Voice, nor is he dating a Kardashian. He’s not even a politician. No, John C. Beale was once the highest-paid employee at the EPA making $206,000 a year.
And, as it turned out, John Beale defrauded the U.S. government out of $886,000.
How did he do it? Well, mainly by claiming to be a CIA spy.
When he appeared before the House Oversight Committee on October 1, 2013, I told Beale that his tenure with the EPA smelled a lot like the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Catch Me If You Can.
Beale is originally from St. Louis County, Minnesota, which is about an hour and a half from the county seat, Duluth. It’s a Democratic stronghold where mining and forestry are important industries. John Charles Beale was born in 1948. His mother, Marcella, was a nurse and his father, Charles Gordon Beale, was a minister. The family moved from Minnesota to Greenwich, Connecticut, and then to Bakersfield, California, when the senior Beale accepted new ministerial positions.
Young Beale graduated from Bakersfield High School in 1967, went to Chapman College in Orange County for two and a half years, then left school to become a police officer in Costa Mesa. He went into the army in 1971 and trained as a physical therapist and a medic.
After an honorable discharge in 1973, a 2013 Senate report said, Beale led an “itinerant” life in California, going to school at the University of California, Riverside, and earning a degree in political science. As a senior, he briefly interned for Democratic U.S. senator John Tunney. Beale characterized himself as “a very nomadic type of person” in his 263-page deposition to our committee on December 19, 2013.
In 1975 he went to law school at New York University and from there it was off to graduate school at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. There he met Robert Brenner, later a deputy assistant administrator at the EPA. That was a very important connection, as we’ll see. After briefly working at a Seattle law firm, Beale returned to Minnesota to work on his cousin’s apple farm. Just before joining the EPA, Beale was employed at a three-person law firm in Lake City, Minnesota.
Brenner and Beale, by now good friends, bought a rental property in Massachusetts from Beale’s parents in 1983.
With no formal training or experience in EPA matters, Beale became a consultant to the agency in 1987, hired by Brenner. The job, he recalled in his deposition, would “give me a lot of work with the Hill, which I’d had some experience in, would require a lot of liaison work with the Office of General Counsel, because that’s inevitable when you’re drafting legislation, and as an attorney, I knew how to talk to lawyers.”
When asked if he and Brenner had discussed the possibility that his lack of environmental experience might impede his getting the job, Beale said, they had talked about it, “but we agreed that I’m a fast learner and I can pick that stuff up.”
In fact, Beale stated, his only expertise was that he had “done a lot of negotiating in my law profession.” Still, once hired, he worked on amendments to the Clean Air Act and was good enough at his job that the team he worked with got the EPA’s Gold Medal for Exceptional Service for its efforts.
By 1989, Beale was a full-time federal employee with the title of senior policy analyst within the Office of Policy Analysis and Review—even though he was ambivalent about his latest career choice. “I didn’t plan on staying. I was living in a rented apartment with rented furniture, and I was looking around, making plans to go to other places and to do other things,” he said in a deposition.
To keep him from accepting any of several alleged private sector job offers, in 1991 the EPA gave Beale a “retention bonus,” as recommended by his supervisor, Brenner. That bonus amounted to 25 percent of his annual salary, and Beale received it for not just one but three years. There would be additional retention bonuses in future years. We discovered those were paid mainly because nobody remembered to stop paying them.
Over the next decade, Beale was a noteworthy employee. During the October 1, 2013, hearing, Brenner testified that “John had established a track record that made him one of the most highly regarded members of the EPA. He developed many strong relationships at EPA, on the Hill . . . and he became a frequent and well-respected participant in clean air strategy meetings at the White House.” According to the Washingtonian, “EPA employee Lydia Wegman, who worked with Beale until the mid-’90s, would later laud his charisma and gift for mastering complex issues: ‘He could . . . explain them clearly and forcefully to others both within and outside EPA, and marshal persuasive arguments in support.’” Beale himself claimed that “I had earned the trust and the respect of people at all levels in the organization, career employees, political appointees, Republican and Democratic, and had been very successful in accomplishing a lot.” All this good work and goodwill resulted in three EPA gold medals, two commendations—the Lee M. Thomas Excellence in Management Award and the Fitzhugh Green Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Environmental Protection—and a 1999 promotion with the new title of Senior Advisor to the Assistant Administrator.
And then, in 2000, things started to change. Suddenly this unremarkable-looking middle-aged man did not turn up at his EPA office on certain Wednesdays. His electronic calendar explained the absence as “D.O. Oversight,” supposedly meaning that he would be at the Directorate of Operations, or CIA headquarters, in Langley, Virginia. That happened 9 days in 2000, 15 days in 2001, 22 days in 2002, 14 days in 2003, 18 days in 2004, 25 days in 2005, 3 days in 2006, and 1 day in 2007—which adds up to 107 days over 7 years. In 2008, he took off nearly all of the six months from June to December, only occasionally showing his face in the office.
Did anybody notice? Did they miss him? Or ask why he was absent? “Because of my personality and because of the fact that I traveled a lot for international work and because a lot of times . . . when you’re working with Hill staff and members, people from agencies don’t have that show up on their calendars because they’re confidential sessions,” Beale stated in his deposition.
Now, you’d think that when somebody doesn’t show up for work, the logical question might be . . . where are they? Wrong! Not the federal government. The logical conclusion among some federal employees? They are in the CIA!
There were rumors in the office that Beale was a spy for the CIA. “People would joke about it and I would deny it and I would laugh it off or I would say something like, well, if I told you anything I’d have to kill you. I mean, it was a—it was a joke.”
But then it wasn’t a joke. Beale told at least one boss, Assistant Administrator Jeff Holmstead, that he did work for the CIA. He testified that he said, “‘Jeff, I’ve had this experience working before, working for the CIA, and they’ve asked me if I would on a limited basis help out with reviewing operations.’” Holmstead not only bought the story, he never asked for any documentation of Beale’s secondary employment. Moreover, when Beale pitched a spe
cial research project in 2005 that would allow him to work from home, Holmstead and another supervisor gave it the green light. This project, which Beale said he described as a way to “kind of modify the capitalist system to achieve the very goals we wanted,” would have three phases and would take “100 percent” of Beale’s time for at least three years. He would work at home “in order to not be constantly interrupted with colleagues having questions and wanting to talk to me about things.”
Beale had a series of supervisors over the years. The CIA excuse satisfied most of them when they bothered to ask why he wasn’t at work. He lied to Assistant Administrator Bob Meyer in 2008, telling him “I was going to be working on a special process for the agency on executive protection. . . . I fabricated that story,” he told us in his deposition.
And then we have a May 2010 email to his boss Gina McCarthy—yes, the same Gina McCarthy now criticizing President Trump and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt—that read, “Gina, contrary to what I believed when we spoke last Tuesday, I do have to travel out of the country next week. Events last weekend have made this trip necessary. I expect to be back in about ten days.” McCarthy, this savvy custodian of America’s air and water, replied, “Thanks John. Stay safe.”
Another time he fabricated an overseas trip, saying “I had to make a fast trip to London last night. Still here but heading home in a few hours. Will be back around 2100 tonight and will be in the office tomorrow. Sorry for this diversion.” At other times he claimed to be in Pakistan or “in the tank,” referring to being at the CIA.
So, what was Beale actually doing? He admitted to us that he would be at home in Virginia where he would “read, bicycle [or] work on the house.” A logical question would be, didn’t his family inquire why he was spending so much time at home? According to his deposition, he began lying to his wife, Nancy Kete, as early as 1994, telling her that he worked for the CIA. She had been an EPA employee as well but moved to New York to take on a position at the Rockefeller Foundation in 2012. As of his appearance before our committee, the two were still married.
The Deep State Page 3
