Interior IG Lets It Rip

Interior Inspector General Earl E. Devaney really let fly at a House subcommittee hearing yesterday, the New York Times reports. “Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior,” he said. Devaney charged that the department suffers from a “culture of managerial irresponsibility and lack of accountability," and that “ethics failures on the part of senior department officials -- taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism and bias -- have been routinely dismissed with a promise ‘not to do it again.’ ” Recently installed Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said he took the IG's allegations “very seriously” and had sent a letter to all employees on his first day at the department on the need to follow ethical guidelines.