DPC | July 18, 2007

Senate Oversight Highlights Week of July 9, 2007

“It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents.…” — Woodrow Wilson

 

Congress has the Constitutional responsibility to perform oversight of the Executive Branch and matters of public interest. This report summarizes highlights from each week’s Senate oversight hearings.

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2007: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia
“From Warehouse to Warfighter: An Update on Supply Chain Management at DOD”

• Improving the Department of Defense’s supply chain management is critical to our national security.
   
• Department of Defense officials have been planning to meet the logistical challenges of the redeployment of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.
   
• While the Department of Defense has improved its supply chain management, many significant problems remain.

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2007: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery
“FEMA’s Project Worksheets: Addressing a Prominent Obstacle to Gulf Coast Rebuilding”

• Project worksheet cost estimates for the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction effort were significantly inaccurate and undervalued. 
   
• Inexperienced and transient FEMA staff contributed to the inefficient, slow, and contradictory reconstruction effort. 
   
• The Stafford Act and its implementation by FEMA contributed to the reconstruction problems.

 

Wednesday, July 11, 2007: Senate Committee on the Judiciary

“Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys? – Part VI”

• The President’s overbroad assertion of executive privilege contradicts previous assertions that the White House wasn’t involved in the U.S. Attorney firings. 
   
• Frustrated with inconsistent and conflicting testimony, both Republicans and Democrats are calling for Attorney General Gonzales’s resignation. 
   
• Sara Taylor’s testimony suggested that she put her oath to the President above her oath to uphold the Constitution.

 

Wednesday, July 11, 2007: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

“Hearing on Strengthening the Unique Role of the Nation’s Inspectors General”

• Senators questioned whether the selection criteria for Inspectors General can impair their independence.
   
• Witnesses discussed Bush Administration attempts to avoid independent oversight investigations by the Office of the Inspector General into the Department of Justice’s dismissal of U.S. Attorneys and the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program.
   
• The Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight supported a fixed term with the possibility of reappointment for Inspectors General as a way of protecting their independence.

 

Wednesday, July 11, 2007: Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety

“Review of EPA’s Proposed Revision to the Ozone NAAQS [National Ambient Air Quality Standards]”

• Senators and witnesses discussed the negative health impacts of the current ozone standard.
   
• The EPA’s proposed range for ozone levels includes the current standard, which it admits is unsafe. 
   
• Senators and witnesses criticized the EPA for playing politics instead of relying on science.

 

Thursday, July 12, 2007: Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education and Pensions

“Nomination of James W. Holsinger, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., of Kentucky, to be Medical Director and Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services”

• Senators questioned whether Dr. Holsinger would cave to pressure from the Bush Administration and suppress science in favor of politics. 
   
• Dr. Holsinger addressed past studies he published that misrepresented data and cast homosexuality as “unhealthy and unnatural.” 
   
• Senator Mikulski discussed Dr. Holsinger’s mismanagement of Veterans Affairs medical facilities and his response to a sexual harassment scandal during his time as medical director at the VA.
   

Thursday, July 12, 2007: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
“Dirty Bomb Vulnerabilities: Fake Companies, Fake Licenses, Real Consequences”

• The Government Accountability Office’s successful clandestine operation highlighted the need for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change their license inspection policy. 
   
• The material that the Government Accountability Office’s clandestine operation obtained could have been used to make a dirty bomb. 
   
• Improvements in licensing procedures, such as mandatory site visits, were recommended in order to maintain nuclear security.

Improving the Department of Defense’s supply chain management is critical to our national security, especially with our troops fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

SEN. AKAKA: Supply chain management has been on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list since 1990, and that’s far too long. My good friend, Senator Voinovich, and I are dedicated to seeing this issue removed from the list. Since 2005, he and I have chaired three hearings on supply chain management, and this will be our fourth…. 

Supply chain management is critical in our security. It affects the safety of men and women in uniform who are currently engaged in two simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even after these conflicts end, the effect of supply chain management will remain vital….

SEN. VOINOVICH: My continued interest in investigating and improving the department’s supply chain management is guided by two principles. First, with a budget of well over $400 billion and resources and supply chain amounting to more than $162 billion, the department must be a good steward of taxpayer dollars…. Second, and arguably more important, given Operation Iraq Freedom, inefficient, ineffective and redundant steps within the supply chain can have a direct and negative impact on the warfighter. We must assure that the current supply chain system at the department has the ability to deliver the right items at the right time to the right place to our soldiers in the battlefield.

 

Department of Defense officials have been planning to meet the logistical challenges of the redeployment of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

SEN. AKAKA: When we eventually begin redeploying forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, this moment will present a significant logistical challenge since we have been there for several years now and moved many assets there. My question to each of the three of you is what planning, if any, have you done to ensure that we have the logistics capability to leave the theater and return our assets back to the U.S.? Mr. Bell? 

Jack Bell, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness, Department of Defense (DOD): Yes, sir. It’s obviously fair to say that we have extensive planning activities currently underway throughout DOD addressing that question. So that when the time comes and the decision is made to begin to draw down forces, that we will have put in place the capabilities logistically to do that in the right order with the right amount of equipment coming down in the right sequence. That effort has been underway for some time and is being discussed at all levels both in CENTCOM in Iraq, as well as the Pentagon. 

SEN. AKAKA: General Schwartz? 

General Norton A. Schwartz, Commander, United States Transportation Command: Sir, I would concur with that. I would say that our objective, and this is really Central Command’s objective, is to execute a retrograde, the redeployment, whatever that turns out to be, with the same precision that we would execute a deployment. 

To take you back a few years, during the rollup for Desert Shield/Desert Storm, materiel returned to the United States without good visibility, went to the wrong port. Materiel was lost. We will not repeat that exercise…. 

Lieutenant General Robert Dail, Director, Defense Logistics Agency: Sir, I would echo the comment that General Schwartz made about our entire focus would be on ensuring that we support Central Command’s, Admiral Fallon’s plans to execute whatever operations that he would undertake. 

The Defense Logistics Agency is a largely contractual operation. So we have already begun planning about what kinds of capabilities we would need to increase to support a redeployment of some sort in the future.

 

While the Department of Defense has improved its supply chain management, many significant problems remain.

SEN. AKAKA: To begin, let me congratulate the Defense Department for what it has done well in supply chain management. I am very impressed by the progress made by the Defense Logistics Agency in implementing the Joint Regional Inventory Materiel Management initiative, or JRIMM, which has now been operational in my home state of Hawaii on Oahu. And it has been operating since August of last year. I hope that we will continue to see the benefits of jointly managing supplies regionally as JRIMM is expanded, in the Pacific Command and in other regions. I also want to recognize the progress made by the Transportation Command in implementing several forward-looking initiatives as it grows into its role as the distribution process owner. 

However, having said all of this, there are several areas where I’m especially, especially concerned about. First, poor, poor container management continues to be a serious problem. At this moment, DOD cannot account for more than 50,000 containers in the Central Command theater. They are lost. They have disappeared. Many of these containers do not even belong to the military. 

DOD also has thousands of containers that it’s simply failed to return to the commercial owners who, in turn, charge the government late fees for getting them back. This has forced the Defense Department to buy them out. It has spent $203 million to buy out over 25,000 containers. Now it has thousands of containers that are its responsibility if it can ever find them. This is exactly the kind of waste that helps put this issue on the high-risk list. 

Asset visibility cannot be fully achieved without adequate technology applied to the supply chain. The radio frequency identification initiation or RFID, in theory, will track every palette and every container from the warehouse to the war fighter. This capability has been in use in the private sector for years now, and has greatly improved inventory and visibility. While implementation of RFID continues to move forward at DOD, there is still a long way to go. 

We also need to ensure that information systems involved with logistics can communicate with each other. Personnel in the field are being forced to find tedious, manual workarounds to exchange information between different computer systems. Computers working in joint operations cannot always automatically exchange needed data. 

The Defense Department needs to formulate a unified, comprehensive strategy to address future logistic capabilities. It has been promised since we started these hearings that the department was working toward that goal. I am particularly concerned that the to be road map, which was supposed to provide the strategy, is still not complete, even though it was supposed to be released last February. 

Without a long-term strategy, all of the links in the supply chain – the Defense Logistics Agency, the Transportation Command and the Combatant Commands are likely to end up with their own approaches, which may not be consistent. As chairman of the Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee, I know that failure to modernize business processes contributes greatly to all of DOD’s high-risk areas. These areas also have to be removed from GAO’s high-risk list.

 

The Department of Defense is taking steps to ensure that efforts to improve supply chain management continue smoothly once a new presidential administration takes office.

SEN. AKAKA: I’d like to end with a question about sustainability of the Department’s efforts in supply chain management. In less than 18 months, there will be a new administration running the Department of Defense. What steps are you taking now to ensure that progress made so far doesn’t end when the civilian leadership turns over at the Pentagon?

DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY BELL: Thank you, Chairman Akaka. Several important steps we have underway. Number one, as a team here, we are focusing in our overall supply chain management efforts to institutionalize all of the key elements of the improvement program and you’ve heard different elements of that described today. 

On a personal basis, within my shop, I have identified and designated a principal deputy, assistant deputy under secretary of defense, who is well known to you, Alan Estevez, who has been up and reported to you frequently, who will have the responsibility for managing the transition on the carry-through on all of the items that we have in implementation. And Alan, as you know, has been intimately involved in the whole supply chain improvement program during this period. 

We are also working with the other commands to make sure that the elements that we need to have in place get sufficiently documented so that when there is a transition occurring in administrations, our plan is to have a transition handover book available for the new administration that identifies all the new initiatives and all of the key points of contact within the Department of Defense that are working on these initiatives.

The project worksheet cost estimates for the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction efforts were extraordinarily inaccurate and undervalued.

SEN. LANDRIEU: The project worksheet [PW] system is inefficient, slow and contradictory. Anyone who comes in contact with it quickly understands it is one of the major roadblocks to our recovery from Katrina and Rita…. Communities are prevented from building better and smarter. Our locals must re-justify their projects because of FEMA’s [Federal Emergency Management Agency] high employee turnover. And FEMA inspectors systematically low ball damage estimates, in some cases by four or five times. 

… 

C. RAY NAGIN, MAYOR, CITY OF NEW ORLEANS: As of June 29, FEMA had written 837 project worksheets totaling an estimated 347 million; the city had received only $182 million in reimbursements from the state – a deficit of more than $160 million on an estimate already significantly below what the cost of replacement or reconstruction is expected.

… 

COLONEL JEFF SMITH, ACTING DIRECTOR, GOVERNOR’S OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PERSONNEL, STATE OF LOUISIANA: Another significant problem is the inferior quality of the PWs. Many PWs were prepared by FEMA using grossly underestimated costs for eligible project work and we have encountered innumerable problems with the accuracy of scope and eligibility of projected work…. Understanding that the projects have been undervalued, applicants are reluctant to proceed with a project when FEMA obligated funds at the start of the project are significantly less than the funds needed for completion of the project. Some of the PWs are underestimated by a factor of four or five times compared to the actual cost. The State Office of Facility Planning and Control, the Louisiana agency responsible for the rebuilding of all state owned facilities, has reported actual cost of completed projects average four times the original FEMA PW estimate. Jefferson Parish has reported projects costs 2.5 times the PW estimates. New Orleans has estimated the costs of repair/replacement of their facilities to be over $200 million more than the FEMA estimates.
 

Inexperienced and transient FEMA staff contributed to the inefficient, slow and contradictory reconstruction effort.

KEVIN DAVIS, PRESIDENT, ST. TAMMANY PARISH, LOUISIANA: The speed with which FEMA personnel changed created havoc with the PW process. Each new person coming in wanted the wording his or her way or even questioned the need for such a PW….Our employees did not rotate in and out and their stress levels continued to grow throughout the recovery process. Changing federal personnel made their jobs even harder at a time when they most needed help. These issues clearly demonstrate the need for consistent training and personnel continuity in emergency situations. Proper training will save lives, property, and tax payer dollars. 

… 

HENRY J. RODRIGUEZ, PRESIDENT, ST. BERNARD PARISH, LOUISIANA: Many FEMA representatives would write project worksheets with inaccurate, undocumented cost estimates, despite the Parish’s personnel, experienced in the subject field, offering documented costs estimates. In many cases, the Parish’s estimates or contract costs were arbitrarily reduced. 

…

MARK MERRITT, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF RESPONSE AND RECOVERY, JAMES LEE WITT ASSOCIATES: The lack of experienced staff with true authority in the field not only bogs down the recovery progress, but it represents a real missed opportunity for FEMA. Following the Northridge Earthquake, the Associate Director for Response and Recovery – along with key staff – spent significant amounts of time on the ground working in Pasadena. Unfortunately, I do not see the many of the same high-level people, who are empowered to make programmatic fixes, sitting with us in Baton Rouge these days. The absence of the agency’s senior leadership in the field is hurting the recovery effort in Louisiana and it is not allowing FEMA to seize the opportunity for improving the responsiveness of our assistance programs in preparing for the next catastrophic disaster. 

…

JAMES WALKE, DIRECTOR, PUBLIC ASSISTANCE DIVISION, DISASTER ASSISTANCE DIRECTORATE, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: For disasters as large as Katrina that present an enormous amount of projects over a vast geographic area, it is very difficult to keep the same staff on site for the duration of the recovery operation. While many staff were deployed to the Gulf Coast states following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for many months, eventually they were transitioned out and replaced with new staff…. Our strategy to mitigate the impact of transition staff in and out of long-term recovery operations is to hire people locally to manage the long-term recovery operations. This was a significant challenge following Katrina and Rita because of the competition for skilled resources.

 

The Stafford Act and its implementation by FEMA contributed to the reconstruction problems.

MR. NAGIN: We recommend a change to the Stafford Act that would establish a definition of “catastrophic disaster” for events such as Katrina to be differentiated in scale from “major disasters” and to amend the timeframes and formulas for assistance that a “catastrophic disaster”would call for. The extent of the devastation should determine the level of response. This trigger should automatically provide up front funding, extend the 100 percent reimbursement time frames for emergency work, increase assistance calculations for all grant programs and make provisions for rapid delivery of operational funds for devastated jurisdictions and their critical agencies….[T]he Stafford Act should extend deadlines for applications of assistance following catastrophe designation. 

…

MR. MERRITT: The Stafford Act, 44 CFR, and the 9500 Series, which is the compendium of policies for FEMA’s Public Assistance (PA) Program, outline all of what cannot be funded by the PA Program and some of what can be funded by the Program. The idea was to place boundaries on what is possible, yet provide maximum flexibility within the law to meet critical disaster record…. If the issue in question is not prohibited explicitly by law, regulation, or policy then the next question should be, does it make sense? If it passes both tests, every effort should be made to allow the course of action to proceed. Unfortunately, this is not how the Public Assistance program – or any authority under the Stafford Act, for that matter – is currently being managed….The Stafford Act was not written for a catastrophic event…. We are desperately in need of a catastrophic annex to allow the rules that they are restricted by to be modified in those circumstances and those things that are too open for interpretation because of the general nature of the act can be restricted a little bit further to take people’s interpretation out of it so we know exactly what are rules are going into it.

 

The President’s overbroad assertion of executive privilege contradicts previous assertions that the White House wasn’t involved in the U.S. Attorney firings.

SEN. LEAHY: From the outset of this scandal, the President’s spoken about the firing of U.S. Attorneys as if it were a matter handled and decided by the Attorney General, and something Mr. Gonzales would have to explain to Congress and the American people; the President was hands off and at arms’ length. Are we now to understand from the White House claims of executive privilege that these were decisions made by the President? That’s a direct contradiction of the President’s earlier statement that he’s not responsible for this scandal, for the firing of such well-regarded and well-performing U.S. Attorneys, apparently in some instances for partisan political purposes and to affect elections. 

When we had the Attorney General testify under oath, he did not know, according to his testimony, who added U.S. Attorneys to the list of those to be fired or the reasons they were added. Indeed, the bottom line of the sworn testimony – sworn testimony – from the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Attorney General’s former chief of staff, the White House liaison and other senior Justice Department officials that they were not responsible. 

Senator Specter said recently that two of the questions at hand are who ordered the firings and why? We need answers to these questions. Who did make these decisions? Was it, in fact, the political operatives at the White House? Was it an attempt to affect elections? What role did Ms. Taylor and others in Karl Rove’s White House political office play? And if the decisions were not made by anybody at the Justice Department, who made them? 

… 

SEN. SPECTER: I think it is really important to get to the bottom of these issues. They are very serious charges, about asking U.S. Attorneys to resign for improper reasons. 

No one questions that the President has the authority to terminate all the U.S. Attorneys for no reason, as President Clinton did in January of 1993, at the start of his term. But similarly, I think it is agreed that the President cannot terminate a U.S. attorney or ask for a resignation for an improper reason. 

But the Department of Justice is second only to the Department of Defense on the important functions of protecting the American people. It’s the investigation of terrorism. It’s the investigation of organized and violent crime, drug dealings, and many, many important subjects.

 

Frustrated with inconsistent and conflicting testimony, both Republicans and Democrats are calling for Attorney General Gonzales’s resignation.

SEN. SPECTER: I believe that the continued tenure of Attorney General Gonzales, as I’ve said publicly and privately, is not in the national interest…. I think it may well be, when we finish this investigation, that the reasons for his departure may be overwhelming. They’re being built upon day by day. Yesterday’s headlines contained the additional misfeasance – perhaps even malfeasance – on the part of the Attorney General in not disclosing to Senate committees the fact that the FBI had abused its authority and its power when he said that there were no instances, when we were considering the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, of abusive practices by federal law enforcement officials. 

… 

SEN. SPECTER: The Attorney General called me up before he testified and sought some advice, and I said, “I’m glad to give you advice, Al. This is not a gotcha game.” What we need to know in specifics is why each one of these individuals was asked to resign, and we need to know if there’s documentation on it, and we need to know if there’s corroboration as to the reasons so we can evaluate it. 

We’ve had just a lot of smoke about U.S. Attorney Lam because [she was] hot on the trail of Duke Cunningham’s confederates. We’ve had a lot of smoke on a lot of subjects. 

After we’d had a very testy day when he testified a few months ago, he called me up the next day, said, “What should I do?”And I said, “The same thing. We don’t want to play gotcha. Your testimony yesterday hurt you a lot and hurt the Department of Justice a lot, and you’re under a lot of – a lot of concern that the department is dysfunctional, so come up and tell us. Tell us what happened.”

 

Instead of simply telling Congress and the nation what happened, President Bush has prohibited current and former staff from testifying in full – and, for some, at all – about their knowledge of the U.S. Attorney firings and the politicization of the Justice Department. 

SARA TAYLOR, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS: I am here today to testify pursuant to subpoena before this committee as a willing and cooperative private citizen. I must recognize, however, that the areas you would like to question me about today arise out of my service to the President in the White House. I have received a letter from the counsel to the President informing me that the President has directed me not to testify concerning White House consideration, deliberation, communications, whether internal or external, relating to the possible dismissal or appointment of United States Attorneys, including consideration of possible responses to congressional and media inquiries on the United States Attorneys matter.

 

A question that remains unanswered is: did White House officials use Republican National Committee computers in an attempt to avoid detection of illegal behavior? 

SEN: LEAHY: Are you – this is a February 16, 2007, e-mail exchange between you and Kyle Sampson, is that correct?

MS. TAYLOR: It is.

SEN. LEAHY: Are you familiar with this document?

MS. TAYLOR: I have seen this document.

SEN. LEAHY: The last e-mail in the string is an e-mail from Mr. Sampson to an e-mail address st@gwb43.com.

MS. TAYLOR: Yes.

SEN. LEAHY: Is that your Republican National Committee e-mail address?

MS. TAYLOR: That is a domain controlled by the Republican National Committee that I used when I had political matters.

SEN. LEAHY: That was your Republican National Committee e-mail address?

MS. TAYLOR: Yes. That is in fact my address – was my address.

SEN. LEAHY: How frequently did you use this e-mail address?

MS. TAYLOR: I used it a fair amount. I mean, people had the address and e-mailed me. And it got a lot of news clips on it, and I read those. So I think it’s fair to say I used it regularly.

SEN. LEAHY: Any idea how often?

MS. TAYLOR: I don’t – I know from your press accounts that there are 66,000 e-mails. And I have heard that and I know that from the press. So I believe that there are 66,000 e-mails.

SEN. LEAHY: That would be using it on occasion?

MS. TAYLOR: Well, it’s a lot e-mail, I believe. And I don’t know with certainty that the e-mail that I have goes back to either 2001 or 2002.

SEN. LEAHY: Why did you send these e-mails regarding the department’s handling of the U.S. attorney firings from your Republican National Committee e-mail account?

MS. TAYLOR: Because I can tell you, as an end user of the system that was set up early in the Administration to make sure that the President’s appointees, who on occasion had to address political matters never violated theHatch Act. And the reason for the e-mail account was so that I never put myself in a situation where I was violating the Hatch Act.

MS. TAYLOR: We particularly didn’t want to spend taxpayer dollars on political matters. And so as a result of that system, I had, you know, two computers, two BlackBerrys, and, as somebody who just generally tried to be efficient with her time, sometimes just used the wrong computer.

SEN. LEAHY: If you were to use that – you or anyone [– were to] use that to involve yourself in hirings that were violative of the Hatch Act, that would not be a nonviolation simply because it was done on an RNC computer rather than a White House, is that correct?

MS. TAYLOR: I’m not...

SEN. LEAHY: If you were to do something on there that violated the Hatch Act– political manipulations of hirings and firings that were precluded by the Hatch Act – I’m asking you as a hypothetical – that would still be a violation, whether you did it on a White House account or an RNC account, would it not?

MS. TAYLOR: Well, I assume a violation of the law is a violation of the law. I think that, again, the purpose of the e-mail account was to make sure that if, you know, the President was doing Republican fund-raising, as he has done in the past, that we were doing it on political equipment, not official equipment.

SEN. LEAHY: But the law is the law?

MS. TAYLOR: I mean... I am not an expert on the Hatch Act.

SEN. LEAHY: I’m trying to make sure I understand your answer. You said the law is the law.

MS. TAYLOR: Well, I understand that if you were to break a law you would obviously break the law.

 

Former Bush Administration officials continue to offer differing accounts of who supported the plan to avoid Senate confirmation of U.S. Attorneys. 

SEN. FEINSTEIN: When testifying before the Senate, Kyle Sampson, formerly Chief of Staff to [the] Attorney General, stated that the idea to avoid Senate confirmation for replacement of U.S. Attorneys was a bad staff plan that was eventually rejected in January of this year. He stated that you, Sara Taylor, supported the idea of avoiding Senate confirmation and that you were upset that the Attorney General backed away from that strategy.

MS. TAYLOR: Is your question about the Arkansas situation or are you asking the question broadly?

SEN. FEINSTEIN: I’m asking the question, he stated that you supported the idea of avoiding Senate confirmation and that you were upset that the Attorney General backed away from that strategy. That’s in his testimony on pages 88 to 93. Essentially, I’m asking, is that correct?

MS. TAYLOR: I would – I believe, if my memory serves me correct – I read Mr. Sampson’s testimony – I believe that he was talking about the Senate –the Arkansas situation specifically. And my recollection of my – I was upset at one point. I was upset greatly at one point because the day...

SEN. FEINSTEIN: Could you be – I don’t understand what you were upset about...

MS. TAYLOR: I’m trying to explain it – I’m trying to explain it to you.

SEN. FEINSTEIN: OK.

MS. TAYLOR: So the reasoning for me being so upset was that I saw a friend of mine, a colleague of mine who had become the U.S. Attorney in the state of Arkansas – and we can debate how that happened, but he was in fact the interim U.S. Attorney. And as I understand it, I had a call where the Attorney General had let Senator Pryor know that the White House would not be nominating Mr. Griffin. And then he, as I understand it, called Mr. Griffin to inform him of that decision. And so, yes, I was very upset about that.

SEN. FEINSTEIN: That’s not quite my question. Let me repeat it again. Mr. Sampson testified that you supported the idea of avoiding Senate confirmation –I’m not talking about the appointments, I’m talking about avoiding Senate confirmation – and that you were upset that the Attorney General backed away. Is that correct?

MS. TAYLOR: I don’t believe that’s an accurate reflection of my position. My – I was upset because we had pulled, in my view, sort of the rug out from underneath Tim Griffin and told him that we would not be nominating him. And that is why I was upset.

SEN. FEINSTEIN: So it had nothing to do – you were perfectly willing to have him go through Senate confirmation?

MS. TAYLOR: I expected he would go through Senate confirmation.

SEN. FEINSTEIN: OK, then apparently Mr. Sampson did not testify accurately.

MS. TAYLOR: Well, and I think what – and, again, I’m trying to, you know, infer here, but I think that the discussion was – the point in which you leave him – because I want to be fair to Mr. Sampson. The point in which he is the interim U.S. Attorney, at that point does he stay in the job or does he be removed immediately? And so I certainly was supportive of him staying in that job for a period of time.

Sara Taylor’s testimony suggested that she considered her oath to the President paramount to her oath to uphold the Constitution. 

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Just a quick fact question: Is there anything in your employment agreement with the White House obliging you to honor executive privilege after your departure from employment with the White House?

MS. TAYLOR: I don’t recall that. I don’t know, to answer your question. I will say, Senator, I was a Deputy Assistant to the President. I was a commissioned officer. I took an oath. And I take that oath to the President very seriously. 

… 

SEN. LEAHY: I was really struck by one of your answers. I know the President said recently – he referred to our government as his government – he said “my government.” Most of us always assume that it’s the government of all of us, not just of one individual. It’s almost a monarchy kind of question – or kind of answer that he gave, although it may explain a lot of things. And then you said, “I took an oath to the President, and I take that oath very seriously.” Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?

MS. TAYLOR: I – yes, you’re correct. Yes, I took an oath to the Constitution. But, what...

SEN. LEAHY: Did you take a second – did you take a second oath to the President?

MS. TAYLOR: I did not. What I should have...

SEN. LEAHY: So the answer was incorrect.

MS. TAYLOR: The answer was incorrect. What I should have...

SEN. LEAHY: Thank you.

MS. TAYLOR: ... said is that I took an oath; I took that oath seriously. And I believe that taking that oath means that I need to respect, and do respect, my service to the President.

SEN. LEAHY: No. The oath says that you take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States. That is your paramount duty. I know the President refers to the government as being his government. It’s not. It’s the government of the people of America. Your oath is not to uphold the President. Nor is mine to uphold the Senate. My oath, like your oath, is to uphold the Constitution.

Witnesses highlighted the importance of the independence of the Inspectors General.

GLENN A. FINE, INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: By the nature of the role, Inspectors General (IGs) cannot please everyone, nor should we try. We regularly are accused of being either too harsh or too soft, of acting like junkyard dogs or lapdogs, of being out to “get” someone or out to“cover up” a problem, of engaging in a witch hunt or a whitewash. Sometimes we are described in each of these ways by different sides in the same matter. But our role is to be independent, to objectively identify any problems and provide effective recommendations to correct deficiencies, and not to worry about our popularity. 

… 

ELEANOR HILL, FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: [I]ndependence goes to the very heart of the IG mission. It is what makes IGs a critical – and absolutely unique – link in insuring effective oversight by both the executive and legislative branches of our government. The IG Act, and its method of protecting IG independence, is at least one stroke of congressional brilliance. 

… 

EARL E. DEVANEY, INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR: Given the dual reporting obligation that IGs have to both the Congress and the agency head, making somebody unhappy is not difficult to do. In fact, trying to make everybody happy is the fastest way I know for an IG to get into trouble. Of course, it goes without saying that IGs should be selected without any regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of demonstrated integrity and professional abilities related to the roles and responsibilities of the position.
 

Senators questioned whether the selection criteria for Inspectors General can impair their independence.

SEN. LIEBERMAN:You cited an interesting earlier practice in your testimony under which the PCIE [President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency] would prepare a list of qualified candidates for IG openings and then the selection would be made from those, from that list. Is your suggestion of that based on a concern that in recent times the IGs have either been less qualified or less partisan than you would like them to be? 

DANIELLE BRIAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT: Well, perhaps more partisan I think is the concern. There have been…
SEN. LIEBERMAN: Excuse me. I do mean more partisan. 

MS. BRIAN: There have been a few instances where there really are questions about the qualifications of the IGs that were appointed and whether their appointment was more because of relationships they had with the White House or people in the Administration than their real qualifications for the job.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: So, in fairness, it may not, as your answer suggests, be partisanship so much as lack of independence.

MS. BRIAN: Yes, absolutely right.

 

Witnesses discussed Bush Administration attempts to avoid independent oversight investigations by the Office of the Inspector General into the Department of Justice’s dismissal of U.S. Attorneys and the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program.

 

MR. FINE: Recently, the Attorney General directed OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) to investigate aspects of the removal of U.S. Attorneys. In essence, the Attorney General assigned OPR – an entity that does not have statutory independence and reports directly to the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General – to investigate a matter involving the Attorney General’s and the Deputy Attorney General’s conduct. The IG Act created OIGs (Office of the Inspector General) to avoid this type of conflict of interest. It created statutorily independent offices to investigate allegations of misconduct throughout the entire agency, including actions of agency leaders….While the OIG operates transparently, OPR does not. The OIG publicly releases its reports on matters of public interest, with the facts and analysis underlying our conclusions available for review. In contrast, OPR operates in secret. Its reports, even when they examine matters of significant public interest, are not publicly released. 

… 

MS. HILL: As Defense IG, I worked closely with the military IGs and oversaw many of their investigations. My work with them – and with many other administrative Defense Agency IGs – reinforced my belief that independence is absolutely essential for federal statutory IGs. Military IGs often requested that our office conduct top-level, particularly sensitive investigations since they did not believe they had the independence needed to conduct an investigation that would both be and appear to be objective. I had similar conversations with some administrative Defense Agency IGs, who are appointed and serve, without the benefit of statutorily-protected independence, at the pleasure of the Directors of their agencies. All of those IGs recognized that in investigations of very senior officials or in audits of programs dear to the agency head, the statutorily protected independence of the departmental IG was critical to both the integrity of the inquiry and to the credibility of the findings in the Department, on Capitol Hill, and with the American public. I could not help but recall those conversations when I read reports last year that oversight of what has been referred to as NSA’s “terrorist surveillance program”had been handled by the NSA IG, who has limited resources and no statutory independence, and not by the Department of Defense IG. In my view, that is exactly the kind of program where the oversight should have been conducted, from the very beginning, by the independent Defense Department.

 

The Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight supported a fixed term with the possibility of reappointment for Inspectors General as a way of protecting their independence.

MS. BRIAN: A way to mitigate any possible bias caused by being appointed by the President or agency head, is to create a term of office longer than four years, and to stipulate that an IG can only be removed for specific cause. This would give IGs some protection if they are operating in an agency whose head is trying to undermine an IG’s independence.

 

Senators and witnesses discussed whether to strengthen the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE) and the Executive Council for Integrity and Efficiency (ECIC) to ensure more effective oversight.

SEN. AKAKA: I am concerned that the PCIE and ECIE, particularly the Integrity Committee, may not be strong enough. Earlier this year, the Integrity Committee concluded that the NASA IG, Robert Cobb, had abused his authority and had not maintained an appearance of independence from NASA officials. 

The committee took the unusual step of recommending disciplinary action, which they normally don’t, and up to and including removal. Mr. Cobb rejected the committee’s findings, and he remains in office. What should be done if the Integrity Committee’s recommendations are ignored? Can the committee role be strengthened? 

MR. FINE: I do think that it can be strengthened. I think one of the things that can be done to strengthen the PCIE is to make it statutory, make it a statutory council, to provide designated funding for it. The people who work on the PCIE, the Vice Chair or the people on the Integrity Committee, are IGs who have enormous other responsibilities and this is a collateral duty piled on top of all their other responsibilities. So, to the extent it can be made more concrete, codified and provided funding, I think would be a positive thing. 

… 

MS. HILL: Based on my own experience, would echo what Mr. Fine said in terms of strengthening the committee…. The PCIE was kind of out there as sort of this amorphous thing that was counsel, but it really wasn’t a statutory function or a statutory requirement. So I think codifying it, making it statutory, giving it resources, giving it funding, would certainly give it a lot more authority and make it a more serious effort. 

 

Senators and witnesses discussed the negative health impacts of the current ozone standard.

Stephen L. Johnson, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): [T]he current standard does not protect public health with an adequate margin of safety and should be revised to provide additional public health protection. 

… 

SEN. BOXER: We know that ozone leads to a whole “pyramid” of effects, including lost school and work days, aggravation of asthma and other chronic lung diseases, increased susceptibility to infection, reduced lung function, hospital admissions, and even premature death. All children, but especially asthmatic children and those who are active outdoors, are among the most vulnerable. Adults with asthma and other lung disease, older adults and adults who work outdoors are also particularly vulnerable. 

… 

SEN. CARPER: The dirty air millions of Americans are being forced to breathe is costing us dearly. The National Association of Manufacturers [NAM] released a publication in March titled Health Care Cost Crisis. The publication states“the rising cost of health coverage is one of the biggest challenges manufacturers face today.” In terms of solutions, the first “quick fix” the NAM offers is the following: “Intensively managing chronic health care conditions (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, asthma) can generate substantial cost savings and increase productivity.”

The health care costs of asthma are staggering. In Delaware, each year, about 32 percent of adults with asthma must visit the doctor one or more times. And 19 percent reported one or more visits to an emergency room or urgent care center because of asthma. 

… 

Michelle L. Bell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University: [T]he health impacts of ozone have been vigorously studied for many years. The connection between ozone and health is well-established based on evidence from epidemiology studies using real-world data, laboratory data using human exposure, and animal models. We now have strong scientific evidence that ozone also increases risk of human mortality. This increase in mortality risk is persistent even at very low levels of ozone near natural background concentrations.… The current state of the science is evidenced by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee’s (CASAC’s) unanimous conclusion that adverse health outcomes occur at the level of the current regulatory standard. Our research indicates that health benefits would result from lowering ozone concentrations, even in communities with currently low levels. 

… 

Vickie Patton, Deputy General Counsel, Environmental Defense: Basing the nation’s health-based air quality standards on public health concerns is, singularly, the most important principle woven into the vibrant fabric of the bipartisan Clean Air Act. The resulting benefits for healthier air have in fact changed the world in which we live.
 

The EPA’s proposed range for ozone levels includes the current standard, which it admits is unsafe.

SEN BOXER: These facts [the health effects of the current standard] led the independent review panel to say unanimously that “there is no scientific justification for retaining the current [standard]…of 0.08 parts per million.”As a result, the panel “unanimously recommends a range of 0.060-0.070 parts per million” as the ozone standard. Yet EPA proposed a standard in the range of 0.070-0.075 parts per million [ppm]. EPA’s proposal is unacceptable. 

… 

Administrator Johnson: I proposed to set a standard within the range of 0.070 to 0.075 ppm. This proposal marks the beginning of an open public comment process, during which EPA is inviting comment on a range of primary standard levels from as low as 0.060 parts per million up to the level of the current standard, 0.084 ppm. 

… 

MS. PATTON: EPA has nevertheless expressly held open the prospect of retaining the current health standard for ozone unchanged, and EPA explicitly seeks public comment on such an outcome.

 

Senators and witnesses criticized the EPA for playing politics instead of relying on science.

SEN. BOXER: EPA has also decided to change its process for setting future ambient air quality standards – it will treat the independent review panel like any other commenter and it will allow political considerations to intrude into the recommendations made by staff scientists based on scientific evidence alone. Playing politics with public health is unconscionable.

We need an EPA that will, above all else, make sound scientific judgments that protect public health and not polluters.… EPA’s standards must be set based on the latest and best science. The simple act of breathing must not threaten anyone’s health or the life, most especially our elderly citizens and children who are least able to protect themselves. 

… 

James D. Werner, Director, Division of Air and Waste Management, Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control: EPA’s failure to propose a standard consistent with the CASAC [Clean Air Science Advisory Committee] recommendation tends to undermine environmental professionals everywhere who take pride in operating as much as possible on a science-based approach to problem solving. 

Senators questioned whether Dr. Holsinger would cave to pressure from the Bush Administration and suppress science in favor of politics.

SEN. MURRAY: [A]s we heard past surgeon generals testify that they were censored, their speeches were edited. These things are deeply troubling to all of us because we need someone in this office that can be independent that Americans trust. So having said that, let me ask you, you obviously have heard the testimony of Dr. Carmona this past week, and having being subjected to political interference based on ideology and religious beliefs, and I wanted to know what your reaction was as you heard him testify. 

DR. JAMES HOLSINGER, NOMINEE TO BE SURGEON GENERAL: Well, first of all, I’ve not had the opportunity, Senator, that I know of, to have ever met Dr. Carmona, so I have...

SEN. MURRAY: Certainly heard about this testimony this week...

DR. HOLSINGER: Right. I have. But I’m just saying I’ve not had the opportunity to have a direct conversation with him about his experience.

SEN. MURRAY: Yes, I’m not asking you about him, I’m asking you about the fact that he felt that he was told to edit his speech and do different things based on political belief, not based on himself. What was your reaction personally when you heard that?

DR. HOLSINGER: Oh. I would obviously be deeply concerned that any surgeon general would feel that that has occurred. Certainly from my perspective I would commit myself to, should I fill this job, to using the science as the basis on which I take my positions. 

SEN. MURRAY: But do you think what he testified to was inappropriate or was it just part of his job? 

DR. HOLSINGER: Well, since I don’t have the firsthand experience of knowing, it’s hard for me to answer that question, Senator.
 

Dr. Holsinger sidestepped a question regarding the potential for medical and scientific progress should the President’s restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research be rescinded.

SEN. KENNEDY: Would the opportunity for scientific and medical progress be greater if the President’s restrictions on the federal funding of stem cell research, if they were rescinded? 

DR. HOSLINGER: I have to confess, Senator Kennedy, that I have, since the 2002 hearing, not had a lot of reason to stay engaged in the stem cell discussions. So I’m not as informed on both the science on current stem cell work, as well as some of the new alternative processes that are coming. I simply, you know – I don’t feel comfortable giving you my opinion when I don’t feel like I’ve had the proper time to study it.
 

Dr. Holsinger addressed past studies he published that misrepresented data and cast homosexuality as “unhealthy and unnatural.”

SENATOR KENNEDY: For example, you had one study, one single study – and you mentioned the Copenhagen – and it was one STD clinic. 

DR. HOLSINGER: Yes. 

SEN. KENNEDY: And yet your paper fails to mention the source of the data relies is from the STD clinic study. And the reader is left to assume the figures were taken from a general population of Copenhagen, instead of a very small sample of men who visited one STD clinic. And that’s the type of issue and question, in terms of science, that’s... 

DR. HOLSINGER: I understand that. And that clearly wasn’t my intent. My intent was to provide... 

SEN. KENNEDY: But you can understand how people... 

DR. HOLSINGER: I can clearly understand. And I understand the reason why people are concerned. And if I’ve hurt anyone, Senator, by that paper... 

SEN. KENNEDY: No, it isn’t question of hurting, you know. We’re not – it’s just getting the science right. 

… 

SEN. KENNEDY: Dr. Holsinger’s paper cherry-picks and misuses data to support his thesis that homosexuality is unhealthy and unnatural. For example, a disproportionate amount of the data Dr. Holsinger relies on in this paper is pulled from emergency room and trauma studies, which are not at all representative of the homosexual population as a whole. Dr. Holsinger also artificially padded his paper’s bibliography by adding citations to three sources that either had nothing to do with either homosexuality or actually directly refuted his paper’s thesis. This misuse of science gravely concerns me 

… 

SEN. KENNEDY: And you wrote a very important paper [on homosexuality], back – it goes back to 1991, where there are so many who say that you did not look at the real science and that you were controlled by ethics and by your morality and religion, all of which are admirable elements and all of which have value in terms of politics, ethics and in terms of making judgments and decisions. But the issue is, did you avoid – did you avoid available science in terms of your particular document at that time?... 

DR. HOLSINGER: I think that it would be helpful to perhaps understand the context a little bit better on the paper. The paper I was asked to write, I was asked to deal with certain specific issues because the other ones had already been covered in other papers that had been presented to the committee over a significant period of time. I was asked to do essentially a literature review of the health issues surrounding the issue of homosexuality…. 

SEN. KENNEDY: But if it’s the literature review, if it’s the literature review, why would you not then reference the most prominent medical journals and scientific journals that the country has? I mean, in terms of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Public Health Association, the Psychiatric Association, the (inaudible) Association, the World Health Organization.
 

Senator Mikulski discussed Dr. Holsinger’s mismanagement of Veterans Affairs medical facilities during his tenure as medical director at the VA.

SEN. MIKULSKI: I remember our meeting when from 1990 to 1993, you were the medical director at VA and I chaired the Senate Committee on Appropriations that dealt with VA. As I recall during those three years, we did not have a good time together. We clashed on a number of issues. As I recall those times and reviewed the record, our experience with you was that you resisted change in the area of quality control, you were often indifferent or dismissive of oversight when it came to the health care of women veterans and also sexual harassment at VA medical facilities…. I recall that in 1991, soon after you were appointed, a GAO report, along with newspaper accounts, indicated that there was a very serious issue of quality control at several VA hospitals. And in particular, there was even a particular hospital in which six veterans had died. You told the committee that, ‘Yes, there were management changes, but no system was perfect,’ and then you were resistant to changing some of the systemic problems at VA.

 

Dr. Holsinger’s was criticized for his response to a sexual harassment scandal during his time as medical director at the VA.

SEN. MIKULSKI: We had the unhappy situation of sexual harassment at an Atlanta hospital that was so pervasive that even the inspector general called it the “worst scandal since Tailhook,” for which there was then a culture of silence in terms of both at the Atlanta hospital and in others. I will not read what the inspector general found that were often the comments that were directed at women staff. They would be too inappropriate to share with the committee. There was a culture of silence and the response of your leadership at VA was just to kind of move people around. 

The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) successful clandestine operation highlighted the need for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to change their license inspection policy.

SEN. COLEMAN: Under the NRC’s previous rules, license reviewers were not required to “visit” with applicants seeking Category 3 licenses. Instead, the NRC could visit those facilities up to one year after the license was issued. Thankfully, the NRC changed some of its rules soon after GAO’s latest operation. Now, license reviewers are required to “visit”with applicants seeking Category 3 licenses. Again, I applaud the NRC’s prompt response and recognize that it is a step in the right direction. 

…

GREGORY D. KUTZ, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FORENSIC AUDITS AND SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE: NRC’s goal is to provide licenses to only those entities that can demonstrate that they have legitimate uses for radioactive materials. However, our work shows that there continues to be weaknesses in the process NRC uses to approve license applications. In our view, a routine visit by NRC staff to the site of our bogus business would have been enough to reveal our lack of facilities and equipment. Furthermore, if NRC license examiners had conducted even a minimal amount of screening – such as performing common Web searches or making telephone calls to local government or business offices – they would have developed serious doubts about our application. 

… 

EDWARD MCGAFFIGAN, JR., COMMISSIONER, NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: GAO’s most recent report has raised issues about the adequacy of these procedures because of their ability to obtain and modify an NRC license issued to a fake West Virginia firm. The NRC license as issued in March 2007 would have limited the firm to purchasing four or five moisture density gauges with the total radionuclide content approximately in the middle of Category 4 for americium-241 and near the bottom of Category 4 for cesium-137…. In hindsight NRC missed the vulnerabilities in our licensing process identified by GAO, that resulted in a seemingly legitimate licensee obtaining a license for a small amount of material, then falsifying the license and potentially aggregating a much greater amount of material. Our primary focus on the control of Category 1 and Category 2 material under our risk-informed approach perhaps resulted in our not sufficiently probing vulnerabilities in our materials licensing system.

 

The material that the GAO clandestine operation obtained could have been used to make a dirty bomb:

SEN. LEVIN: Smaller quantities of radioactive materials are classified in 3 additional categories – Categories 3,4, and 5. An individual who handled Category 3 quantities could be permanently injured if he or she handled the material for many hours or days, with the possibility of death if the exposure continued for weeks. Category 4 quantities are unlikely to permanently injure anyone, and Category 5 quantities could not permanently injure anyone. The ability of the GAO to creatively avoid the NRC restrictions on Category 4 materials in this instance by obtaining small amounts of materials that could be aggregated into larger quantities to get to Category 3 quantities of material is troubling. That is what happened in this case. 

… 

SEN. COLLINS: The threat of a “dirty bomb” seeded with radioactive materials is widely recognized. The former head of Britain’s MI-5 intelligence service has said it is “only a matter of time” before a dirty-bomb attack strikes a country in the West…. The consequences could be dire. A 2004 study published by the National Defense University concludes that a dirty-bomb attack “is apt to cause mass panic and great economic damage,” even if it is unlikely to cause mass fatalities. A new Canadian government study concludes that exploding even a small dirty bomb in Ottawa could cause over $20 billion in economic disruption, in addition to localized death and destruction. If it is indeed a relatively simple matter to obtain, alter, or counterfeit Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses to acquire radioactive materials, then we face yet another challenge to achieving homeland security for our people. The GAO deserves great credit for giving us concrete evidence of this vulnerability. I am eager to learn more about the GAO’s investigation and recommendations for improvement. 

… 

SEN. CARPER: We can open the paper and turn on the news every day and see the impact conventional explosives placed in a backpack or in the trunk of a car have had in communities like Great Britain, Spain, Israel, and Iraq. Just imagine what would happen if those explosives were coupled with radiological materials. The fact is that a dirty bomb is likely the worst terrorist threat we face as a nation today and one of our major lines of defense against them did not hold up when tested. Luckily, this test was not a real one and, hopefully, we can learn from the mistakes that were made.

 

Improvements in licensing procedures, such as mandatory site visits, were recommended in order to maintain nuclear security.

SEN. COLEMAN: [T]he NRC should evaluate whether to include Category 3 sources in the proposed National SourceTracking System, which will be designed to monitor the most lethal sources from cradle to grave. The NRC should also take steps to ensure that source materials can be obtained only in authorized amounts by legitimate users. For instance, the NRC should also consider established a web-based licensing system, so that suppliers can go online and check that a purchaser’s license is actually valid and how much radiological material the purchaser is authorized to obtain. These recommendations are designed to bolster our government’s efforts to prevent a radiological attack in the United States. It is clear that terrorists are interested in using a dirty bomb to wreak havoc in this country. In the words of one homeland security expert, the impact of such an attack – even a relatively simple and small dirty bomb – could be a “nightmare scenario.”

…

MR. KUTZ: First, to avoid inadvertently allowing a malevolent individual or group to obtain a license for radioactive materials, NRC should develop improved guidance for examining NRC license applications. In developing improved screening criteria, NRC should consider where site visits to new licensees should be mandatory. These improved screening criteria will allow NRC to provide reasonable assurance that licenses for radioactive materials will only be issues to those with legitimate uses.

DPC