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With all the hubbub today about the Vanity Fair article in which former high-ranking FBI official W. Mark Felt claims he was Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Deep Throat source during the Watergate era, it's worth looking back at why Felt denied being the mysterious figure for so long. One interesting answer lies in the interview he granted to Timothy Noah, Slate's "Chatterbox" columnist, in 1999. Noah pressed Felt on his denial, asking hypothetically what would be so bad if he were the legendary leaker. Here's Felt's response: "It would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information." There you have it: In the popular imagination, Deep Throat was the ultimate whistleblower, who ultimately took down a president. But in his own mind, apparently, he was just another federal employee who couldn't keep his mouth shut with the media.

The Pentagon has released its base-closing list, the BRAC Commission has begun its debates, and the House is voting down another effort every day to slow or kill the base-closing process. It's time to start accepting reality, right? Not if you're Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who unseated former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle last fall partly by saying his White House connections would help him save Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. That didn't work out, but Thune's nowhere near giving up. "Momentum Builds for Delaying BRAC," he trumpeted in a press release yesterday, touting his bill to halt the process, which has garnered a whopping 17 cosponsors. I'm hearing echoes of a historically challenged "Bluto" Blutarski in Animal House: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!" (Warning: That last link includes some, er, colorful language.) And remember what job Bluto ended up with: United States senator.

At the behest of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court has ordered a company to stop sending “date lonely wife” spam e-mail. The spam, according to the FTC, "violates nearly every provision of the CAN-SPAM Act. It contains misleading headers and deceptive subject lines. It does not contain a link to allow consumers to opt out of receiving future spam, does not contain a valid postal address, and does not contain the disclosure, required by law, that it is sexually explicit." Umm, I hate to burst the bubble of any lonely guys who fell for this, but I doubt it leads to any actual dates, either.

As you fire up that barbecue and kick off the start of summer this Memorial Day weekend, ponder these facts, courtesy of the Veterans Affairs Department: More than 42.3 million people have served in the U.S. military during wartime since the Revolutionary War, and 1.2 million of them died in service. There are 16.5 million living wartime veterans, plus another 8.2 million from various peacetime eras.

From the You-Can't-Make-This-Stuff-Up Department: Shaquille O'Neal was recently sworn in as a deputy U.S. marshal and has joined a Justice Department task force that tracks down sexual predators who target children on the Internet. This puts him in very good company. You remember who else got the whole honorary law enforcement officer treatment, don't you? That's right: Elvis.

Here's a message for all those members of Congress who grandstand year after year about increasing the size of the Border Patrol to stem the tide of illegal immigration on the country's southern border: It's not just about adding more bodies. As AP reports, bringing on 2,000 more agents next year would max out the agency's ability to train the new hires. It's easy to drop language into legislation mandating certain hiring levels. It's much harder to make the sustained commitment to training, development and deployment of technology that is required to have a real impact on the border situation.

Hey, L.A. denizens, here's a day-brightener for ya: The U.S. Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center say that potential earthquakes on the Puente Hills fault underneath the city could result in 3,000 to 18,000 fatalities, 142,000 to 735,000 displaced households, and more than $250 billion in total damages.

Apparently, space weather forecasters aren't any better at predictions than their terrestrial counterparts.

Job title of the day: Nina Hatfield, deputy assistant secretary of Interior for business management and wildland fire. I imagine there are days when the two parts of her job seem like exactly the same subject.

GAO report title of the day: "Federal Agencies Are Engaged in Various Efforts to Promote the Utilization of Woody Biomass, but Significant Obstacles to Its Use Remain." Obstacles to woody biomass? That's just not a subject I want to read any more about, at least not while I'm trying to finish my lunch.

Marines with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment have formed a new platoon called "Team America" to help maintain a military presence over the large area of operations they must cover. It's not this Team America, I hope.

The independent base-closing commission won't be a "rubber stamp," chairman Anthony Principi tells the NY Times. Maybe not, but changing the Pentagon's list won't be easy. Some installations could be spared the ax, but adding others to replace them on the closure rolls will be difficult: Seven out of the nine commissioners must vote to add a base to the list. In the past, it only took five votes to put a base on the list.

Note to politicians: Before you decide to break out the Hitler analogy in a speech, please, for your own sake, stop and think twice. Because it boomerangs 100 percent of the time.

The 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey: kinda good news, or very bad news? You be the judge. There's an interesting dynamic at work here: OPM and the Bush administration, which usually don't like to trumpet the unhappiness of federal employees, clearly want this survey spun as "Workers hate appraisal system," to bolster the case for the performance-based pay proposals they're pushing. Ordinarily, labor unions would be happy to oblige this line of thinking, because they traditionally haven't held the appraisal system in the highest regard. But because the unions aren't interested in furthering the administration's larger cause, they're now taking great pains to say the system's not the problem.

The Energy Department seems to have hit on a surefire way to attract new bidders for the contract to run Los Alamos National Laboratory--pay the new contractor almost 10 times the $8 million a year the University of California gets now.

Hey, critics of the federal food inspection program: Please look into getting a new anecdote. This one about the USDA regulating pepperoni pizza and the FDA overseeing the plain cheese variety is getting a little stale. It first came out of the oven in 1988, for Pete's sake.

It's that time of year, when Washington's movers and shakers leave the capital to offer up words of wisdom to graduates of the nation's finest institutions of higher learning. Generally they just serve up platitudes about how bright the future is, the importance of following one's dreams, etc. But sometimes they just can't leave the world of policy behind even for a few minutes. For example, on Sunday at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, commencement speaker Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a mini-seminar on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Even Greenspan's homilies were expressed in terms only an economist could love. Honesty is the best policy, he said, because, well, it makes the economy run better: "In virtually all our transactions, whether with customers or with colleagues, with friends or with strangers, we rely on the word of those with whom we do business," he said. "If we could not do so, goods and services could not be exchanged efficiently."

Here's something for those obsessed with cybersecurity to keep in mind: A new report from the Secret Service and the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute’s CERT found that most acts of insider sabotage on computer systems in
critical infrastructure sectors were perpetrated by former
employees--motivated at least in part by a desire to seek revenge--who were granted system administrator or privileged access when hired.

Federal judges aren't happy with the information the U.S. Marshals Service is providing them about securing courtrooms, the Chicago Tribue reports. The Marshals Service says it's not a separation of powers issue; it's just that they don't want to share security information with anybody but their overseers on the Hill.

Sometime GovExec contributor and longtime public service expert Paul Light had a nice column in Newsday Sunday on the John Bolton situation. On the form Bolton had to fill out before he was nominated, Light notes, "none of the more than 200 questions asked about Bolton's definition of leadership, his approach to managing people, problems he might have had with subordinates, his commitment to public service, his definition of ethical conduct, or his own supervisory behavior."

Now comes the time in the military base-closing process when members of Congress seek to deflect accusations that they failed to protect all of their states' facilities by gamely suggesting it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings. Just a few examples:

• Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas: "This recommendation list is...by no means final."








• Sen. Hilary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.: "I look forward to showing [Base closing commission] Chairman [Anthony] Principi that the Department of Defense has made the wrong recommendation."
  
  
  

  
  

• Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H.: “The BRAC process is far from complete."








• Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas: "Now the battle is joined."








• Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio: “Now is not the time for foot-stomping or pouting. We need to concentrate our efforts on making a convincing case to the President..."








• William Jefferson, D-La.: "We must see this is an opportunity to enter into negotiations with the Base Realignment and Closure Commission..."
  

  
  

  
  
• Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine: "We will systemically and relentlessly chisel away and dismantle the Navy’s and the Department of Defense’s analysis--or lack thereof--with regard to their faulty recommendations."








• Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V.: "We are prepared for this fight."








• Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D.: "Our fight to save Ellsworth [Air Force Base] isn't over."






Give Johnson credit, though. He added: "We must be realistic about the likelihood of removing the base from the closure list by the BRAC Commission." With all due respect, most of the rest of these folks are kidding themselves.


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Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago have discovered a new kind of water that doesn't freeze--even at temperatures near absolute zero. “Even though people have been modeling water for decades,” said visiting scientist Christian J. Burnham from the University of Houston, “we are only now just beginning to appreciate the importance of including the correct quantum-level description of the motion of the hydrogen nuclei and we are still working on a more accurate mathematical description of the charge clouds enveloping each water molecule.” Uhh,...sure. Keep us posted on that, willya?

You might think that Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., has re-introduced the Southern Sea Otter Recovery and Research Act to support sea otter research programs at the Fish and Wildlife Service just because the little critters are so darn adorable. You'd be right. The title of his press release says it all: "Farr Bill Supports Cute, Critical Sea Otters."

Another urban legend bites the dust: No, the FAA does not have regulations stating that Christian airline pilots must be paired with non-believers in cockpits to keep planes from falling out of the sky when the Rapture occurs and Christians are swept up into the clouds to meet Jesus.

Best detail I've seen yet from yesterday's "Run for your lives, a Cessna's attacking Washington" reporting comes from the Washington Times: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi fled in her stocking feet when Capitol Police officers lifted her out of her shoes."

The American Hellenic Institute has called on the United States to establish a "special relationship" with Greece. You know, they've got a point. We've been hanging out with Greece for, like, more than 200 years, and having a really good time, without making the kind of real commitment that Greece could count on for its long-term future. Either the United States should be prepared to take this relationship to the next level, or we should free up Greece to date other countries.

I've been combing over Education Department press releases for a week now, and I'll admit the reason: I was hoping to find misspellings or grammatical errors and make fun of them. I've come up completely empty, which reflects very well on whoever is producing these things. Can you imagine the pressure? I mean, not only is it the Education Department, but your boss is actually named "Spellings."

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to a report in the Washington Times, says efforts like the Minuteman Project--under which some folks are sitting in lawn chairs next to barbecue grills in Arizona in order to ward off would-be illegal immigrants--are what happens when the federal government doesn't do its job of securing the border. He wants beefed-up border spending, but in making his case, he relies on the same tired logic used to argue for any federal expenditure: the old "if we can afford to do X, then we can afford to do Y." In Schwarzenegger's case, it translates this way: "When we can afford the war in Iraq," he says, "we can afford to control our own borders."

You hear this kind of talk all the time, but only in the federal context. It doesn't work on the domestic front, at least not in my house. ("Hey honey, because we can afford to buy that new car we needed, we can afford a trip to Vegas for me and my buddies, right?") This is not that difficult, folks: When you spend money in one place (wisely or not) that means you have less to spend elsewhere, not more.

It's not every day that a United States senator puts out a press release praising the efficiency and effectiveness of a federal program--even when it is a pet program of the senator's, and the praise is mostly designed to prevent budget cuts.

The Justice Department announced Friday that ex-Bureau of Engraving and Printing employee Donald Edward Stokes had been arrested for allegedly stealing $30,000 in currency from the agency's Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth, Texas. He was charged with theft of government property. (Well, I suppose that's what it was, technically.) The best part? When Stokes was arrested after a high-speed chase, he had a total of $80,000 on him. He said he won the other $50,000 gambling. He must've had the best gambling day of his life. Too bad he was using Uncle Sam's "property" at the time.

Seventy or eighty or so years from now, you're going to be able to walk into a nursing home and shout "Emily! Jacob!" and half the people will turn around. That's right, the Social Security Administration has reported that once again, those two names were the most popular baby names in the United States. Emily has topped the girls' list since--I can hardly believe this--1996, and Jacob has headed the boys' side since 1999. C'mon people, it's time to spread the wealth a little. New to the top 10 this year: Isabella for the girls and William for the boys.

Let's play "Press Release Roulette." Who do you believe about the Bush administration's new rule on roadless areas in national forests? The Forest Service ("Forest Service acts to conserve roadless areas in national forests"), the Natural Resources Defense Council ("Bush administration replaces roadless rule with treeless rule"), the American Forest and Paper Association (" A thoughtful, legal, and effective plan to protect our nation’s true roadless areas"), or the League of Conservation Voters ("Bush administration once again selling out to the logging and timber industry instead of siding with the American people").

So what would happen if Washington's Mount Rainier erupted in "a catastrophic seismic event that triggers a landslide and massive debris flow"? FEMA characterizes that as a "high consequence, low probability" scenario (whew!), but that's not stopping the agency from working with the Defense Department on how they'd respond to it.

Dang, I knew it was too good to be true. The actual amount of the recent NASA contract for CrackBerry--oops, BlackBerry--international roaming charges is $42,982, not more than $4 million.

I sympathize with federal public affairs officials who must decide which news reports are simply too outlandish to justify comment, and which they should make an effort to bat down. Apparently, Pentagon press officials think a recent report in a London-based Arab newspaper that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took a meeting with Saddam Hussein fell on the latter side of that line, and felt compelled to issue two separate statements dismissing it as "absolutely ludicrous" and "patent drivel."

Sure, the big issues of the day are Iraq, the economy, the ridiculous price of gas, Social Security reform and runaway brides. But that doesn't mean that other critical issues are escaping the attention of vigilant members of Congress. Witness the press release yesterday from Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the National Parks Subcommittee of the House Resources Committee, about a hearing he's holding today. “It is vitally important," Nunes said, "that our national parks be open and accessible to everyone, including those who want to use personal water craft. Furthermore, there are nine park units that have not made a decision on whether to allow personal watercraft use and the users of those parks deserve to know if they can enjoy the upcoming summer months on the water.”

For awhile now, I've been arguing that President Bush likes to declare that he's a small-government conservative by walling off defense and homeland security programs as though they don't count as "government." Now comes the Cato Institute with a new report showing that even if you exclude such expenditures, Bush still ranks as one of the biggest spenders in recent memory.

Give 'em credit for bravery over at the Postal Service. First they announce they're going to have to raise rates if Congress doesn't approve a postal reform bill, and then they say they're "inviting customer comment" about the future direction of the agency. Good luck with that.

Did NASA really just issue a $4,298,235 contract to cover "International Roaming Charges for AT&T Wireless Blackberry"? That's a lot of emails. (Thanks, NASA Watch.)

Often, the best (and most overlooked) examples of effective civil servants in action involve not begging for legislation or unveiling flashy new programs, but simply rolling up your sleeves and working together to get the job done. There was a great story on this phenomenon in the NY Times yesterday. "With little fanfare and some adept bureaucratic maneuvering, a partnership between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and a select group of Justice Department prosecutors has been forged to identify and single out for prosecution the nation's most flagrant workplace safety violators," the paper reported.

The Army missed its recruiting goals for the third month in a row, USA Today reports. But service leaders say spring's never any good for signing up recruits, and they'll make up the difference this summer.