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Calling all office drones: The CIA wants you. The agency, DefenseTech notes, has put up one of those trying-too-hard-to-be-cool Web sites to bolster its recruiting efforts. The site takes the form of a quiz for would-be spies, using a series of questions to place them in one of the following categories:

• Daring Thrill Seeker


• Curious Adventurer


• Thoughtful Observer


• Impressive Mastermind


• Innovative Pioneer

Working at the CIA doesn't mean you'll be jet-setting around the globe, attending parties with billionaires and showing off your tango skills. In reality, we depend on administrative managers and staff for our operational success, at home and abroad.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued some tips for notebook computer users, including this bit of advice for the common sense-challenged:

Avoid dropping or bumping the computer. Dropping it, especially on a hard surface, can potentially cause damage to the computer and battery.

Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame wants federal employees in national security agencies to start leaking information about potential plans for war against Iraq. In the October edition of Harpers magazine, Ellsberg tells people "who have safes in their office" to start spilling their contents to reporters in the hopes of derailing plans for an American attack on Iran. (The article isn't online, but Daily Kos has a summary here.) In a Sept. 22 interview with Brooke Gladstone of National Public Radio's On the Media, Ellsberg said federal employees with access to sensitive national security documents make a contractual agreement to maintain required levels of secrecy, but the oath they take to uphold the Constitution is more important. Ellsberg argues that going to war with Iran would be unconstitutional, and he's convinced that leaked documents about a possible invasion "would show it to be crazy, just as the Iraq war was a crazy decision and the Vietnam war, of which I was part, was a crazy decision in terms of the legality but also the disparity of costs and consequences and any possible benefits. So I'm saying, yes, an individual could have enormous effect, and I hope one or more of them will do that."--Daniel Pulliam

The Homeland Security Department relies heavily on interagency contracts in its procurement operations. GAO says DHS lacks specific guidance on managing certain types of such contracts, such as GSA schedules and governmentwide acquisition contracts. But the folks in the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer at DHS seem to have a pretty good excuse: Their people must respond to procurement needs arising from crises such as Hurricane Katrina, leaving them little time to generate policy guidance. After all, the office has only five employees to oversee the $17.5 billion in purchases DHS makes every year.

IRS Commissioner Mark Everson unveiled the outlines of a new plan to address the $345 billion gap between taxes owed and those paid in testimony before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. It calls for simplified tax laws, computer upgrades, research into the causes of tax evasion, and better taxpayer service. The National Treasury Employees Union has a simpler proposal: Hire more enforcement employees.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is apparently no spendthrift. His investigation into the 2003 leak of a CIA employee's identity has cost just $333,000, not counting the salaries of personnel who were simply transferred from one government account to another, AP reports. That's a lot less than similar previous investigations. One reason: Fitzgerald and his team didn't splurge on expensive office space in Washington.

Suppose you're at the Defense Department and you're looking at the news that Homeland Security has thrown in the towel by deciding not to ask the Supreme Court to overturn lower courts' rulings against the labor relations portion of its new personnel system. Isn't this when you start thinking it's about time to give up on your own appeal of a judge's ruling against your personnel system? After all, the cases are similar in key respects. What, exactly, is the point in continuing to drag out the fight and further delay the seemingly inevitable process of sitting down with employee representatives to craft a new system that will pass legal muster?

At the risk of getting very self-referential, I can't resist posing the following question: If you got the idea of trying to enlist the aid of bloggers in embarassing members of Congress into supporting your agenda, would you start things off by announcing it publicly?

The New York Times and Los Angeles Times are all over the story of Army budget problems this week, reporting on shortages of equipment and on Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker's refusal to submit a budget for next year as a protest move. Slate's Fred Kaplan noted the papers' coverage yesterday, but at the same time, pointed out that back in July, GovExec's Katherine McIntire Peters was reporting that Schoomaker was issuing dire warnings about funding shortfalls at the service. Kaplan also noted Schoomaker's comments at an Aug. 23 appearance at the National Press Club: "There is no sense in us submitting a budget that we cannot execute … a broken budget." That appearance, it seems worth noting, was at a GovExec Leadership Breakfast. There's a transcript of the interview in our Sept. 15 issue.

Add this to the list of Alphonso Jackson's excuses for (he says) making up a story that he killed a company's HUD contract after its president told him he didn't like President Bush: I had a cold, the housing secretary says.

The anonymous writer of the "Dateline D.C." column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review thinks the up-and-coming generation of workers--those born after 1980, whom the columnist rather inexplicably refers to as the "Ho-Hum Generation"--are being sold a bill of goods. They skip from job to job, he says, thinking they can maximize their value to employers. But he says there's only one way to work your way to prosperity these days:

Believe it or not, their hopes of wealth through jobs are doomed -- unless they join the federal civil service. In Washington, federal employee wages average out at just over $80,000 a year, with low-rate loans from the federal credit union and health care for the family as a benefit. When retirement comes around, they will carry with them their pension, indexed for inflation every year, and their health-care benefits. Yet the new workers cannot see sticking with one job and know they can do better than a guaranteed federal check arriving every two weeks. Let them do it.

Here's a sobering sentence in today's New York Times piece on the struggles of the Army's Third Infantry Division to prepare to go back to Iraq for a third tour of duty:

Other than the 17 brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, only two or three combat brigades in the entire Army — perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops — are fully trained and sufficiently equipped to respond quickly to crises, said a senior Army general.

The Third Infantry Division's Second Brigade has no tanks or other armored vehicles to use in training, and must rely on computer simulations.

Board members of the Legal Services Corp. really don't like Kirt West, the organization's inspector general, AP reports. The directors of the agency, which provides legal services to the poor, derided West behind closed doors, saying he was overly aggressive in rooting out potential fraud. (West's allegations of questionable spending included $14 "death by chocolate" desserts written off as a business expense.) But the board members were worried about provoking a congressional reaction--rightly, as it turned out. When the board met in April, Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., and Rep. Christopher Cannon, R-Utah, became convinced they were about to fire West, and dashed off a letter telling them that such a move would be "an egregious action."

There's a fascinating little item in the latest edition of Issues of Merit, the newsletter of the Office of Policy and Evaluation at the Merit Systems Protection Board. The piece notes that agencies are under increasing pressure to step up their efforts to recruit college graduates to address the anticipated baby boomer retirement "tsunami." But the MSPB folks looked at the top 10 occupational series for which the government hired new employees in fiscal 2005, and found that many of them have specialized requirements that go beyond a liberal arts degree. And in four of the top 10 occupations, agencies hired most of their entry-level workers at GS-9 or above, meaning that applicants needed work experience or a graduate degree in addition to a college education. Unless agencies are having trouble filling these slots, that means that for now at least, they can still afford to be pretty selective in replacing aging workers. If the tsunami strikes, will they have to lower their standards?

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson didn't succeed in getting his employees to steer contracts to companies friendly to the Bush administration, the Washington Post reports today. But it wasn't for lack of trying. If Jackson gets out of this whole situation with his job, he has the employees of HUD to thank.

Looks like smooth sailing for Mary A. Bomar, President Bush's nominee to head the National Park Service. And it sounds like she's already accepting the more-with-less reality of running a federal agency today. Bomar told senators at her confirmation hearing yesterday that she would help the Park Service "search for creative ways of working within our means."

NASA, like other federal agencies, has challenges ahead with a graying workforce, according to this piece in Wired News. Peter Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center, said the average age of civil servants he oversees is 49, and only nine are under 30. One of the agency's biggest contractors, Lockheed Martin, has launched a couple of mentoring programs to help move know-how from its senior people to the next generation of engineers. But a book distributed by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics to its student members might not be helping the situation: Advice to Rocket Scientists: How To Be Successful and Happy in a Career Where Science and Politics Often Clash.--Jenny Mandel

How did the Veterans Affairs Department end up with a $3 billion budget shortfall? By using data from before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started to project future costs of caring for veterans, the Government Accountability Office says. On top of that, VA officials didn't tell Congress in a timely fashion that its appropriations weren't covering its costs. Part of the problem, in the VA's defense, is that it had trouble getting accurate information from the Pentagon to develop cost estimates.

The city of Vallejo, Calif., is paying the Agriculture Department to trap and kill animals that prey on an endangered bird and mouse living on the site of the shuttered Mare Island Naval Shipyard. And until recently, those animals included cats, the Vallejo Times-Herald reports. The weapon of choice of the USDA employee who's responsible for getting rid of the predators is a .22 caliber handgun. But since June he's been told that while it's OK to put down trapped raccoons, skunks and opossums, cats should be taken to the local Humane Society facility.

More trouble at the Federal Air Marshal Service: the Washington Times reports today that the size of the air marshal force has been cut in half because almost 2,100 marshals have suffered on-the-job injuries. Those injuries include ruptured eardrums, sinus conditions requiring surgery and deep vein thrombosis, a disease associated with long periods of sitting that causes blood clots, usually in the legs. Marshals now fly an average of four flights a day for five days in a row, then get two days off. Last year, the Air Marshal Service budgeted $3 million for workers' compensation, but spent $6 million. This year, the agency has already spent $7 million.

Great anecdote from today's New York Times piece on the ongoing battle between the Federal Aviation Administration and air traffic controllers over everything from staffing levels to work rules: A controller at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport recently went to work in lime green pants, a clashing brown jacket, and hair dyed blue to protest a new dress code. At other airports, male controllers have appeared in dresses. The dress code, the paper reports, prohibits jeans, T-shirts and "shirts with big lettering." It also generally requires that controllers not appear "disheveled."

New CIA chief Michael Hayden is interested in breaking down barriers between spies and intelligence analysts, the Washington Post reports today. He's created a board of directors for the agency aimed at making its Directorate of Operations and Directorate of Intelligence work more closely together. That means more time spent in training together and more time overseas for analysts. One reason Hayden is focusing on the CIA's internal operations, the Post's Walter Pincus notes, is that unlike previous agency chiefs, he doesn't have to oversee the entire U.S. intelligence community.

Possibilities for what the various pieces of junk floating around the space shuttle could be, according to NASA officials:

• Two rings


• A piece of foil


• A reflective cloth


• A "mechanic-looking" cloth


• Plastic filler placed in between thermal tiles


• Something that looks like a picture hanging clip


• A garbage bag
  

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association has a new president: Margaret L. Baptiste of Mount Pleasant, S.C. Her claim to fame? She's neither an active nor a retired federal employee. Baptiste is the first spouse of a former fed to hold NARFE's top job--and also the first woman. But she's hardly new to the organization. Baptiste has been active in NARFE since 1978, when her husband retired from federal service, and served as its vice president from 1998 to 2002.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy is uploading its anti-drug public service announcements to YouTube, the site which, AP notes, "already features clips of wacky, drug-induced behavior and step-by-step instructions for growing marijuana plants."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a message for the leaders of military services who are clamoring for bigger budgets, Army Times reports: Tell it to the White House.

Most of the large bonuses handed out to employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention go to administrative managers, not scientists, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday. Among the theories as to why this is the case:

• The President's Management Agenda has stressed the improvement of administrative systems (and rewards for those who make progress in this area), but no corresponding effort has taken place in the scientific arena.


• About 800 of the CDC's 4,200 scientific employees are members of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which operates under a different personnel system, making them ineligible for the awards. Another 600 600 "distinguished" scientists weren't eligible for annual performance awards until last fall.

By the way, the paper also reprinted a memo CDC Director Julie Gerberding sent to all employees before the article was printed, warning that the amount of some employees' awards would likely be made public. "The reality of working for the federal government," she wrote, "is that some pay and benefits information, which most people are allowed to keep private, is not private for us."

Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Larry Craig, R-Idaho, wants you to know that the suspect arrested and charged with stealing a computer from a Veterans Affairs contractor with personal information on thousands of people, is not a terrorist. Here is Craig in a press release issued last week:

"I am told that this is not related to the war in Iraq or to terrorism. It appears to be a simple theft. Investigators believe the alleged thief took the customized computer in order to record music."

I can understand someone wanting really badly to serve on the security detail of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but here's the wrong way to go about it: By impersonating a Department of Homeland Security official. (Thanks to FedSmith for the link.)

AP reports today on the tests administered by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration to volunteers that the IRS recommends certain taxpayers turn to for help with their returns. Only 39 percent of the volunteers prepared the test returns accurately. But hey, that's better than last year, when the rate was only 34 percent.

The very real and appropriate fear in the recent spate of federal laptop thefts is that identity thieves will get their hands on personal data about millions of people. Luckily, the reality is that in almost every case so far, a bunch on penny-ante thieves are getting a lot more than they bargained for.

The Transportation Security Administration said last year that it wanted to charge about $30 for background checks on frequent fliers seeking to join its Registered Traveler program to get speedy access through security checkpoints. Now, USA Today reports, the agency wants to add another $70 fee to pay the salaries of the TSA employees who would monitor Registered Traveler checkpoints. The agency also may add a $20 charge for a criminal background check. And all of those fees are on top of the annual charges of up to $80 that fliers would pay to the companies who run the program.

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.

From a journalistic perspective, there were two eyebrow-raisers in Robert Novak's column today on Richard Armitage's acknowledgment that he was Novak's source for a 2003 column revealing that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA:

• First, Novak writes that he "sat down with Armitage in his State Department office the afternoon of July 8 with tacit rather than explicit ground rules: deep background with nothing said attributed to Armitage or even to an anonymous State Department official." Really? He both conducted an interview and refused to reveal his source when the ground rules for the interview didn't explicitly specify how, or whether, the source would be identified?




• Then, Novak acknowledges that during the hour-long interview, "neither of us took notes, and nobody else was present." Novak says this makes the account in his column, which relied on recalling the conversation the same week it occurred, more credible than Armitage's reconstruction for prosecutors months later. But it's hard to see how either of them can lay claim to a great degree of accuracy in their recollections, since neither made any effort to record the substance of their conversation.

In perhaps the least shocking federal criminal justice news of the day, the California-based company responsible for those "Girls Gone Wild" videos has pleaded guilty to failing to keep age and identity records on the, ahem, "performers" in its films. Joseph Francis, founder of the company, agreed to pay fines and restitution totaling $2.1 million, the Justice Department says.

“It was a well-lighted dinner, with electricity-based lighting.”

Employees at the Office of National Drug Control Policy have earned themselves a pay cut, the Senate Appropriations Committee says. The panel has recommended slashing the budget for salaries and expenses at the agency from $26.6 million to $11.5 million, which, its members say, would "more closely reflect actual performance" of the staff.

I'm always comforted when NASA's home improvement projects go just like mine. Astronauts working on the space station early today lost a bolt in space, AP reports. That's no big deal, as long as the bolt floated away and didn't puncture the walls of the station or a space suit. The astronauts simply used three bolts, rather than the planned four, to secure the piece of equipment they were working on. Of course, it's not the first time astronauts have lost equipment on spacewalks. Another bolt went missing Tuesday, and in July a 14-inch spatula disappeared.

AP follows up on conflicts of interest among NIH researchers today, noting that in most cases, scientists found to have improperly accepted money from drug companies received only verbal reprimands or other warnings for their behavior.

Exploring that burning 9/11 anniversary question: "Five Years Later, Are Hoosiers Safe?" Update: An e-mailer provides the following response to this item: "Wow--so it's funny that people outside of the New York-D.C. metro areas may be concerned about their safety from terrorist attacks? Maybe federal employees in Oklahoma City might not find that idea so amusing." The headline did strike me as a little funny, but I have to admit, this is a pretty good point.

Here's part of the statement Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch prepared last week to honor Leroy Smith, who was named the agency's Public Servant of the Year for blowing the whistle on dangerous conditions in a prison factory:

For someone in Leroy Smith’s position, ... it takes real courage to stand up to one’s boss. Even more, to stand one’s ground when the boss – upper-level bureaucrats – won’t listen. That’s real courage and persistence.

Officials at the National Institutes of Health say Dr. Thomas J. Walsh, a senior researcher, engaged in "serious misconduct" by failing to report more than $100,000 in income from unauthorized arrangements with drug companies, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. But so far, the agency hasn't taken any disciplinary action against him, because officials don't think they can. Walsh is a member of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. An NIH internal report on Walsh said that the agency's human resources office had concluded that "if he were a civilian employee, his actions would lead to a recommendation for his proposed removal."

The Army has proved the skeptics wrong, hitting its recruiting targets for August, and thus virtually guaranteeing that goals for the fiscal year will be met. Last year, the service fell short of its target, leading some observers to predict recruiters wouldn't be able to sign up all the new soldiers they needed this year, either. But by trolling for recruits online, offering hefty bonuses and accepting applicants as old as 42, the Army came through.

We remember the fallen, and honor their memory.

The Center for Consumer Freedom uses the beginning of football season to once again take aim at the government's Body Mass Index, which uses height and weight (but not muscle mass) to calculate body fat. At 6' 2" and 240 pounds, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb weighs in with a BMI of 31, putting him in the "obese" category.

The center, a nonprofit supported by restaurants and food companies, is irritated that when the government created the BMI in 1998, millions of Americans were shifted into the obese category overnight. OK, but have these people been to the mall lately? There are some large folks out there. And ripping the BMI just gives your average football fan a great excuse to peer over the bag of Doritos balanced on his gut in his recliner and say, "It's muscle mass. Just like Donovan McNabb."

Here's some unsurprising news from AP: In the wake of the recent airline crash in Lexington, Ky., the Federal Aviation Administration has informed employees at an Indianapolis control center that they won't be allowed to take naps during their shifts any more. What is surprising is that an FAA spokeswoman says the policy change is unrelated to the Lexington crash. (Thanks to Fedsmith for the link).

"Sen. Cantwell Helped Lobbyist's Clients." No! Say it isn't so! That couldn't possibly be true!

The group Judicial Watch says it has obtained records from the Homeland Security Department through the Freedom of Information Act documenting 226 incursions by Mexican government personnel into the United States between 1996 and 2005. Those include "incidents involving shots fired on both sides of the border, unmarked helicopters invading U.S. airspace, drug smuggling, and confrontations between U.S. Border Patrol agents and armed members of the Mexican military."

Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch is in hot water with his employees again, this time for some information in an employee newsletter on office attire. The Washington Post reports today that Bloch, dismayed by some OSC workers' intepretation of "business casual," issued an edict in 2004 on clothing rules. Then, last month, the agency's employee newsletter chimed in with some additonal advice. Men were told to avoid sneakers and earrings. Women were cautioned against tight clothing and told to consider wear tailored pants, shirts, sweaters and purses. Both men and women were told that a "conservative watch" would help, too.

This led to two problems:

• Some female employees found the recommendations in the newsletter to be sexist and patronizing.


• Bloch was forced to admit that the words that ended up in the newsletter was actually plagiarized from a couple of university Web sites.
  

NASA has delayed the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis for at least another day due to a glitch in the spacecraft's electrical power system. If anything happens to go wrong with the launch when it eventually occurs, the folks at the Defense Department's Northern Command report that they're ready to step in with both DoD and Homeland Security assets, including the following:

• 20 U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard Pararescue personnel (308th Rescue Squadron, Moody Air Force Base, Ga.; 103rd Rescue Squadron, Gabreski, N.Y.)


• 4 HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters (301st Rescue Squadron, Patrick Air Force Base, Fla.)


• 1 U.S. Air Force Reserve/Air National Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft (39th Rescue Squadron [Air Force Reserve Command], Patrick Air Force Base, Fla.; and 1 Air National Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft (102nd Rescue Squadron, Francis S. Gabreski Airport, N.Y.)


• 1 KC-130 Hercules (Marine Corps Air Group 49, Stewart Air National Guard Base, N.Y.)


• 6 Army HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters (Fort Irwin, Calif.)


• 5 Air Force UH-1 Huey and OH-58 Kiowa helicopters (White Sands Missile Range, N.M.)

It's the Transportation Security Administration's turn in the identity theft spotlight. The agency has told almost 1,200 of its former employees that a contractor may have mailed their Social Security numbers and birth dates to the wrong addresses, putting them at risk for identity theft, USA Today reports. At least the information was mailed to other TSA employees, lessening the risk that it would fall into the hands of an identity thief.

More than 70 Guam National Guard members are headed to the U.S.-Mexico border to bolster efforts to stem the tide of illegal immigration, the Pacific Daily News reported Sunday. And apparently it's considered a plum assignment. The Guard unit is getting "a lot more volunteers" than it needs for the effort, unlike previous deployments to Iraq, Africa and hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, a public affairs officer says.

A new study from Trusted Strategies, an IT security consulting firm, has found that the government has suffered more from Internet-related crimes than any other industry over the last 7 years. The study of all publicly-available Justice Department-prosecuted cybercrimes concludes that more than 80 percent of all cyberatacks, which end up costing an average of $3 million per case, could have been prevented if the organizations had verified the identity of computers connecting to their networks and accounts in addition to checking user IDs and passwords.

The report's author, Bill Bosen, said that many of the attacks against government agencies were politically motivated, citing Drug Enforcement Administration Web sites as a frequent target of hackers. Bosen said that an attack such as the one carried out against the Federal Executive Board Web sites administered by the Office of Personnel Management could easily cost an agency $500,000 or more. He said that most organizations spend their money blocking viruses and spyware, but he maintained that most of the damage occurs when users log into an organization's computer systems.--Daniel Pulliam

The Bush administration won't have any McClellans to kick around from here on out. Medicare and Medicaid chief Mark McClellan confirmed the rumors Tuesday: He's leaving his post in a few weeks. His brother, Scott, resigned as White House press secretary in April.

Don't assume that the chubby toddler phase is just a phase. Pudgy two-year-olds are five times more likely to become overweight 12-year-olds than regular-sized little ones, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reports.

Lockheed Martin emerged yesterday as the winner in the competition for the NASA contract to build Orion, the next-generation spacecraft to send humans to the Moon and beyond. Under the deal, the company will get $3.9 billion through 2013 to design, build and fly the craft. Then it'll get another $3.5 billion to build ships to go to the space station and the moon, and to ferry cargo to the space station. But you should pay little attention to those numbers, the New York Times reports, because NASA projects typically run 50 percent above initial cost estimates.

The Pentagon really wants to know how its efforts in Iraq are playing in the United States and around the world. The Defense Department, AP reports, is seeking bidders for a $20 million contract for monitoring and reporting on how "Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international, and U.S. media" are reporting on the conflict -- including an analysis of the tone of those reports.

The Federal Aviation Administration has 1,081 fewer controllers today than three years ago, AP reports today. In September 2003, there were 15,386 controllers; as of August, the figure had dropped to 14,305. But FAA Administrator Marion Blakey says the agency has plenty of controllers and adding another one to the late shift at Lexington Blue Grass Airport probably wouldn't have prevented the recent crash there, because the second controller likely would have been in a radar room. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, not surprisingly, begs to differ, saying the FAA is understaffed at several major airports, including Chicago O'Hare, Atlanta and Dallas.