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Looks like this is the week for music-themed posts. The Washington Post's "Government Inc." blogger, Robert O'Harrow, notes today that the Defense Department has issued a contract solicitation for a "rock music band" to tour in Kuwait and Afghanistan. But just being great at Guitar Hero or Rock Band on your Playstation won't cut it. At least one member of the band, according to the solicitation, must be a "professional celebrity."

This is not the first time, of course, that the military has issued contracts seeking musicians to entertain the troops.

This just in from my colleagues over at CongressDaily:

House Republican sources said this afternoon that Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., has decided to retire, creating yet another open seat for Republicans to defend and setting off a shuffle on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Davis is ranking member. Davis' announcement, coupled with the retirement of Rep. Ron Lewis, R-Ky., and Missouri GOP Rep. Kenny Hulshof's decision Tuesday to run for governor, means there are 24 Republicans and 29 House members overall who are either retiring or running for higher office.

Is your agency like Amy Winehouse? That's what EPA's Marcus Peacock wants to know.

If you have no idea who Amy Winehouse is, I'll tell you how you want to answer the above question: No. And I'm impressed that Peacock does know who she is.

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker was the featured speaker at Government Executive's Leadership Breakfast this morning, in what could be called an unofficial stop on his Fiscal Wake-Up Tour. (For full details on Walker's presentation about the impending fiscal crisis, see this GAO publication.)

In addition to plugging his appearance in a new documentary, I.O.U.S.A., which played last week at the Sundance Film Festival, Walker offered a few other observations:

• On the lack of attention to the country's looming fiscal problem: "If it was well understood, people would do something about it."


• On the political process: "Congress is a committee, and you can't run a country by committee. We're a long way from what the Founding Fathers intended."


• On the need for reengineering federal programs: "Government in many cases is based on conditions that existed from the 1940s to the 1960s."


• On oversight of federal operations: "The problem in government is not fraud, but waste. It's huge, and getting bigger."

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been having a debate for several weeks now over whether managerial competence or inspirational leadership is more important in a president. Now a couple of Republican contenders are having their turn.

Speaking in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., late last week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., drew a contrast between himself and one of his top competitors, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Here's how MSNBC's "First Read" characterized McCain's remarks:

"I think everybody knows the difference between leadership and management," McCain told a group of reporters gathered at an airport here. "You can hire managers all the time, people who do the mechanics, people who implement policies, people who are good with assets. Leadership is people who inspire… Leadership is people who have had hands on experience with patriotism and service to the nation… Leadership is the ability to inspire and the ability to make Americans serve causes greater than their self-interest."

Asked what that description of leadership implied about his biggest opponent in Florida, McCain said, "Governor Romney is touting his qualities and his experience and resume as a manager. I am telling the American people that I am a leader and they know it."

Among the "people who inspire," McCain listed Ronald Reagan and Gen. David Petraeus.

Romney, CNN's "Political Ticker" reported, fired back thusly:

He told supporters in Pensacola that as the only candidate at Thursday’s Florida Republican debate who had worked in the private sector, he was uniquely qualified to lead on economic issues.

He added that in his view, McCain hadn’t done well at the forum: the senator “had to come back and flail a bit, trying to attack my record, saying that my record — 25 years in the business world and three years running the Olympics, and then four years as governor of Massachusetts — that that doesn't qualify me to understand how the economy works."

If you weren't among the hundreds of people who participated in our webinar yesterday featuring the Pentagon's Mary Lacey talking about the implementation of the National Security Personnel System, you can still go in and view the archived version. It was a lively event, and timely, too, since the Defense Department just issued performance-based raises to thousands of employees under the new system.

Earlier this week, the Office of Personnel Management put out this somewhat curious announcement:

Because of technical difficulties, the deadline for the application process to the Federal Candidate Development Program has been extended to midnight Friday, January 25, 2008, or until the end of the day when 500 Fed CDP applications have been received, whichever comes first.

Now, OPM says it won't provide any information to Government Executive on exactly what those "technical difficulties" were. Anybody have any intelligence on that?

The American people aren't the only ones getting fatter. American chickens are, too. And scientists at the Agricultural Research Service are trying to find ways to slim them down.

Area 51 in New Mexico Nevada, home to a super-secret Air Force installation, has a new and rather mundane name. Air Force Times reports that civilian aviation journals now list the air base near a dry lake bed as "Homey Airport." New flight planning software also lists the designation "KXTA" for the facility -- which, the newspaper reported, "online wags have speculated stands for 'extraterrestrial airport.' "

Capt. Jessica Martin, a spokeswoman for Nellis Air Force Base, which has control over Homey Airport, told Air Force Times, “we already know about the designation, but it doesn’t have any effect on operations at the base.”

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

The New Yorker’s George Packer jumps into the debate over whether the President’s role is managerial or inspirational this week with a piece contrasting the ways in which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama view the presidency. Packer lays out the choice between their approaches starkly when he says that “if this campaign is, among other things, a referendum on the current occupant of the White House—as elections at the end of failed presidencies inevitably are—then its outcome will be determined partly by whether voters find George W. Bush guilty of incompetence or of demeaning American politics.”

It’s a smart, probing piece that focuses more on how Clinton’s managerial style has evolved over time than on Obama’s obvious inspirational gifts, and how those skills for making policy and getting things done translate to the political campaign Clinton is running. Packer uses an interesting variety of examples, including the fight over Bill Clinton's health care bill and the process that Hillary Clinton used to produce her book It Takes a Village, to describe her reluctant journey to the realization that she needs to focus more on humanizing herself and inspiring voters, and that she can’t rely simply on competence and service delivery. It would be interesting to learn more about how Obama arrived at his theory of the president’s role, and to see whether he’s become more or less invested in management and process over time.--Alyssa Rosenberg

As federal agencies become increasingly concerned about losing baby boomers who are reaching retirement age, they are looking to pick up experienced workers from the private sector to fill the gaps. Hence the announcement last week of the Partnership for Public Service's FedExperience program involving IBM and the Treasury Department.

Also last week, the Dallas Morning News reported on the Senior Environmental Employment Program, under which 1,500 people 55 and older have been hired to work on a full- or part-time basis at the Environmental Protection Agency as clerical staff, data administrators, engineers and inspectors. The program is run by the National Older Worker Career Center, which manages a similar effort for the Agriculture Department and is looking to extend its reach to other agencies. Private sector workers seem eager to sign up, given the generous federal benefits they can receive after working for the government for only a few years.

This seems all well and good, but here are a couple of caveats:

• Bringing a lot of new baby boomers into government could end up costing taxpayers a lot of money. Last year, the Bush administration implicitly recognized this by including a proposal in its fiscal 2008 budget to scale back the government's contribution to health care premiums for new federal retirees with less than a decade of government service. The government's current subsidy is "the envy of many people in the private sector," said OPM Director Linda M. Springer. (That proposal hasn't gone anywhere on Capitol Hill yet, and federal labor unions have vowed to fight it.)
• Recruiting replacement boomers shouldn't come at the expense of giving the people who have been in government a long time, but who are not retiring soon, a shot at the top career jobs in agencies. The last thing the government needs is to force out talented younger people by denying them the chance at advancement for which they have patiently been waiting.

Fred Thompson has made it official: He's out of the presidential race. Politics aside, this means that the race has lost the candidate with arguably the strongest working knowledge of the management challenges facing the federal government right now -- certainly the strongest on the Republican side. And as I keep saying, these issues really matter -- and not just to the people who work in government, but to the country as a whole.

The Library of Congress has begun using photo-sharing site Flickr to upload about 3,000 stunning historical images from the 14 million the agency has in its collections. They include this amazing image of a real-life Rosie the Riveter during World War II:

In case you've forgotten, here's the iconic Rosie image from a poster promoting the war effort:

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

Now that the President of the United States is blogging (and taking questions from Americans), what kind of juicy behind-the-scenes details can we glean about goings-on in the Bush administration? Only this, apparently: The president picks out his own clothes every day.

The issue of professional liability insurance for federal managers hit the mainstream media again Sunday, with a New York Times story about CIA officers who are turning to Wright & Company for policies to cover their legal costs in the event they get hauled into federal court or become ensnared in a congressional investigation.

As the story notes, FBI agents, Secret Service officers, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees also have purchased the insurance. They're not the only ones. In the late 1990s, professional liability insurance became popular at the IRS after reform legislation provided a new avenue for agency employees to file complaints against their supervisors.

Exactly who should get the insurance has long been open to question. The Justice Department typically represents federal employees in proceedings resulting from actions taken in the course of their job duties, but some managers see the benefit of having personal representation, too.

In a 1998 report, the Office of Personnel Management found that in the previous five years, only 14 federal employees had been found personally liable in lawsuits brought against them in relation to their government duties. And in only one reported case did an employee actually have to pay damages. The Justice Department reported that it had received about 7,000 requests for representation from federal employees in the same period, and had rejected 150 of those requests, or 2 percent.

The insurance costs about $300 a year, and the government pays half the premium for supervisors and certain other employees.

How cool is this? Japanese researchers are planning to launch a paper airplane from the International Space Station -- and they think it will reach Earth without burning up on reentry. They started testing the heat and wind resistance of a prototype this week.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

This week's New Yorker includes an exhaustive profile (not available online) of Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence. Among the thoughts the intelligence community's overseer shared with the magazine's Lawrence Wright:

• On coordinating the efforts of the various intelligence agencies: "I grew up in this community. I served it as a consultant. I'm passionate about it. So this job gives me the opportunity to make a contribution, even to the consternation of the bureaucracies, because I am going to force them to cooperate."


• On his political affiliation: "I'm not a Republican or a Democrat. My worry is good government." And: "I always vote, and I've voted for both parties."


• On the movie The Bourne Ultimatum, in which CIA agents sit at banks of massive computer monitors and have instant access to data and security camera feeds around the world: "Yeah, we can't do that. That's all horse pucky."

The White House and members of the Senate are still at odds over legislation that is designed to strengthen federal inspectors general. The bill, CongressDaily noted yesterday, "aims to increase the independence of IGs through measures such as requiring notification of Congress 30 days before an IG is removed and mandating that all have their own legal counsel instead of using agency lawyers."

Umm, the senators might want to look at how well that provision about legal counsel is working out at the General Services Administration.

With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination seeming to come down to a choice between Barack Obama's push for change and Hillary Clinton's focus on experienced leadership, an interesting shift has occurred: Suddenly, the issue of managing the federal government has taken center stage. It started on Monday, when Obama, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, said the following:

I'm not an operating officer. Some in this debate around experience seem to think the job of the president is to go in and run some bureaucracy. Well, that's not my job. My job is to set a vision of "here's where the bureaucracy needs to go."

Clinton took issue with that in a Democratic debate Tuesday night in Las Vegas:

I do think that being president is the chief executive officer. I respect what Barack said about setting the vision, setting the tone, bringing people together. But I think you have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy. You've got to pick good people, certainly, but you have to hold them accountable every single day. We've seen the results of a president who, frankly, failed at that. You know, he went in to office saying he was going to have the kind of Harvard Business School CEO model where he'd set the tone, he'd set the goals and then everybody else would have to implement it.

And we saw the failures. We saw the failures along the Gulf Coast with, you know, people who were totally incompetent and insensitive failing to help our fellow Americans. We've seen the failures with holding the administration accountable with the no-bid contracts and the cronyism. So I do think you have to do both. It's a really hard job, and in America we put the head of state and the head of government together in one person.

But I think you've got to set the tone, you've got to set the vision, you've got to set the goals, you've got to bring the country together. And then you do have to manage and operate and hold that bureaucracy accountable to get the results you're trying to achieve.

Obama responded:

Well, there's no doubt that you've got to be a good manager. And that's not what I was arguing. The point, in terms of bringing together a team, is that you get the best people and you're able to execute and hold them accountable. But I think that there's something, if we're going to evaluate George Bush and his failures as president, that I think are much more important. He was very efficient. He was on time all the time, and you know, and had... You know, I'm sure he never lost a paper. I'm sure he knows where it is. What he could not do is to listen to perspectives that didn't agree with his ideological predispositions. ...

I mean, those are the kinds of failures that have to do with judgment. They have to do with vision, the capacity to inspire people. They don't have to do with whether or not he was managing the bureaucracy properly. That's not to deny that there has to be strong management skills in the presidency. It is to say that what has been missing is the ability to bring people together, to mobilize the country, to move us in a better direction, and to be straight with the American people.

I'm not about to make any kind of endorsement in this race or the Republican one, but I'll acknowledge that I'm already on the record as saying that management really matters. In fact, nine months ago, I noted that it looked like the issue of effectively managing government operations might play a central role in this year's presidential contest, and I've been waiting for it to happen ever since.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn't just about busting people at the border. Sometimes officials there get to do other stuff, like return an ancient marble sculpture of the head of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the Algerian government. ICE had seized the three-foot-high, 200-pound marble sculpture from Christie's auction house in New York, where it was up for sale. INTERPOL had alerted ICE that the artifact might have been stolen in a 1996 museum robbery.

ICE says it has agents in 50 locations around the world to work with host countries, the State Department and U.S. Customs and Border protection to identify stolen antiquities smuggled into the United States.

Most of the recent scary stories about the loss or theft of federal employees' personally identifiable information involve the theoretical possibility that such data could be used for fraudulent purposes. Now comes a story where it came much closer to really happening.

On Jan. 5, four people were arrested in Bensalem Township, Pa., for attempted identity fraud, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. One of the suspects had two pages of a 1994 report that included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, salary information and other data about roughly 100 employees of the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in Dahlgren, Va. The listed employees all had last names beginning with the letter B.

Officials don't know whether the suspects have all of the pages of the report, but as many as 10,000 employees may be at risk of identity theft. Dahlgren officials say they notified employees on Jan. 10 of the situation via an all-hands e-mail. Those possibily affected could have worked at the Naval Facilities Command, NSWC Dahlgren, NSWC White Oak, Md., NSWC Panama City, Fla., the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, the Naval Space Command and the Aegis Training and Readiness Center. The Navy has set up a call center at 1-800-352-7967 to provide more information.

(Hat tip: Fedsmith.)

Federal Executive Boards across the country are getting the job done, the Office of Personnel Management says. Among the accomplishments highlighted in the FEB 2007 annual report:

• Efforts by the Minnesota FEB to coordinate federal agencies' response to the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis.


• Settlement of more than 565 cases through low-cost or no-cost mediation programs.


• A program to provide free or reduced cost training to more than 23,000 federal employees saved agencies more than $6 million.

So if FEBs are so effective, why don't they get more support? Alyssa Rosenberg noted in a November piece in Government Executive, "though the Office of Personnel Management oversees FEBs, their staffs consist of employees detailed from offices in the area. That lack of consistent staffing, and the fact that there is no standard for determining the jurisdiction of FEBs based on the number of federal workers in a given area, can leave directors dangerously short-handed in a crisis." Kathrene L. Hansen, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles FEB, which covers 125,000 federal employees at 230 agencies, told Rosenberg she was serving as a one-person office at the time of last fall's wildfires in southern California, because the only other employee -- her secretary -- had recently resigned.

If FEBs can really help government be more effective, maybe it's time to give them a stable source of funding and adequate staff.

Everybody knows Americans have developed a tendency toward obesity. Now research shows the trend is taking its toll in the workplace. The Washington Times reports that studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and North Carolina-based RTI International show that obese workers cost their employers an extra $2,500 per year on average due to medical expenses and missed work. And research from the University of Cincinnati shows that overweight employees are less productive than their slimmer counterparts, costing their employers an average of $1,800 a year.

I was listening to ESPN Radio's "Mike and Mike in the Morning" show this morning on my way to work. Discussing impending congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, they began mocking legislators for their tendency to profess their love for the national pasttime without knowing all that much about the teams that play it. But then one of the show's co-hosts, Mike Greenberg, referred to Roger Clemens' potential deposition by staff members of the "Government Committee."

It cuts both ways, guys.

That's how Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., characterizes the choices facing inspectors general in the latest round of what seems to be an endless debate over their proper role and function in the federal government. USA Today reports on the efforts of McCaskill and others to boost the independence of IGs. The watchdogs, she says, need to operate without interference from the political leaders of agencies and be held accountable for their own misconduct.

In November, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed legislation that would raise the pay of IGs and provide them with more autonomy. The full House already has approved the measure.

Of course, this debate over IGs has been going on in one form or another for the entire 30 years since Congress created the IG position. And it's unlikely to stop any time soon, because even with the changes McCaskill has outlined, IGs will still be in the position of being charged both with helping agencies improve their management and with investigating misdeeds.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that Dessie Ruth Nelson, 65, of Oakland, Calif., a former longtime employee of the General Services Administration, had pleaded guilty to accepting more than $100,000 in bribes from a firm providing security to federal buildings in return for awarding the company three federal contracts worth more than $130 million.

In exchange for steering contracts to Holiday International Security Inc. (which later changed its name to USProtect Corp.) Nelson received, among other things, a shopping bag filled with $35,000 in cash, an envelope containing $10,000, and a $7,000 Caribbean cruise.

Nelson's case was pursued by Justice's Procurement Fraud Task Force, which is chaired by Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher and includes representatives from U.S. Attorneys' Offices, the FBI, agency inspector general offices, and other federal law enforcement agencies.

From the Washington Times:" Chinese Trashing Space with Missiles."

I spent part of this morning at a planning meeting for this year's Excellence in Government conference (which I can say with a complete lack of objectivity is going to be a fascinating set of two one-day events this year). I was interested to hear the federal folks in the room say that leaders of their agencies were really ramping up their preparations for the transition to the next presidential administration -- and not just trying to figure out how to react to whatever the next president proposes, but to provide help and information to the next set of political leaders. I hope agencies across government are taking that kind of forward-thinking approach. It will help not only federal employees, but the country as a whole if the experts in how this increasingly complicated set of structures known as the federal government actually works are fully prepared to help the next set of political appointees implement their agenda in the most effective way possible.

My post earlier this week about Stephen Goldsmith's essay on the subject of inherently governmental functions is certainly generating a lot of debate. By the way, in that post, I was remiss in not pointing out that GovExec's own Robert Brodsky explored this subject in some depth in the Sept. 1, 2007 issue of the magazine.

Thanks, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. As if I didn't already have enough to worry about, now I've got to start contemplating the possibility of an outbreak of dengue?

The White House is taking baby steps into the blogosphere. The Hill reports that Bush administration officials are posting notes from the president's trip to the Middle East on what White House spokeswoman Dana Perino characterizes as a "little bit of a blog." The first of the "Trip Notes" already has been posted, by Perino herself.

The United Nations is taking a novel approach to boosting its public image among the youth of America: BBC News reports that the organization is teaming up with Marvel Comics to produce a new comic book in which Spider-Man works with U.N. aid workers and peacekeepers. Marvel's going to produce the comic for free, and the U.N. is seeking funds to distribute it in American schools. Former United States envoy to the U.N. John Bolton isn't impressed. He calls the move an "act of desperation," saying the U.N. ought to focus its efforts on improving its performance if it wants a better image.

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

The Transportation Department inspector general is launching an investigation of working conditions for Chicago-area air traffic controllers, the Associated Press reports. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., requested the study after a Government Accountability Office report showed that O’Hare International Airport had the second-highest number of near-collisions on runways from 2001 to 2006.

The General Services Administration has declared that it's OK to cruise around federal buildings on Segway scooters, Federal Computer Week reports. Under an interim rule, people with certain impairments are allowed to use the two-wheeled personal transporters to get around. But "the policy does not cover motorcycles, mopeds, tricycles or bicycles."

Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indianapolis, one-time adviser to President Bush on management issues, and an advocate of privatization of government functions, raises a provocative issue in a new essay in The American magazine: "Even if we could agree on core government functions that had to be walled off from contractors," he writes, "we would be left with a thorny question: what happens when government turns out not to be very good at inher­ently governmental work?"

Goldsmith argues that the feds are simply too hung up on the issue of whether particular work is too important to be contracted out to seriously address this question:

It appears almost certain that any significant steps toward privatization are going to occur at the state level. Why? Because that’s where the most exciting work is going on right now, and because Washington appears allergic to public-private innovation. Congress not only clings to the view that gov­ernment workers must produce all government services, but also even tries to impede progress when it surfaces outside the Beltway—witness the provision tucked inside the 2007 farm bill that would prohibit outsourcing by states and require government employees to process all applications for food stamps.

I think Goldmsith's taking it a little too far -- I'm not convinced Washington's "allergic to public private-innovation," or that Congress thinks that "government workers must provide all government services." If he thinks that's true, I think he's missed out on an awful lot of innovation in recent years, and a tremendous amount of outsourcing of government functions that has occurred with the active or tacit approval of Congress.

Nevertheless, Goldsmith's core question is a valid one, and it would be worth some exploration during this year's presidential campaign, if the candidates ever decide to get serious about federal management issues. And lest you think that's a pipe dream, remember it's happened before, and Goldsmith was involved.

One of those little-known facts about federal employment is that if you're a man, and you failed to register for the draft when you turned 18, you're ineligible to work for Uncle Sam. This ensnared Chris Freking, 39, a GS-12 technician at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, last year. It also hit Michael B. Elgin Jr., 42, an 18-year employee of the Internal Revenue Service in Boston, who was fired in 2007 despite an appeal for leniency on the part of the agency by, among others, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Now, the Boston Globe reports, Elgin has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging his dismissal, saying he was discriminated against because he is a man. (Women don't have to register for the draft.) But the IRS and the Office of Personnel Management aren't budging: those who fail to register must go, they say.

I'm a fan of the National Treasure movies, although (or maybe because) they require a hefty suspension of disbelief to accept the notion of buried loot in lower Manhattan or a city of gold underneath Mount Rushmore. So imagine my surprise when I read in the Washington Post's "Reliable Source" column today that the films aren't entirely fictitious. "Damned if Mount Vernon doesn't actually turn out to have [a] super-mysterious secret basement!" write Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts. And now the overseers of George Washington's home have decided to open the basement to the public. But curious sightseers won't see the secret tunnel leading out of it that's depicted in the movie. That's made up.

NASA and the National Science Foundation say they've set a record by launching three long-duration scientific balloon flights in a single summer in Antarctica. They're using the balloons to study ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and search for antimatter.

Michael Tanji, who spent nearly two decades as an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office, posts some thoughts over at Danger Room about what he'd like to see in a presidential candidate. Some of the more interesting ideas he backs:

• "Purging the intelligence community of long-time incumbents and golden-handcuffed dinosaurs."


• "Right-sizing the military and civilian intelligence community staff by eliminating duplication through consolidation and fighting for smart growth in key areas by proposing raises in manpower caps in human intelligence and all-source analysis disciplines."


• "Refining the use of contractors in the defense and intelligence communities. Contractors are necessary and in some cases essential, but they should be used judiciously and over short periods of time."


• "Dispersing as much of the national security apparatus across the country as possible. ... Let agencies keep their headquarters elements in DC, but send everyone else to Dayton, Omaha, Kansas City, Boise, etc."

From NASA: "White Dwarf Pulses Like a Pulsar"

It's no surprise that the Defense Department is interested in power in many different forms. But it may come as some surprise that one of those forms is "wearable power." In fact, the department is sponsoring a competition for wearable power systems, defined as those that can "power military equipment for 96 hours, but that weigh less than half the current battery load." The contest will take place next September and October at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and the winner will take home a $1 million prize. But competition is stiff -- 169 teams already have registered for the contest.

Larry Carr, an FBI agent based in Seattle, was four years old in 1971 when a man calling himself Dan (or D.B.) Cooper hijacked a flight that took off from Portland, Ore., demanding four parachutes and $200,000. He got them when the plane landed in Seattle, and forced it to take off again, aiming for Mexico City. Then he jumped out the back of the plane somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nev., and never was heard from again.

Now, the New York Times reports, Carr has reopened the Cooper case, and the FBI has put new details and images relating to the hijacking on its Web site in the hopes of tracking down more information about Cooper. Of course, if he's still alive, he'd be about 85 now.

Carr still holds out hope of hearing from someone who knew Cooper -- or the man himself. “Maybe one day," Carr says, "I’ll be sitting at my desk and I’ll get a call from an old man who says, ‘You’re not going to believe this story.’ ”

How important is the distinction between "must" and "should"? In the world of federal auditing standards, apparently it's really important -- so important that it took the Government Accountability Office 93 pages to spell it out.