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Report: Political Interference Tainted Most Endangered Species Rulings for 5 Years
WASHINGTON - A high-ranking Interior Department official tainted nearly every decision made on the protection of endangered species over five years, a new inspector general report finds, concluding she exerted improper political interference on many more rulings than previously thought.
This August 2005 file photo provided by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks shows a gray wolf pup from the Calder Mountain pack along the Montana and Idaho borders west of Troy, Mont. The Bush administration is poised to remove the region's estimated 1,500 wolves from the endangered species list as soon as next week. (AP Photo/Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Kent Lauden, File) Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service, did pervasive harm to the department's morale and integrity and may have risked the well-being of species with her agenda, Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney said in his report out Monday.
The Interior Department last year reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found that MacDonald had applied political pressure in those cases. The new report looked at nearly two dozen other endangered species decisions not examined in the earlier report. It found MacDonald directly interfered with at least 13 decisions and indirectly affected at least two more.
MacDonald, a civil engineer with no formal training in natural sciences, resigned in May 2007. Department employees reported that they used her name as a verb - encountering political interference from senior managers was called "getting MacDonalded."
Devaney said "MacDonald's zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity of the ESA program and to the morale and reputation" of the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as potential harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act.
"Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every ESA decision issued during her tenure," from 2002 until 2007, the report said. MacDonald was deputy assistant secretary from 2004 to 2007 and a senior adviser in the department for two years before that.
MacDonald did not return telephone messages left for her in Washington and California on Monday. In a letter to Devaney refusing to be interviewed for his second report, she said that he showed "breathtaking arrogance" in conducting his previous investigation.
She resigned weeks after the report by Devaney last year found that she broke federal rules and should face punishment for leaking information about endangered species to private groups. That report also said MacDonald censored science and mistreated staff.
The new investigation reaffirmed those findings and said MacDonald's influence was even more far-reaching. It also faulted her boss, former Assistant Secretary Craig Manson, as well as several other high-ranking Interior officials, including Randal Bowman, a special assistant to Manson, and Thomas Graf, a department lawyer.
Manson, who left office in 2005, told The Associated Press in the spring that he took an active role in the endangered species program and his actions were "perfectly proper."
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who requested the investigation, said Devaney "makes it crystal clear how one person's contempt for the public trust can infect an entire agency."
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said the findings "paint a picture of something akin to a secret society residing within the Interior Department that was colluding to undermine the protection of endangered wildlife and covering for one another's misdeeds."
Interior Department spokesman Shane Wolfe said officials had just received the 147-page report late Monday and were reviewing it.
12 Comments so far
Show AllThe only part of this that is news, is that it took 7 plus years for this and other Inspector Generals to work up the courage to tell the truth.
Once the debacle of Katrina began, it should have been obvious to everyone that ideology not competence, being law abiding, or having common decency was the hallmark of nearly all of the Bush League helpers.
The higher the human population, the more crowding stresses people's psyches and resources, the more conservative they become. Conservatism is nature's way of making people kill off their excess populations. Wolves are collateral damage.
Here in THIRD WORLD Appalachia www.wisecountyissues.com people will soon be extinct ! Environmentally and Health Care wise.
Just another appointment of an incompetent by the bush criminals. I hope he burn in hell!!! Too bad about the shoe missing.
Seems everyone feels the same about Bush/Cheney and their criminal regime. Read Naomi Klein's: "The Shock Doctrine" for the ideology running this machine. It's all about killing every social/environmental program....anything for the people, so as to open the path free and clear for capitalism to fulfill its' destiny....unrestricted markets and a total free hand to business and CORPORATIONS (like the person who keeps reminding us of the tragedy of mountaintop removal in Appalachia). Sure! We see where that has gotten us!
It's going to take some time to reverse all this.....that is, if Obama is not another "disaster capitalist!" I still have hope. We'll have to wait and see.
Whoa, this Bush-appointee is one heckuva bitch. Check out the following links about her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_A._MacDonald
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/2007-05-21-06.asp
or just Google her name.
Our "democracy" was hi-jacked in 2000 and still has to right itself. Common Dreams is a wonderful venue to reassure individuals that we are not alone in our outrage but we need to forward this site to all like minded individuals. Critical mass counts in cyber space...
This outgoing regime gave no response to those who were not in agreement; there was no dialogue, not so much as a murmur. That is not to say that arrests were not involved. When the broadcast media is influenced by the politicians, democracy is compromised. Newspapers are endangered and cyber news is specialized. I go to Common Dreams because it addresses all the issues that are important to me. I imagine that my counterpart has sites that provide information that would make my blood boil. Such a site would justify slaughter of species that are struggling to survive. Such a site would offer justification of the misdeeds of Bush.
The last eight years created a huge awareness of the fallibility of elected officials. The Bush Regime was the poster for the Rich Old Boys Club. The 2008 election showed us that We The People woke up! I believe that most of the regulars to Common Dreams didn't vote for any Bushes at any time and they are probably more aware of politics than the average citizen. Send the site to smart people who may not already know about this site. It can't hurt and it might just help. Might even wake up some disillusioned former Bush fans. They need all the help they can get.
When you look at Bush's language, his reactions, his actions, his minions; it isn't difficult to come to the conclusion that he is not intelligent. I've heard bright people claim that he is an untreated alcoholic. I cannot even begin to try to identify him because he is so dangerous, so offensive, so evil in his intent and so obnoxious as a human that I recoil in horror that he represents our country. His legacy should tarnish his ancestors and well as his decendants, he is the biggest blackeye that this nation has experienced. I would hope that all individuals that ever cast a ballot in his behalf has the decency to feel shame.
I rejoice in our 2008 election and celebrate the clarity and wisdom of We The People. May Obama serve well and live long. I am so very grateful for every person who cast a ballot for him. We have finally done something right!!
Wait........... Somehow Clinton will be blamed for this too!!
The whole world sees the shame of BUSH and his whole administration and yet the GOP can not and will not clean it's, or, police it's own! They govern with their eyes closed. I remember just a year ago Bush stood at the podium and declared that our economy was Sound!! These people do not nor will they open their eyes and say "we made a mistake, let's fix it" They are, creeps. Eight years of Bush and he's still trying to pull the rug out from our country he claims to love! I wish the shoe did hit him not only once but twice!
There's no punishment painful enough for these Bush cronies who place no value on the public trust, blatantly ignore the laws they swore to uphold and think nothing of destroying the species the law was designed to protect.
Busque la verdad!
Jeanot7...Here is another front page story that won't see the light of day. Another yawner as far as the press is concerned. It deserves the public's focus, outrage and contempt. Even if Barak measures up only to the lowest expectations of the progressives, it will still be a breath of fresh air. I predict however that we will see the greatest remediation in the history of the U.S. It will occur down the line in the various departments, agencies, commissions. A new day is in view, there is hope in the hearts of men....the road is open again. These are part of the song that sprang from FDR's first 100 days back in 1933. Barak may not satisfy us 100%, but the change from what we have now may be breathtaking.
Protecting endangered wildlife species is a sane society's method of protecting the interlocking biosystems that Nature has evolved/designed to enable life on earth. If too much of earth's lifeweb dies due to wrong human activity, so too will humans die.
Progressive psyches tend to understand and accept these earthly laws of reciprocal maintenance far better than neocon psyches; likely because the former as a rule have have deeperly self-examined egos than the latter.
A chief mark of the conservative psyche is that it fears and denounces any Natural law it can't ego-control, or bind collectively via mysticalized Authority.
Some social psychologists believe that precisely for this fear-rooted reason, current day conservatives are especially compelled to mock objectively-adduced biospheric laws and to revile the environmental protection efforts of progressives, because: to do less would force [conservatives'] admission that Nature's laws connect all humans together in a manner that conservative economic and political values provably violate.
The politically institutionalized neoconservative psyche {i.e., the present Republican Party) gets around its suicidal, wealth & privilege-protecting anti-ecology stance by using pseudo-religious blather to pretend to speak in the name of a God who: allegedly promises not only Human dominion over Nature, but also maintenance of wealthy, elitist conservative economic domination over all 'lower' human beings, to boot. Neo-Calvinism, in a word.
Decades ago, well before environmental awareness began to penetrate human consciousness, Wilhelm Reich made a good case for seeing the rigid conservative psyche for what it arguably is: "...an emotional plague, fearfully life-hating and against Nature -- binding together its unexamined deathwish with a vampyre's need to live in luxury at the expense of other creatures, and accomplishing all this through the propagation of pseudo-religious magical thinking and the most violent, primitive kind of authoritarianism."
China and India have been over
It goes way beyond the endangereed species act. The power and favoritism of large corporation influence ALL government agencies enforcement of regulation - from the SEC to the EPA to OSHA. And the state agencies are even worse. In general, an "ethic" of go along to get along pervades most regulatory agencies.
---USAn---