The OGE Coverup Is Exposed!
On Thursday the Project on Government Oversight sent me a letter dated April 12, 2007 from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) responding to POGO's March 12 FOIA appeal letter regarding Mr. Mineta's calendar year 2000 public financial disclosure.
The OGE's latest response is based on an outright lie. The OGE's April 12 letter says: "As we stated in OGE's initial response letter of February 12, 2007, that report (copy enclosed) remains on file here and copies can be obtained in accordance with the public access procedures of the Ethics in Government Act."
That statement is patently untrue. The OGE's Feb. 12 FOIA response states, and I quote: "Our file review has not located any such other copies or versions of that schedule or the CY 2000 report itself" (emphasis added). In other words, they clearly stated that "the CY 2000 report itself" was not on file. When I called the OGE shortly after I received a copy of OGE's response from POGO, Ms. Denise Shelton (who is responsible for both sending out reports to the public and destroying outdated reports) confirmed to me over the phone that she could find no record at all that Mr. Mineta's CY2000 report ever existed. Her remarks about the non-existence of that report were included in POGO's FOIA appeal letter of March 12.
The OGE's response to POGO's initial FOIA request tried very hard to imply -- without exactly coming out and saying -- that the OGE could not find Mr. Mineta's calendar year 2000 financial disclosure because it had been destroyed, since reports are only retained by OGE for six years.
However, POGO's appeal letter called them on that excuse, which wouldn't hold water because the calendar year 2000 financial disclosure that OGE sent me last October was dated April 19, 2002, which means that it should not have been destroyed until April 2008. POGO's appeal letter pointed out that Ms. Shelton, who sent the package of reports to me last October, had told me over the phone that not only did she not have a record of destroying Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure, she could find no record of that report at all.
The OGE's latest response to POGO's FOIA appeal indicates that Mr. Mineta's CY2000 has magically reappeared, just as it had magically disappeared earlier.
The OGE's latest response also tries to blame the agency's incompetence for the anomalies related to their initial acquisition of that disclosure. The OGE now says that the "source of confusion" regarding the April 19, 2002 date on Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure stems from the fact that until April 2002, almost a year after that report was due in to OGE, nobody realized that he hadn't filed that CY2000 report. Thus, as their story goes, the assumption that the April 2002 version was an amended version wasn't the case because the report in fact wasn't even filed until someone noticed almost a year after it was due that it hadn't been filed. Of course, assuming that this explanation is the truth points out monumental incompetence on the part of the very agency that is supposed to be a watchdog on our federal officials' ethics. After all, how much effort can it require for the agency to make sure that all fifteen Cabinet members' financial disclosures are received by the due date (May 15 following the calendar year)? Their excuse is: "oops -- we just forgot to notice for almost a year that he didn't send in his disclosure." A truly amazing excuse for a government ethics watchdog agency.
The OGE's letter also points out a second example of serious incompetence related to that same disclosure. It points out that the OGE did not require Mr. Mineta to formally submit the CY2000 at all, that it simply photocopied his earlier "New Entrant" disclosure and added a new page for Schedule B while bypassing the normal review/signature approval process for the disclosure itself. As an acknowledgement of that shortcoming, footnote 1 says "OGE staff have been instructed that they are no longer to employ such procedures and must obtain a full submission from each filer." One wonders if that "instruction" was a result of POGO's FOIA appeal letter that exposed this amazingly lax process.
If we assume that the April 2002 date on Mr. Mineta's CY2000 financial disclosure is, in fact, due to the agency's serious oversight and/or incompetence and not because the disclosure was amended, the fundamental question about Mr. Mineta's CY2000 financial disclosure remains: how did he report an income of up to $1 million in stock options on Schedule A (assets and income) of his CY2000 disclosure, yet mark "none" on Schedule B as to any equity transactions he had during the calendar year. Clearly, if he made an income from capital gains of up to $1 million in stock options, he had transactions in stock options and the underlying stock that should have by law been reported on Schedule B.
The only possible explanation is that he exercised his Trimble stock options before becoming Commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration. However, according to information provided by both Trimble Navigation and the U.S. Commerce Dept. that is readily available on the web, Mr. Mineta was a member of Trimble's Board until July 24, 2000, and began as Commerce Secretary on July 21, 2000, so there was a 3-day overlap. The fact that he was either on the Board of Trimble or Commerce Secretary throughout calendar year 2000 is important, because both responsibilities would have required that he disclose the details of his Trimble stock transaction. If he exercised those options and made the capital gain while on Trimble's Board, he was required by law to provide the details on an SEC Form 4 covering insider transactions. (Board members, of course, are considered "insiders.") However, the SEC earlier informed me (and FAXed me information to show) that the only SEC forms he filed related to insider trading in Trimble were related to his original stock option award in 1999, and that there's absolutely no record on file with the SEC of his sale of Trimble options or stock in 2000. Therefore, he apparently exercised his Trimble options during the 30 day period after he left the Board (another requirement stated on Trimble's proxy). Of course, if that was the case Mr. Mineta exercised those options while Commerce Secretary, and that information should have been provided -- and it was not -- on Schedule B of his CY2000 Public Financial Disclosure Report.
There are really two separate and distinct coverups at work here. First is Mr. Mineta's failure to disclose the details of his profit in Trimble Navigation stock options on either SEC Form 4 or the OGE financial disclosure, as is required by law. I believe that this failure was very likely deliberate, because he likely received many more stock options than he should have been entitled to by the company's own published policy as a Board member for just 13 months before becoming Commerce Secretary. The second coverup involves the OGE's original implication in response to POGO's FOIA request that they could not find Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure because it was over six years old, followed by the amazing reappearance of that disclosure when confronted with proof of its actual existence.
The OGE essentially cited their own incompetence as the "source of confusion." While from my experience it does seem that the OGE is largely incompetent, I also believe that it's likely that someone within the agency tried to magically lose Mr. Mineta's disclosure, but that ploy didn't work when they were called on it.
I guess I never really believed that so many well-educated public servants, many of whom are lawyers, would be involved in such widespread subterfuge and downright lying. Mr. Mineta, who has carefully cultivated a reputation for honesty and integrity over the years (although that reputation was at least questioned by some when he went to Lockheed-Martin for big bucks over a decade ago), is at the head of the pack of those involved in fraud and corruption. My guess, which certainly is substantiated more and more by news reports, is that this type of scandal is almost routine in the Bush Administration, which I believe will go down as the most corrupt in history. (Even conservative groups are more and more saying that!)
As Lewis Carroll observed in Alice in Wonderland: "it was a world in which up was down and down was up."
I and the folks I'm working with will keep the pressure on to expose this scandal, and (hopefully) we can help create an environment where up actually is up.
Jerry
The OGE's latest response is based on an outright lie. The OGE's April 12 letter says: "As we stated in OGE's initial response letter of February 12, 2007, that report (copy enclosed) remains on file here and copies can be obtained in accordance with the public access procedures of the Ethics in Government Act."
That statement is patently untrue. The OGE's Feb. 12 FOIA response states, and I quote: "Our file review has not located any such other copies or versions of that schedule or the CY 2000 report itself" (emphasis added). In other words, they clearly stated that "the CY 2000 report itself" was not on file. When I called the OGE shortly after I received a copy of OGE's response from POGO, Ms. Denise Shelton (who is responsible for both sending out reports to the public and destroying outdated reports) confirmed to me over the phone that she could find no record at all that Mr. Mineta's CY2000 report ever existed. Her remarks about the non-existence of that report were included in POGO's FOIA appeal letter of March 12.
The OGE's response to POGO's initial FOIA request tried very hard to imply -- without exactly coming out and saying -- that the OGE could not find Mr. Mineta's calendar year 2000 financial disclosure because it had been destroyed, since reports are only retained by OGE for six years.
However, POGO's appeal letter called them on that excuse, which wouldn't hold water because the calendar year 2000 financial disclosure that OGE sent me last October was dated April 19, 2002, which means that it should not have been destroyed until April 2008. POGO's appeal letter pointed out that Ms. Shelton, who sent the package of reports to me last October, had told me over the phone that not only did she not have a record of destroying Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure, she could find no record of that report at all.
The OGE's latest response to POGO's FOIA appeal indicates that Mr. Mineta's CY2000 has magically reappeared, just as it had magically disappeared earlier.
The OGE's latest response also tries to blame the agency's incompetence for the anomalies related to their initial acquisition of that disclosure. The OGE now says that the "source of confusion" regarding the April 19, 2002 date on Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure stems from the fact that until April 2002, almost a year after that report was due in to OGE, nobody realized that he hadn't filed that CY2000 report. Thus, as their story goes, the assumption that the April 2002 version was an amended version wasn't the case because the report in fact wasn't even filed until someone noticed almost a year after it was due that it hadn't been filed. Of course, assuming that this explanation is the truth points out monumental incompetence on the part of the very agency that is supposed to be a watchdog on our federal officials' ethics. After all, how much effort can it require for the agency to make sure that all fifteen Cabinet members' financial disclosures are received by the due date (May 15 following the calendar year)? Their excuse is: "oops -- we just forgot to notice for almost a year that he didn't send in his disclosure." A truly amazing excuse for a government ethics watchdog agency.
The OGE's letter also points out a second example of serious incompetence related to that same disclosure. It points out that the OGE did not require Mr. Mineta to formally submit the CY2000 at all, that it simply photocopied his earlier "New Entrant" disclosure and added a new page for Schedule B while bypassing the normal review/signature approval process for the disclosure itself. As an acknowledgement of that shortcoming, footnote 1 says "OGE staff have been instructed that they are no longer to employ such procedures and must obtain a full submission from each filer." One wonders if that "instruction" was a result of POGO's FOIA appeal letter that exposed this amazingly lax process.
If we assume that the April 2002 date on Mr. Mineta's CY2000 financial disclosure is, in fact, due to the agency's serious oversight and/or incompetence and not because the disclosure was amended, the fundamental question about Mr. Mineta's CY2000 financial disclosure remains: how did he report an income of up to $1 million in stock options on Schedule A (assets and income) of his CY2000 disclosure, yet mark "none" on Schedule B as to any equity transactions he had during the calendar year. Clearly, if he made an income from capital gains of up to $1 million in stock options, he had transactions in stock options and the underlying stock that should have by law been reported on Schedule B.
The only possible explanation is that he exercised his Trimble stock options before becoming Commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration. However, according to information provided by both Trimble Navigation and the U.S. Commerce Dept. that is readily available on the web, Mr. Mineta was a member of Trimble's Board until July 24, 2000, and began as Commerce Secretary on July 21, 2000, so there was a 3-day overlap. The fact that he was either on the Board of Trimble or Commerce Secretary throughout calendar year 2000 is important, because both responsibilities would have required that he disclose the details of his Trimble stock transaction. If he exercised those options and made the capital gain while on Trimble's Board, he was required by law to provide the details on an SEC Form 4 covering insider transactions. (Board members, of course, are considered "insiders.") However, the SEC earlier informed me (and FAXed me information to show) that the only SEC forms he filed related to insider trading in Trimble were related to his original stock option award in 1999, and that there's absolutely no record on file with the SEC of his sale of Trimble options or stock in 2000. Therefore, he apparently exercised his Trimble options during the 30 day period after he left the Board (another requirement stated on Trimble's proxy). Of course, if that was the case Mr. Mineta exercised those options while Commerce Secretary, and that information should have been provided -- and it was not -- on Schedule B of his CY2000 Public Financial Disclosure Report.
There are really two separate and distinct coverups at work here. First is Mr. Mineta's failure to disclose the details of his profit in Trimble Navigation stock options on either SEC Form 4 or the OGE financial disclosure, as is required by law. I believe that this failure was very likely deliberate, because he likely received many more stock options than he should have been entitled to by the company's own published policy as a Board member for just 13 months before becoming Commerce Secretary. The second coverup involves the OGE's original implication in response to POGO's FOIA request that they could not find Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure because it was over six years old, followed by the amazing reappearance of that disclosure when confronted with proof of its actual existence.
The OGE essentially cited their own incompetence as the "source of confusion." While from my experience it does seem that the OGE is largely incompetent, I also believe that it's likely that someone within the agency tried to magically lose Mr. Mineta's disclosure, but that ploy didn't work when they were called on it.
I guess I never really believed that so many well-educated public servants, many of whom are lawyers, would be involved in such widespread subterfuge and downright lying. Mr. Mineta, who has carefully cultivated a reputation for honesty and integrity over the years (although that reputation was at least questioned by some when he went to Lockheed-Martin for big bucks over a decade ago), is at the head of the pack of those involved in fraud and corruption. My guess, which certainly is substantiated more and more by news reports, is that this type of scandal is almost routine in the Bush Administration, which I believe will go down as the most corrupt in history. (Even conservative groups are more and more saying that!)
As Lewis Carroll observed in Alice in Wonderland: "it was a world in which up was down and down was up."
I and the folks I'm working with will keep the pressure on to expose this scandal, and (hopefully) we can help create an environment where up actually is up.
Jerry
posted by Jerry Werner | 8:21 AM
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