Issa pushes EPA chief to resolve investigator dispute

Congress’s top investigator has told EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to resolve a long-running dispute that Rep. Darrell Issa says is undermining the agency inspector general’s ability to investigate misconduct. In a letter to Ms. McCarthy last week, Mr. Issa said she has done little to resolve the dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, which was set up by Congress to root out fraud and abuse, and the EPA’s homeland security office, which has no statutory authority. Mr. Issa, California Republican, said the inspector general’s work “continues to be compromised” by the feud with the homeland security office, which the inspector general said interfered in the early stages of the probe into notorious time and attendance fraudster John Beale, a high ranking EPA official now in prison after he pretended to be a CIA spy, bilking the agency of nearly $900,000 in pay. The homeland security office also came under scrutiny when one of its executives was accused of assault by an inspector general agent, Elisabeth Heller Drake. Ms. Drake told Congress that a senior official, Steve Williams, displayed “inexplicable anger and aggressiveness” when she went to the office as part of an ongoing investigation...more