Soldier of Fortune Magazine Exposes Massive Illegal Overtime Pay to FBI, ATFE, and DEA Agents Deployed to Iraq
The editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine, Lt. Col. Robert K. Brown, has written an editorial on a report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Justice. The report, “An Investigation of Overtime Payments to FBI and Other Department of Justice Employees Deployed to Iraqâ€, found where massive amounts of illegal overtime were paid to government agents:
“ATFE Special Agents were deployed in Iraq on 90-day TDY assignments between 2003 and 2008. During that time, they were paid $4,175,731.00 in unauthorized and unlawful overtime pay. They filed fraudulent claims for the overtime and ATFE senior officials did nothing to monitor the claims or review them for conformity with federal law and regulations. In other words, the ATFE Special Agents, law enforcement officers who are sworn to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, filed false time and attendance reports claiming pay for overtime which was not worked and for which payment was not authorized under federal law.”
Lt. Col. Brown also breaks down the “extraordinarily generous” pay and benefits the agents received and the fact that “missing” from the report is any “call for accountability”, nor an attempt to “recoup the excess payments” which were against the law.
Lt. Col Brown also noted that our new Commander in Chief and President Barack Obama has “issued a call for responsibility”:
“Amid the orderly transfer of power, our new Chief Executive has issued a call for responsibility. As is the case with most of his public statements, his meaning is not clear. However, if he means holding government officials accountable for their actions, a novel and great idea, it is something that we can all embrace. It is particularly true of those officials within agencies with a long and well documented history of abuses of entrusted powers. Somehow, ATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) comes to mind as the poster boy for irresponsibility and unaccountability.”
To date, accountability hasn’t extended to within the government.
Lt. Col. Brown’s expose is in the April issue of Soldier of Fortune, which is at the newsstands in March. The link to the story online can be found [here].
By LBG
Image – Government waste
