Crude!

(pun intended)

 

NYT article on reports by Earl Devaney, the Interior Department's inspector general, about shenanigans at agency that collects oil and gas royalties.  You know, it's just the usual "financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct."

 

According to one report, about one-third of the program's staff accepted prohibited gratuities from oil companies.

 

The report also indicates that staff improperly steered business to former agency employees, abused expense accounts, and accepted tickets to a Toby Keith concert (which should be a capital offense).

 

The program's manager (allegedly) "mixed official and personal business, and took money from a technical services firm in exchange for urging oil companies to hire the firm," and "ha[d] intimate relations with two subordinates, one of whom regularly sold him cocaine."

 

And on, and on, and on.  A pirate ship has less corruption than this place.  And if it'd been prowling the Gulf when Katrina hit, probably could have saved more people than FEMA did...

 

Anyway, the best excerpt even has a pun:

On one occasion in 2002, the report said, two of the officials who marketed taxpayers' oil got so drunk at a daytime golfing event sponsored by Shell that they could not drive to their hotels and were put up in Shell-provided lodging.

The same two women also "engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts," the reports' cover memo said, adding that "sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length."