#3 Job Title: Criminal Investigator Agency: National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives contains billions of documents and items that make up our nations cultural and political heritage. Presidential letters, military documents and even secret stuff regular folk like us cannot see (except perhaps Nicholas Cage). And sometimes people take documents from those archives and try to sell them. The investigators comb the Internet, follow up on tips and travel to places such as Gettysburg, Pa., to look for documents, gather tips and educate traders at antique shows. Civil War documents are a ripe area for people trying to…
Browsing: Interior
The Washington Monument, damaged in the August earthquake, is cracked in dozens of places, according to a National Park Service report released Thursday. Six marble panels near the pointed top of the monument — called the “pyramidion” — have severe cracking, and. water is leaking through to the observation areas, according to the report. The report — prepared by government contractors Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. and Tipping Mar — also documents other cracks throughout the structure. The Park Service will receive $7.5 million in funds to repair the monument under the fiscal 2012 spending bill approved last week. The agency…
The Bureau of Land Management spends between $20.8 million and $33.3 million on computers for its employees. By replacing computers with Apple iPads, the bureau expects it would have to spend far less — between $8 million and $12 million, according to internal documents obtained by the website governmentattic.org. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. It isn’t clear if the bureau’s current hardware costs are annual or over its five year technology refresh period, when it periodically replaces technology. Transitioning to the iPad would require “very little maintenance” over its lifespan, the bureau said. Currently,…
It’s not every day that national leaders pay tribute to someone who spearheaded a cause that will cost the government several billion dollars. That distinction goes, however, to the late Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Interior and Treasury departments that prompted a $3.4 billion settlement to make up for their mismanagement of an Indian trust fund. Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe from Montana, died late Sunday from cancer. In a statement today, President Obama said he and First Lady Michelle Obama were “saddened” to learn of Cobell’s passing. “Elouise spoke out when she saw that…
The White House continues to push renewable energy projects during National Energy Awareness month this October. The latest is from the Interior Department, which has announced what they call the largest solar energy project on public lands. From Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary The Tessera Solar Imperial Valley Solar Project and the Chevron Energy Solutions Lucerne Valley Solar Project will both be built in the California desert. Together, the projects could produce up to 754 megawatts of renewable energy, power 226,000 – 566,000 American homes, and support almost 1,000 new jobs. At the Department of the Interior, we have a special…
RIK, RIP. That’s the message from the Interior Department accompanying its next-to-last annual report about the “royalty-in-kind” program tarnished by repeated scandals. The program, dating back to 1998, allows energy companies to pay royalties to the federal government with oil and gas instead of cash. After Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced last year that he was shutting it down, the program officially ends this Thursday, when the final contracts expire, the department said in a news release. For fiscal 2009, the initiative generated benefits estimated at $23 million “depending on various assumptions regarding markets and administrative costs,” the newly issued…
The revamped Minerals Management Service is wasting no time showing the oil and natural gas industry that a new day has dawned. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — created last month in the wake of April’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — assessed a $5.2 million civil penalty on BP America for submitting “false, inaccurate and misleading reports” about energy production on Southern Ute Indian Tribal lands in southwestern Colorado, bureau director Michael Bromwich said today. BP reported incorrect royalty rates and prices to the department and also attributed oil and gas…
You remember the Minerals Management Service, right? The agency that completely failed to properly oversee oil rig operations? Employees literally in bed with oil company representatives, jacked up on crystal meth while on the job? Fell on its sword after BP’s Deepwater rig exploded and sank, causing a still-ongoing environmental catastrophe? Now you can own a piece of it. The watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility this morning announced they’re auctioning off a wide assortment of tchotchkes from MMS. And we’ve got to hand it to them: their snark is top-notch. PEER has 16 items for auction, starting at…
NPR’s Planet Money blog has a cute little rundown of federal agencies that have changed their names in the past, prompted by the Minerals Management Service’s rebranding as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (try to say that acronym three times fast). This sort of thing intrigues me so I Googled around a bit and found a nice list on Wikipedia of defunct federal agencies. Anyone remember the Board of Tea Appeals (which apparently hung around until 1996, somehow?!)? How about the Board of Economic Warfare? The Federal Theatre Project? Oh, for the days when a fed…
Visitors to www.interior.gov might feel like they’ve entered a time warp. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill never occurred, the Minerals Management Service remains intact and the lead story on the home page is about Interior Secretary Ken Salazar commending employees for all their hard work…in 2009. So who set back the clock? It looks like Interior failed to link together the various iterations of its Web address. Visitors who type in www.doi.gov will get the current website, which was overhauled at the beginning of the year. But visitors who type in www.interior.gov will see a world that appears to have ended shortly…