John Beale (65), a highly paid climate-change expert at the Environmental Protection Agency, is to undergo sentencing in a Washington DC federal court tomorrow, after pleading guilty to defrauding the US government of $900,000 in salary and other benefits.
Beale, who pretended for a decade to be an undercover CIA agent in order to disappear for months at a time, has agreed to pay some $1.3m in restitution. He faces up to three years in jail.
The scandal could rebound against the current administrator of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, and her efforts to carry out President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda. Last week, an official investigation found that she knew of the fraud for more than a year.
Lack of challenge
Other officials who worked with Beale at the agency are under investigation and in a report last week, the EPA inspector general said senior agency officials had "enabled" Beale by failing to challenge any of his stories or expense claims amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Beale, who retired last April after learning he was under investigation, earned salary and bonuses of $206,000 a year, far more than his supervisors. His fraud consisted largely of failing to turn up for work – in one instance for 18 months – and offering excuses connected to his fake intelligence role at the CIA.
He faked malaria, and a rescue mission on behalf of a CIA colleague who was being tortured by the Taliban. He billed the government $57,000 for five trips to California – which he used to see his parents – and for lavish trips to London.
Mountain bike rides
But the CIA has no record of Beale ever walking in the door, let alone earning a security clearance, and the climate expert was actually using his absences to go for long rides on his mountain bike or catch up on reading.
Patrick Sullivan, the EPA assistant inspector general who carried out the investigation, told NBC: “I thought: ‘Oh my God, how could this possibly have happened in this agency?” He added: “I’ve worked for the government for 35 years. I’ve never seen a situation like this.”
The deception only came to light after Beale held a very lavish retirement party aboard a yacht on the Potomac River, but kept drawing his salary for another year. Ms McCarthy and other officials attended his send-off. She later initiated the review of Beale’s activities.
Beale, who worked on landmark legislation of the Clean Air Act, remains well-connected in Washington, and a number of former colleagues were reluctant to comment on his case. – (Guardian service)