A team of federal investigators hit the headquarters of the International Boundary and Water Commission on North Mesa in El Paso this week as a result of charges of waste, fraud and abuse leveled by IBWC’s top lawyer who was fired after taking his complaints to the U.S. State Department Office of Inspector General.

The arrival of investigators from the inspector general's office was reported by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonprofit organization that has been following the controversy and whose lawyers are representing the former IBWC Counsel General Robert McCarthy.

IBWC, which works with a Mexican-counterpart agency, is responsible for maintaining the nation's boundaries and the waterways that constitute international boundaries. Because of its international nature, it comes under the supervision of the U.S. State Department.

According to a report PEER posted Tuesday on its Internet website, “The Inspector General is launching a wide-ranging investigation into disclosures by … McCarthy that the agency violated numerous federal laws and regulations, including alleged mismanagement of a $220 million Recovery Act program to raise levees along the Rio Grande. (See www.peer.org)

PEER also reported that the investigators "are concentrating on claims that officials altered federal documents to cover up other malfeasance. A forensic computer specialist will be looking for evidence that electronic communications or other documents were illegally altered or destroyed."

The levee projects include work along the Rio Grande in El Paso and Dona Ana counties that is intended to bring the levees up to Federal Emergency Management Administration standards so areas that include the city of El Paso are protected from flooding and so owners of residential and business properties will not be required to purchase flood insurance.

The report on PEER's website states, ”On July 28, 2009, McCarthy reported to the Inspector General that IBWC officials had conducted secret surveillance of agency employees, altered official government records, made false reports to the Inspector General, manipulated payrolls, misappropriated funds, built substandard levees and operated unsafe dams and wastewater treatment plants.

“Three days later, on July 31, 2009, Commissioner Bill Ruth, a holdover Bush appointee, terminated McCarthy’s employment on the grounds that the attorney was insufficiently 'congenial.' McCarthy has challenged that action through an appeal with the United States Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which reviews illegal personnel actions, charging unlawful retaliation for protected whistleblowing.”

Ruth abruptly left the agency on personal leave this week, and IBWC’s public information officer, Sally Spener, was unavailable for comment.

PEER’s executive director in Washington, Jeff Ruch, said it is time things changed in an agency that has been ranked by its employees among the worst places to work in the federal government and worst in leadership.

“Hopefully this probe will be the first step in rooting out the culture of corruption that has characterized this agency for too long,” Ruch said in PEER’s statement.

The problem, he told Newspaper Tree, has been that the state department “hasn’t been willing to get its hands dirty” cleaning it up.

“There’s a new secretary of state, and we hope there’s a new at attitude because while this is an obscure agency, the potential failure of one of its dams has huge consequences.”

He referred to a 2006-2007 report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that raised safety questions about the Amistad and Falcon reservoir dams on the southern Rio Grande for which IBWC is responsible.

“PEER is calling on the Obama Administration to remove Commissioner Ruth pending the appointment of a new commissioner, to reinstate McCarthy, and to institute structural reforms making the agency accountable to the State Department,” the statement read.

The inspector general’s investigation will not delve into McCarthy’s claim of retaliation by Ruth.

“That issue is separate from other illegal conduct that Mr. McCarthy disclosed,” said PEER Staff Counsel Christine Erickson, who filed the retaliation complaint on McCarthy’s behalf. “We are seeking to rescind Mr. McCarthy’s removal as soon as possible. The law is supposed to ensure that public servants need not risk their careers in order to shine a light on malfeasance.”

IBWC also came under investigation in 2005 while El Pasoan Arturo Duran was its commissioner. Duran resigned under pressure after the Office of Inspector General investigated allegations against him and produced a scathing report on its findings.

Bush appointed Ruth, who is from Austin, as commissioner last year after Duran’s successor, Carlos Marin, died in September in a plane crash in Mexico along with his Mexican counterpart while they were inspecting flood conditions along the river near Presidio.

A former employee of the commission who asked not to be named said the agency has been in shambles for years and that employees and former employees have worked in a hostile and threatening atmosphere.

“There was a death threat against Commissioner Marin when he was killed in the plane crash, but it had nothing to do with the crash,” the former IBWC employee said. “They videoed the offices, eavesdropped telephone calls and read people’s email.”

That former employee’s assertions, including the death threat, are supported in an 11-page letter McCarthy sent to the state department’s inspector general on July 28 naming names and detailing allegations of “fraud, waste and abuse made by several employees and former employees.”

“Disclosures herein include allegations of criminal electronic surveillance, rampant workplace hostility and threats, making false reports to the OIG, unlawful personnel actions, gross negligence and mismanagement of the Recovery Act, potential Anti-Deficiency act violations, and criminal interception of electronic communications,” his letter states. “This may be just the tip of the iceberg.”

The letter is posted on the PEER website and can be downloaded below. Also on the PEER website and posted below is McCarthy’s narrative of his whistleblower appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605, ext. 30, or 630-6622.

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