http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010726-92356793.htm Washington Times July 26, 2001 Sham FBI conference used as cover for party By Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES      Senior FBI executives scheduled a sham conference at the bureau's Virginia training academy to allow colleagues to attend at taxpayers' expense a 1997 retirement party for a top FBI official, an internal report shows.      While the "Integrity in Law Enforcement" conference was later found to have been cover for senior FBI managers to obtain improper reimbursements for personal travel to Washington, no one was disciplined other than to receive letters of censure.      Similar actions by rank-and-file FBI agents would have led to their firing.      The report was given last week to Senate investigators looking into recent FBI mismanagement and questions concerning such investigations as the Timothy McVeigh case and the arrest as a spy of agent Robert P. Hanssen.      More than 140 persons, including as many as nine FBI executives and special-agents-in-charge (SACs) of bureau field offices, attended the Oct. 9, 1997, party in Arlington for veteran agent Larry A. Potts, while only five persons showed up for the Oct. 10, 1997, conference in Quantico, Va., -- which lasted about 90 minutes, including lunch.      Two months before the party, Mr. Potts -- a onetime FBI deputy director -- was under criminal investigation over his questionable handling of a standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, during which three persons died.      According to a September 1999 report by the Law Enforcement Ethics Unit (LEEU) at the FBI Academy, an inquiry into the Potts party began Oct. 22, 1997, and focused on whether the Quantico conference was illegally used to justify travel reimbursements to senior agents, who otherwise would have been on personal business. ...