Sham FBI conference used as cover for party for Ruby Ridge agent

Declan McCullagh declan at well.com
Sat Jul 28 23:16:03 PDT 2001



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.

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