Media Response (or lack of it) to Homeland Security time bomb

I alerted half a dozen reporters whom I communicate with fairly regularly, to this story.

Boston Globe (Hiawatha Bray): Yeah, I knew about it; why should I care?

USA Today: Wow. Thanks. We'll assign someone to this right away.

Washington Times: Good stuff. We'll get onto it.

L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, S.F. Chronicle: no reply.

(My response to Mr. Bray:
1. Senior government official with fake doctorate? Yeah, I guess I care. The fake degrees of the Notre Dame football coach, the Houston fire chief, the head of the US Olympic committee, and a few others, were big stories. This seems at least comparable.

2. What does it say about the hiring practices at what should be the most careful organization there is?

3. For decades, the argument against gays in the military was that they had a secret which made them vulnerable to blackmail, etc. This woman will surely lose her job, and probably her career is dead. Has she perhaps been vulnerable?)

 

Yes, it seems that the coaches have been a highlight. I think this one if a bigger story than any of the coaches who fudged their credentials.

John

 

Dr. Bear,
Even if the Washington Times or U.S.A. Today managed to get a story in the papers tomorrow what good would this do?
The Federal government, as always, will probably "cover their butts" and place the blame on Tom Ridge.
It's quite easy today for public servants to falsify or misrepresent their experience and credentials (and many have). Laura Callahan was caught for misrepresenting her qualifications and she will eventually be fired. Perhaps the people she reports to are also graduates of bogus universities.

Note:
Richard Nixon ended up taking the fall for the Watergate scandal and yet there were many others involved who were implicated but not reprimanded for their involvement.

warmest regards,

 

If this is "covering their butts" then who exactly should take the blame? The entire federal government and every one of its employees? George W. Bush? Given that this was a senior member of the department, I think that Tom Ridge should indeed take the blame.

And what good would it do to have publicity for this story? It would let people know that there are consequences to using a bogus degree. And that you may get away with it for a while, but it will likely catch up to you eventually. It might also cause a few people responsible for hiring decisions to actually verify the legitimacy of degrees.

 

I agree with you Jeff, the public should be told the truth. It's just that whenever a story of this nature occurs, the government quickly sweeps the dirt under the carpet and assigns the blame.

 

How is that possible?

To get a high level Federal job, above GS-15, specifically in the SES 1 through 5, applicants must write almost a dissertation, and have serious background checks done on them. They also have to do a presentation to a panel.

I know because I applied for several positions (and so far have been rejected every time).

 

That's an excellent question. I don't think that any of us know whether this person was capable of doing the work to earn the degrees, only that she did not do it. So it's quite possible she could have done well on the application/presentation. It's also quite possible that at this level, while those things may be required, political considerations are much more important.

As for the background check, due to backlogs in completing the checks (even before September 11) many (probably most) federal employees were hired before the background check was completed, contingent on a clean check. Fairly recently (not sure if it was under Bush or Clinton) there was somewhat of an uproar because so many people who were working at the White House had not had background checks completed on them.

Moreover, do the people doing the background checks understand accreditation? I suspect not. I suspect that they verified that she had received the degrees, and that was that.

 

Like the staged Private Lynch rescue and the WMD that don't exist?

Christian

 

Considering that this was the Department of Homeland Security, and that this woman was a high level IT person who had access to the inner workings of their computers, I'd assume that she would need some kind of security clearance.

So how did the FBI miss the fact that virtually all of her education seems to have been bogus?

Perhaps the real story here is less about one woman's bogus degrees than about the fact that security checks for sensitive internal security posts are not being performed competently.

I wonder how far the rot extends.

 

That alone is pretty amazing, that the Globe, about as far left as a legitimate newspaper can be, would pass on a story that might embarass a Republican administration.


Bruce

 

Callahan entered Federal civil service in the 1984 with an AS from TESC. From Hamilton she received a bachelor's in 1993, a master's in 1995 and a PhD in 2000.

In 2000 she (Laura Crabtree) was subpeonaed to appear before the House Government Reform Committee where she revealed her TESC degree but not the Hamilton degrees. She was subpeonaed because she was in charge of the mail system that glitched away some subpeonaed email. She's been accused of threatening people with knowledge of the missing email to shut up about it.

More than one administration involved in this sad story.

Susan Collins, R-Maine and Carolyn Mahoney, D-NY have called for an investigation into the matter.

 

Dr. Bear wrote:

From the Washington Post:

All kinds of questions on this one: Is her vulnerability related to these actions? And how the heck did a Clinton aide who was involved in a scandal get a high-ranking position in the Bush administration?

 

Why waste time with those marginal newspapers and reporters when the is Washington Technology with Patience Wait and Wilson P. Dizard III?

"Following news reports that a senior official at the Homeland Security Department appears to have obtained her academic degrees from an unaccredited diploma mill, several members of Congress are seeking to learn how background checks and security clearances failed to flag the questionable credentials."

Washington Technology

This is the third Callahan article I've seen from Wait and Dizard as first reported by our own inkstained sleuth, oxpecker.

 

Perhaps there is more to this article than meets the eye. Maybe Wait and Dizard are attempting to open a "pandora's box". Could there be corruption within the DHS?

 

Well, it ain't just HSD. Systems security officer at DoD and the White House work was pretty heavy:


"Callahan, deputy CIO of the Labor Department, and Hobbs, deputy CIO of the Agriculture Department, tap that experience when working with the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies to improve the hiring and retention of federal IT workers.

Callahan has been in her Labor post since 1999. She oversees the department's $ 420 million IT budget and is responsible for the daily operations of the department's core networks, as well as all application systems.

Before coming to Labor, she worked for the Defense Department in a several jobs, including programmer, systems engineer and systems security officer. She also oversaw the network and desktop computing environment for the Executive Office of the President.

Callahan has bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and a doctorate in computer information systems from Hamilton University in Wyoming."


Well this tears it. She wants to be a college professor:


Laura Callahan

* Age: 39

* Last movie seen: "Austin Powers in Goldmember"

* Leisure activity: Softball

* Best job: Deputy CIO

* Dream job: College professor at a major university

* Personal motto: "Focus on what you want more of, and do it right the first time."


TEXTORE

 

Hamilton not a "diploma mill" according to British press.

DipFabPlant

 

Hamilton not a "diploma mill" according to British press.

DipFabPlant

 

Jeff Brunton: "Hamilton not a "diploma mill" according to British press."

But lest there be any misunderstanding, the site simply calls it a "diploma fabrication plant" rather than a "diploma mill." Same thing.

 

John:

Didn't they want to award your pet pooch a PHD?

 

I often make inquiries under the names of dogs and other creatures. The only one I actually bought for our dog was from Argus University, the pride of Fairplay, Colorado, which only awarded degrees to dogs (but the owner could get one as long as the dog did). Five bucks, as I recall. (When I was asked by Alex Trebek, during the 30-second interview, what was my "favorite diploma mill" (what a silly question), happily Argus came to mind.)