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Audit harsh on Bush reading program

By TIMES WIRES
Published September 23, 2006

WASHINGTON - A highly critical internal review of the Bush administration's billion-dollar-a-year reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.

The government audit is unsparing in its view that the Reading First program has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

It also depicts a program in which review panels were stacked with people who shared the director's views, and in which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money.

In one e-mail, the director told a staff member to come down hard on a company he didn't support, according to the report released Friday by the department's inspector general.

That official, Chris Doherty, is resigning, department spokeswoman Katherine McLane said Friday.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pledged to swiftly adopt all the audit's recommendations. She also pledged a review of every Reading First grant her agency has approved.

Reading First aims to help young children read through scientifically proven programs. Just this week, a separate review found the effort is helping schools raise achievement.

Libby plans to testify in CIA leak trial

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff plans to take the stand at his upcoming trial to tell jurors that he never lied to investigators in the CIA leak case, defense attorneys said Friday.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about his conversations in 2003 with reporters regarding Valerie Plame's CIA job.

Libby plans to testify about President Bush's daily terrorism briefings and other classified information to show he had more important things on his mind and didn't remember talks with reporters, attorneys said in court papers.

Among the documents Libby wants to use at trial are records related to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger. Wilson, Plame's husband, disputed reports that Iraq had an agreement with the African country to buy uranium for a nuclear program.

Plame says White House aides revealed her CIA status as retribution for her husband's claims that the Bush administration twisted prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald investigated that for three years and did not charge anyone with violating the law that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert CIA agent.

Civilians, not police, stopped Capitol intruder

WASHINGTON - Civilian employees rather than police stopped an armed intruder at the U.S. Capitol, authorities acknowledged Friday, adding new details to an already embarrassing security breach.

Carlos Greene, 20, accused of carrying a loaded handgun and crack cocaine, assaulted one civilian employee and struggled with another before a third got him in a bear hug, seconds before officers caught up with him Monday morning, police said.

"It was the civilians who did have him corralled or subdued," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a Capitol police spokeswoman. "We were hot on his trail. We just didn't get there in time."

On Monday, after the arrest, acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher McGaffin said his officers subdued Greene outside a basement office.

Officials said Greene eluded two officers in his car, ran past a third on the Capitol grounds and slipped through an unguarded door into the Rotunda.

Schneider called the security breach unacceptable and said police are reviewing procedures.

[Last modified September 23, 2006, 01:26:21]