“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”

Is it possible that the people in our Government are this bloody stupid??

Guess so.  Sad, as Pogo got it right when he said, " We have met the enemy, and he is us."

With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG   NY Times

Published: April 28, 2013   

KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

Off-the-books cash delivered directly to President Karzai’s office shows payments on a vast scale.

 

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader. 

      

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.” 

      

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing. 

      

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan. 

      

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.” 

      

The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.

At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaign to buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is. 

      

American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government. The officials spoke about the money only on the condition of anonymity. 

      

It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. Instead of securing his good graces, the payments may well illustrate the opposite: Mr. Karzai is seemingly unable to be bought. 

      

Over Iran’s objections, he signed a strategic partnership deal with the United States last year, directly leading the Iranians to halt their payments, two senior Afghan officials said. Now, Mr. Karzai is seeking control over the Afghan militias raised by the C.I.A. to target operatives of Al Qaeda and insurgent commanders, potentially upending a critical part of the Obama administration’s plans for fighting militants as conventional military forces pull back this year. 

      

But the C.I.A. has continued to pay, believing it needs Mr. Karzai’s ear to run its clandestine war against Al Qaeda and its allies, according to American and Afghan officials. 

      

Like the Iranian cash, much of the C.I.A.’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban. The result, American and Afghan officials said, is that the agency has greased the wheels of the same patronage networks that American diplomats and law enforcement agents have struggled unsuccessfully to dismantle, leaving the government in the grips of what are basically organized crime syndicates. 

      

The cash does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or even the C.I.A.’s formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies. And while there is no evidence that Mr. Karzai has personally taken any of the money — Afghan officials say the cash is handled by his National Security Council — the payments do in some cases work directly at odds with the aims of other parts of the American government in Afghanistan, even if they do not appear to violate American law.

Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan since the start of the war. During the 2001 invasion, agency cash bought the services of numerous warlords, including Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the current first vice president.

 

“We paid them to overthrow the Taliban,” the American official said. 

      

The C.I.A. then kept paying the Afghans to keep fighting. For instance, Mr. Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was paid by the C.I.A. to run the Kandahar Strike Force, a militia used by the agency to combat militants, until his assassination in 2011. 

      

A number of senior officials on the Afghan National Security Council are also individually on the agency’s payroll, Afghan officials said. 

      

While intelligence agencies often pay foreign officials to provide information, dropping off bags of cash at a foreign leader’s office to curry favor is a more unusual arrangement.

Afghan officials said the practice grew out of the unique circumstances in Afghanistan, where the United States built the government that Mr. Karzai runs. To accomplish that task, it had to bring to heel many of the warlords the C.I.A. had paid during and after the 2001 invasion. 

      

By late 2002, Mr. Karzai and his aides were pressing for the payments to be routed through the president’s office, allowing him to buy the warlords’ loyalty, a former adviser to Mr. Karzai said. 

      

Then, in December 2002, Iranians showed up at the palace in a sport utility vehicle packed with cash, the former adviser said. 

      

The C.I.A. began dropping off cash at the palace the following month, and the sums grew from there, Afghan officials said. 

      

Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations. 

      

Much of it also still goes to keeping old warlords in line. One is Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek whose militia served as a C.I.A. proxy force in 2001. He receives nearly $100,000 a month from the palace, two Afghan officials said. Other officials said the amount was significantly lower. 

      

Mr. Dostum, who declined requests for comment, had previously said he was given $80,000 a month to serve as Mr. Karzai’s emissary in northern Afghanistan. “I asked for a year up front in cash so that I could build my dream house,” he was quoted as saying in a 2009 interview with Time magazine. 

      

Some of the cash also probably ends up in the pockets of the Karzai aides who handle it, Afghan and Western officials said, though they would not identify any by name.

That is not a significant concern for the C.I.A., said American officials familiar with the agency’s operations. “They’ll work with criminals if they think they have to,” one American former official said. 

      

Interestingly, the cash from Tehran appears to have been handled with greater transparency than the dollars from the C.I.A., Afghan officials said. The Iranian payments were routed through Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff. Some of the money was deposited in an account in the president’s name at a state-run bank, and some was kept at the palace. The sum delivered would then be announced at the next cabinet meeting. The Iranians gave $3 million to well over $10 million a year, Afghan officials said. 

      

When word of the Iranian cash leaked out in October 2010, Mr. Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for it. He then added: “The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices.” 

      

At the time, Mr. Karzai’s aides said he was referring to the billions in formal aid the United States gives. But the former adviser said in a recent interview that the president was in fact referring to the C.I.A.’s bags of cash. 

      

No one mentions the agency’s money at cabinet meetings. It is handled by a small clique at the National Security Council, including its administrative chief, Mohammed Zia Salehi, Afghan officials said. 

      

Mr. Salehi, though, is better known for being arrested in 2010 in connection with a sprawling, American-led investigation that tied together Afghan cash smuggling, Taliban finances and the opium trade. Mr. Karzai had him released within hours, and the C.I.A. then helped persuade the Obama administration to back off its anticorruption push, American officials said. 

      

After his release, Mr. Salehi jokingly came up with a motto that succinctly summed up America’s conflicting priorities. He was, he began telling colleagues, “an enemy of the F.B.I., and a hero to the C.I.A.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 29, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Karzai’s Office Gets Bags Full Of C.I.A. Cash.

Pretty Much Sums it up......

WILEY nails it again.....

Today's NON SEQUITUR Comic strip

Kabul Press calls Massachusetts more corrupt than Afghanistan

My wife and I were discussing the issue of the "Government Critters" on both sides of the world, and that there really is no real difference as the Government at home and the Government here are inhabited by the same level of ineffective and overpaid staff. They aren't very effective and are highly overpaid for the work that they do. It doesn't matter if you are in Afghanistan or the USA, these fools have taken over the Government that is supposed to work for us. Instead they have made it all about themselves.

Here's a point-of-view from the AFGHN side where the local press in Kabul describes how they see the State of Massachusetts as corrupt (if not more so)than those in Afghanistan.

With DEVAL PATRICK in charge in the State of Massachusetts, I can kinda see this guy's point. Governor Patrick is the best buddy with the President, who is the epitome of ineffective, bloated, overpaid Government. They are a pair of inept frauds who scammed their way into elective office. We would be much better off with both of them out of office and going back to some other line of work.

Massachusetts Corruption Dwarfs Afghan Corruption

International corruption statistics are distorted to protect Western nations and China - Saturday 18 August 2012, by Matthew J. Nasuti - Kabul Press http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article120954

Government corruption in the United States is hundreds of times more pervasive and costly than in Afghanistan. Every day American newspapers recount the scandals. One day it involves U.S. Customs officials, the next day it is the Secret Service, then the General Services Administration, then the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Every month there are new scandals involving foreign aid and other funds administered by the U.S. Department of State, the latest involved the waste of billions of dollars in “global warming” funds squandered by Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones and her predecessor, Claudia A. McMurray. Despite the State Department being perhaps worst administered agency in the Federal Government, no one dares utter even a whisper of criticism at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so the corruption continues.

While billions of dollars in domestic spending and foreign aid are misappropriated, corruptly awarded and mismanaged each year, that corruption is easier to conceal, because the U.S. is a wealthy country with many distractions. Despite the publicity, few members of the public seem able to grasp the size and scope of the cancer of corruption and nepotism that is eating away at the country.

Internationally, government corruption is ranked under a flawed system established by such groups as “Transparency International.” They rank corruption in countries like Afghanistan and the United States based on subjective “perceptions” of corruption. Because the rankings are not based on the actual volume of corruption, this system unfairly maligns developing countries. If the system were based on the dollar amount of corruption, it would list many Western, Arab and Far East nations as the most corrupt.

Supposedly non-profit groups such as Transparency International are anything but transparent. Its co-founder, Michael Hershman, is a former official with USAID and he is also the chairman of the Fairfax Group. Fairfax makes it profits from the corruption that Transparency International “discovers.” Fairfax holds itself out as an expert consultant on foreign government corruption and as a result it has been awarded numerous U.S. government anti-corruption contracts. Transparency International’s U.S. Board of Directors and Advisory Council is filled with former government officials, lawyers for major Washington, D.C. law firms, government consultants and other representatives of organizations affiliated with the U.S. Department of State. Many of these people make money from or advance their careers by pointing the corruption finger overseas, rather than where it belongs, which is at the Federal, State and local governments in the United States.

In the United States, the systemic government corruption is not limited to the loss of public funds and cronyism, but extends to a wide range of dishonest and illegal practices which shield those with political connections. American is literally a land of two peoples; those to whom the law applies and those who are above the law. The problem is too large for a single article to examine, so just one of America’s 50 states (Massachusetts) was chosen for this article and even for that state, there is only space to summarize a tiny percentage of its public corruption.

Timothy Murray Scandal: The current state government in Massachusetts is called the Patrick/Murray Administration after Governor Duval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray. On November 2, 2011, at 5:26 a.m. Murray was driving his State-owned Crown Victoria automobile in Sterling, Massachusetts, when he crashed the vehicle, completely destroying it. Murray told the police that he was driving at the legal speed limit of 55 miles per hour and lost control of the vehicle. He claimed to be on official business inspecting (in the dark) storm damage in the area. The police determined that he was driving at 108 miles per hour and fell asleep at the wheel. Every statement made to police by Murray was false. Despite that and Murray’s lack of remorse, local prosecutors refused to prosecute him for his false statements or for reckless endangerment. As a reward, Governor Patrick gave Murray a new $40,000.00 State automobile to replace the one he destroyed. Murray had previously been cited in 1992 and 2006 for speeding. Attempts by the Boston Herald to further investigate this scandal have been blocked by lawyers in the Governor’s Office, including E. Abim Thomas, who claims that the records are exempt from public release. ,br />
Chelsea Housing Authority Scandal: Massachusetts has 242 public housing authorities and some of the top jobs within these agencies have historically been patronage appointments, a system prone to abuse. For most of the past year, the Chelsea (Boston) Housing has been rocked by sandals. On June 15th of this year investigators questioned Lieutenant Governor Murray about allegations that Chelsea officials were illegally fundraising for him. Murray has refused to brief the people of Massachusetts regarding any of these allegations. Since then there have been no public updates. The concern is that this criminal investigation, like so many others, has been quietly dropped.

MBTA Scandal: On August 6, 2012, the Boston Globe reported that there were only two bidders on a $1 billion State MBTA transportation contract. Initially, 25 companies expressed an interest in bidding but except for the favored contractors (Mass Bay) and a little known French company, all the rest of the bidders ultimately declined to bid. The reason that 23 companies withdrew from the process is that there is a wide-spread belief that State officials had rigged the bidding in favor of Mass Bay. Governor Patrick has done nothing to dispel this apparently accurate assessment. Due to the lack of competition and in order to try and restore public confidence, Governor Patrick should withdraw bidding authority from MBTA General Manager Jonathan R. Davis, assign the bid evaluation to an independent panel and order that panel to rebid the work. This of course will never happen because the Governor seems quite content with the present corruption.

Deerfield River Levee Scandal: In the Fall of 2011, a group of wealthy agri-businesses in Deerfield, Massachusetts created several kilometers of sand levees along the Deerfield River in an attempt to prevent future flooding of their low-lying farm fields. The 10-15 foot levees, in some places push into tree-lines and right up to the river’s edge. The legal issue is that State law prohibits any construction work within 200 feet of a river without a permit, which the farmers failed to apply for. The Massachusetts River Protection Act is very clear and it mandates that the levees be removed. According to informed sources, inspectors for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recommended in 2011 that enforcement action be commenced against the violators. A letter was sent on December 15, 2011 to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley from Cynthia M. Pepyne of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office requesting a State review of these potential environmental violations. To-date however nothing has happened. The reason is that the agri-businesses involved have close political ties to the Patrick-Murray Administration and party loyalty matters more to these State officials than the environment or the law. It is not clear who within Ms. Coakley’s office or the DEP quashed the enforcement action. The case is presently sitting on the desk of Brian Harrington, Assistant Administrator for DEP’s Western Region. It has been sidelined with the support of DEP attorney Kathleen Delaplain, but the real decision authorities may have been DEP Director Kenneth L. Kimmell and Western Regional Administrator Michael Gorski. In contacts with these officials, they claim that the enforcement action is still under “active consideration” but it is impossible to obtain the truth from any of these individuals.

Department of Revenue Scandal: An investigation in early 2012 revealed that the Massachusetts Department of Revenue has a new tactic that it is using against the poor. It is called the “desk audit.” For wealthy and corporate taxpayers, the Department will conduct field audits in which revenue agents travel to the home or place of business of the wealthy to review the taxpayer’s records. However, for indigent taxpayers, the Department misuses a device called the desk audit and it orders the taxpayer to copy all of his or her records for one or multiple years and mail all of them to the desk auditor. If the taxpayer cannot afford to do this, the Department labels them as “refusing to comply with the law” and rejects all their deductions, imposing large penalties on them. If the indigent taxpayer tries to appeal this unjust assessment, he or she is hit with the one-two punch by the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board (ATB). The ATB has ignored rulings from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and decided that it will not waive filing fees for the poor. As a result of this misconduct, some indigent taxpayers are barred from appealing State abuses. Even if the indigent could somehow obtain the required filing fees, the ATB requires that all hearings be held in Boston, a long trip for the elderly and in some cases an impossible trip for the poor. The ATB refuses to travel around the State in order to hear cases locally, however, the ATB will travel the circuit for wealthy parties who are contesting property tax assessments. It will hold court for property tax cases for the rich in such upscale western towns as Northampton, but it will not accommodate the poor by holding income tax hearings in Springfield or Greenfield. One of these indigent taxpayer cases is currently being prosecuted by Department of Revenue attorney John DeLosa. Commissioner of Revenue Amy Pitter and ATB Chairman Thomas W. Hammond, Jr. apparently are quite comfortable with these abuses, as they have done nothing to correct them. USDA - Massachusetts Scandal: There is an investigation currently underway by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the FBI into the corrupt awarding of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Bill funds in Massachusetts. The case has been briefed to top officials in Tom Vilsack’s office. Mr. Vilsack is the Secretary of Agriculture for the United States. The evidence is that USDA officials in Massachusetts have been awarding grants primarily to friends, family members and to a small group of wealthy farmers with close ties to the Patrick/Murray Administration. The grants are under two programs called the Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) and the Environmental Quality Improvement Program (EQIP). The public has not heard about this case and it will not be hearing about this case for a while because, unfortunately, the U.S. Attorney’s investigation appears to be on hold until after the November election, so as not to embarrass President Obama. Corruption at the Federal, State and local levels within the United States varies from agency to agency, from State to State and from town to town. Overall, the sheer magnitude of abuses outstrips anything present in Afghanistan. The American metrics far outpace Afghanistan on the dollar number of funds misappropriated, number of instances of corruption and number of people and companies who are immune from and above the law. This is not to condone the level of corruption within Afghanistan, which is believed to be considerable and unacceptable. Hypocracy has always been a staple of international diplomacy and therefore Afghanistan will have to live with the condescending arrogance of American diplomats who see corruption everywhere but in their own back yard

"Where did his primary loyalty lie?" - To HIMSELF....How a State Employee held down two high risk jobs at the same time and endangered the public

The Boston Globe does a good job at investigating issues like the one in the story enclosed here.

The story ask the basic question, " Why did Massport, EMS let a public safety employee work 2 jobs simultaneously almost nonstop? "

There are three simple reasons:

1. POOR MANAGEMENT - No one at Massport and/or Boston’s Emergency Medical Services Department was doing the job we PAY them for - Managing the resources properly and ensuring that NO ONE is ginning up the system like this paramedic did....We pay the Directors/Managers/Supervisors at these agencies well above the average pay and bennies for life...You would expect (expect) a better ROI from them but we all know how these things work....STATE & MUNICIPAL employees were asleep at the switch...shocker. I say we need to look at firing a group of Managers that allowed this to occur and did nothing.

2. UNETHICAL CONDUCT IS THE NORM - The way things operate within the halls of the State Government and Municipal offices, "skinning the system" is a rite of passage...Cops, Firefighters, Town Managers....all do important work and all want to whatever they can do to crank up the $$$ and feather their retirements. We wind up having to write laws to stop all the loopholes they devise because no one sat down and tried to imagine how an employee would try to gin up the system. It takes away from all those who don't do so but "it is what it is" and the culture is based on fleecing the taxpayers, plain & simple.

3. GREED - " GREED IS GOOD "should be the motto for the State Government and Municipal employees and their unions. There is no care of how the money grab effects the taxpayers, who gets deprived of needed services because so much of the budget gets devoted to perks, etc. All that matters in the end, is " I GOT MINE". If you live in the belief that this is not so, I hate to burst your bubble but the Unions and their members have been laughing at you all the way to the bank for decades.

Like anything else, we are reaching a tipping point. The budget crisis is exposing the games and will bring them to an end. The only issue will be " How was this allowed to go on for so long??" - It comes down to we overpaid for poor management and a system that rewarded too many of the worst people in the positions we where we (the taxpayers) needed the best people.

It is to weep.....


One man, two jobs, and a question
Why did Massport, EMS let public safety employee work almost nonstop?
By Rachel Kossman and Walter V. Robinson
Boston Globe Correspondents

Last year, on April 27, Lieutenant Richard G. Covino was paid for working an 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift with the Massachusetts Port Authority Fire Department. All in all, an ordinary work day.

But starting at 3 p.m. the same day, Covino was also being paid for an eight-hour shift at his other full-time public safety job, as a paramedic for the city of Boston’s Emergency Medical Services Department, where he has worked since 1984.

It is one of several instances in which Covino was paid for working for both agencies at the same time.

For at least 11 years, Covino has juggled two full-time public safety jobs, his longtime position in Boston and successive jobs as a firefighter in Cohasset, Gloucester, and, since 2006, at Massport. In the last four years, Covino has been paid an average of $200,000 a year, including substantial overtime pay.

The overlapping shifts aside, Covino’s nearly 100-hour weeks confront two of Greater Boston’s most elite public safety agencies with an embarrassing question: Why would each allow Covino to hold two high-stress public safety jobs in which alertness and clear-headed judgment might spell the difference between life and death?

On at least five days last year, Covino was credited with starting work in Boston between one and three hours before he had purportedly finished his shift at Massport, according to a Globe examination of his attendance records over a recent 18-month period. On numerous other occasions, there was no more than five minutes, and sometimes less, between the time he officially finished work at one agency and started a tour at the other.

And the records show something else: Covino, who is 50, often worked long stretches with virtually no time off, sometimes 40 hours or more at a stretch, and much of that behind the wheel of a Boston ambulance speeding through the city on life-saving missions. In the last four years, he worked nearly 90 days of overtime a year at the two agencies, for which he earned close to $140,000.

On April 14, after an inquiry from the Globe triggered an internal review, Massport Fire Chief Robert Donahue suspended Covino without pay pending completion of a full investigation. Late on Friday, EMS spokeswoman Jennifer Mehigan said EMS was placing Covino on administrative leave with pay after an initial inquiry also uncovered problems.

Covino declined requests for an interview.

Why Massport and EMS permitted the arrangement is not altogether clear. Donahue, for instance, said he assumed when he hired Covino in 2006 that he was quitting the Boston job, and only found out months later that he had not. Mehigan said EMS officials knew only “anecdotally’’ about the Massport job. EMS has no restrictions on outside employment.

Massport has moved swiftly to make changes. Donahue suspended Covino and sharply curtailed the practice that allows firefighters to swap shifts with one another. This practice was critical to Covino’s juggling act. He routinely asked others to fill in for him so he could leave Massport halfway through a normal day shift to work his standard 3 to 11 p.m. EMS shift. He would repay the hours to them at another time.

Massport last week also changed its policy for new hires in any job: None will be permitted to keep a second full-time position.

EMS, which just launched its inquiry, has not said whether its policies might change.

Neither agency had a policy prohibiting its employees from having another public safety job, or even a requirement that managers be notified about other positions. Indeed, EMS Chief James Hooley, in an interview Thursday, said it is possible that Covino may not be the only one of his 350 EMTs and paramedics working for another public safety agency.

“I don’t know if I could say no to someone having another public safety job,’’ Hooley said.

Samuel R. Tyler, the president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-supported watchdog agency that focuses on city finances and management, said he was astonished to learn that either agency would countenance such an arrangement.

“To allow one person to hold two high-stress public safety jobs is inconceivable. It makes no sense,’’ Tyler said. “It should be common sense — you cannot permit someone to have two jobs, each one stressful, that require quick decisions that affect the safety and lives of the public.’’

Tyler said that such arrangements may “cheat the taxpayers out of the services they should expect,’’ and could leave the city vulnerable to substantial legal damages for any serious misstep by an exhausted paramedic.

Hooley said that Covino has been “one of our better performers,’’ with no hint that his Massport job had affected his work as a paramedic. In 1992, when he had just the one job, Covino was awarded the department’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor, for leading people to safety from a Mattapan house fire before firefighters arrived, Hooley said.

Jay Weaver, an EMS partner and friend of Covino’s, had nothing but praise for his colleague. “Rick is an exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable paramedic, among the finest I’ve ever worked with,’’ Weaver said in an e-mail exchange from Afghanistan, where he is serving a tour as an Army lawyer. “He is an extremely hard worker.’’

Donahue, the Massport chief, would say only that Covino was suspended “for possible violations of department policies and procedures.’’

Friday evening, Mehigan released a statement that said Covino had just been placed on leave “while questions raised by his dual employment with Boston EMS and another agency are being reviewed.’’ It said the Boston Public Health Commission, which oversees EMS, “is committed to ensuring that Boston residents have the utmost confidence in its employees and services.’’

The EMS, with 50 ambulances, responded to emergency calls 110,000 times in 2010. The Massport Fire Department, with 85 firefighters, responds to about 3,000 calls a year, almost all at Logan. Its principal firefighting training involves aircraft fire and rescue operations.

Donahue said that by the time he learned Covino had kept his EMS job, his new hire was fulfilling his work requirements and the agency had no policy barring second jobs. “Obviously, in the future, based on this case, we’d do it differently,’’ Donahue said in an interview. “Safety is our highest priority.’’

At EMS, Hooley said that because of concerns about on-the-job fatigue, EMTs and paramedics can work no more than 18 hours at a stretch. “We would never approve anything more than that,’’ he said.

But serving two masters, Covino regularly violated the spirit of Hooley’s restrictions, according to a Globe review of his work records.

Starting last March 13, for example, Covino was off for less than two hours in a 50-hour stretch. That day, a Saturday, he clocked in to Massport at 5:52 in the morning, then left there at 10:21 p.m. for his Boston job, which started at 11 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. on Sunday. After an hour’s break, Covino worked another shift at EMS, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. After a quick commute, he was back on duty at Massport at 4:17 p.m. Sunday for an overnight shift that ended at 8:10 a.m. on Monday.

After that marathon effort, Covino was off for part of Monday, until he went back to EMS for a 3 to 11 p.m. shift.

Such extraordinary work patterns appear again and again during the 18 months of attendance records from the two agencies that the Globe was able to compare. Prior to August 2009, the Massport records do not contain the start and stop times for firefighters’ shifts.

The Massport job allowed for some sleep, typically between midnight and 5 a.m., but only if there were no calls, according to Donahue.

Until the Globe made its public records request in February, neither agency was aware of Covino’s specific work schedule at the other, a scheduled that still allowed for extensive overtime.

Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and one of the country’s leading authorities on sleep deprivation, said in an interview that physicians and first responders like paramedics and firefighters have a much higher risk of making errors when they go long periods without sleep. Someone who has gone without sleep for 24 hours, he said, has impaired judgment similar to a person who is legally drunk. In such cases, he said, people are more likely to make bad decisions and have short-term memory problems.

Neither EMS nor Massport has evidence of fatigue-related mistakes by Covino.

Covino’s dual positions raise another issue as well: Which hat would Covino don if there were a major terrorist episode at Logan that required both agencies to call in all available personnel? Donahue said that he believes Covino’s first responsibility would be to Massport. Said Hooley: “He understands that Boston EMS is his principal employer. That’s where his primary loyalty lies.’’

This article was prepared for an investigative reporting course at Northeastern University. It was overseen by Walter V. Robinson, who is distinguished professor of journalism and a former editor of the Globe Spotlight Team. Robinson can be reached at w.robinson@neu.edu. Confidential messages can be left at 617-929-3334.

Honest Abdul

" Where liberty dies, evil grows." - Hamid Karzai

KARZAI knows this for sure, as the only thing he & his corrupt buddies have "liberated" is OUR MONEY...Frickin' Marvelous.

Marine tells it like it is in AFGHN - "We got the guy, and yet there he was, walking around planning to kill again & we couldn't do a thing about it."

(Picture above depicts the CORRECT method of Catch & Release as demonstrated by the US Navy)

ARE YOU FRICKIN' KIDDING ME ??? This is the kind of stuff that makes you scratch your head....WHAT are they thinking??? This has to be more of the "cement headed" thinking that comes from having a " Community Organizer " sitting in as Commander-in-Chief....They have allowed the Afghanistan Government to set the tune WE PAY FOR and our military has to dance to it.....

It was all I could do to stop my blood from boiling as I read this....to think that our military is risking their lives while diplomatic idiots & the local AFGHN government green-lights this kind of CRAP....Unbelievable except on our President's watch....somehow, I shouldn't be surprised.


Catch-and-release of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan angers troops
Washington Examiner - Sara A. Carter 12/07/10

More than 500 suspected Taliban fighters detained by U.S. forces have been released from custody at the urging of Afghan government officials, angering both American troops and some Afghans who oppose the policy on the grounds that many of those released return to the battlefield to kill NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians.

And those numbers understate the problem, military officials say. They do not include suspected Taliban fighters held in small combat outposts or other forward operating bases throughout the region who are released before they ever become part of the official detainee population.

An Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that President Hamid Karzai's government has personally sought the release of as many as 700 suspected Taliban fighters since July, including some mid-level leaders. "Corruption is not just based on the amount of money that is wasted but wasted lives when Taliban return only to kill more NATO forces and civilians," said the official, who opposes what he considers corruption in the Karzai administration.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Karen Davis, a spokeswoman in Kabul, told The Washington Examiner "nearly 500 detainees held in the [detention facility in Parwan] have been released outright or transferred to the [Afghan government] for disposition under Afghan law" so far this year.

She did not comment on detainees held at other facilities throughout the country, dozens of whom have been released, according to U.S. military officials in Afghanistan. Parwan is the main prison facility located at Bagram Airfield, just north of the capital of Kabul.

Davis added "nearly 200 of those 500 [at Bagram] have been released" since July.

The criteria for detention is not based upon a particular affiliation, such as the Taliban, "but rather is an assessment based upon a preponderance of evidence that an individual participated in the conflict as an enemy combatant and, if so, detention is necessary to mitigate the threat posed to the government and people of Afghanistan, the U.S. and its coalition partners," Davis said.

The Detainee Review Board, made up of three U.S. commissioned officers with a rank of major or above, determines when a prisoner is eligible for release and whether a detainee is likely to be rehabilitated.

Prisoners held at the Bagram facility are not considered guilty or innocent but rather a determination is made "based upon evidence that detention is necessary to mitigate the threat the detainee poses to the government and people of Afghanistan, the U.S. and its coalition partners," states a document provided by the International Security Assistance Force.

Earlier this year, The Examiner reported that numerous insurgents captured in Pakistan, including some members of al Qaeda, were returned to Afghanistan upon the request of the Karzai government, and then, according to a senior Pakistani official, "released back to the Taliban as bargaining chips in negotiations."

A marine stationed in southern Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province told The Examiner that efforts to detain insurgent fighters are "worthless."

Earlier this year, his unit held a man known to be working with the Taliban. The Marines had gathered evidence that the man was transporting hundreds of pounds of bomb-making equipment and explosives for the Taliban. But, shortly after they captured him, he was set free.

"Less than two weeks later, we saw the same guy walking through the bazaar," said the marine, who spoke on condition that he not be named. "He recognized us. I wanted to shoot him right then and there. We got the guy, and yet there he was, walking around planning to kill again, and we couldn't do a thing about it."

For American combat troops in Afghanistan, the release of suspect Taliban is seen as a symptom of the corruption of the Karzai government.

"Back-room dealings between Karzai officials and local government connected to the Taliban make NATO's work almost impossible," said a military official stationed in Afghanistan. "They call the shots, and we've got to release the bad guys."

The release of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks last week provided a rare glimpse into what the State Department considers official corruption in the Karzai government.

That was the opinion of Afghan officials interviewed recently. "Afghanistan is a corrupt mess populated by citizens who are far more comfortable thinking and acting locally and tribally than nationally," one official said. "Karzai takes advantage of that for his own benefit," he added. "The U.S. turns a blind eye because they don't know how to stop it."

Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner's national security correspondent. She can be reached at scarter@washingtonexaminer.com