Wednesday federal headlines – August 6, 2014

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Emily Kopp discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

• Like swarming hornets, 47 agency inspectors general rally around three IGs they feel are threatened. In letters to Capitol Hill, they question restrictions on IGs at the Justice Department, EPA and Peace Corps. The IGs say lawyers at the three agencies are withholding information that their inspectors general should be able to see. At the EPA for instance, the IG has charged the Chemical Safety Board with obsructing its investigation of whistleblower retaliation. The letter from the 47 IGs was released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime supporter of federal whistleblowers. (Federal News Radio
• Former National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander says his business affairs are legal and that he has a right to profit from his knowledge. Alexander retired earlier this year. He was also head of the Defense Department’s cyber command. He raised eyebrows with applications to patent what he calls a game-changing cybersecurity model. Alexander tells the Associated Press, he came up with the idea after leaving goverrnment. And that his lawyers say he’s on firm ground. One member of Alexander’s legal counsel if former FBI chief Robert Mueller. (Associated Press)
• Intelligence agencies have tossed so many names into a terrorist database, it’s doubled in size. Figures released from the National Counterterrorism Center show the data base contained 1.1 million names at the end of 2013. It’s called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDES, and it’s classified. It got going after the attempted blow-up of an airliner by the so-called underwear bomber on Christmas 2009. Of the more than a million people on the list, 25,000 are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. (WTOP)
• Without new thinking, the U.S. military faces a world it won’t be able to deal with. That’s the thrust of a message Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work delivers to the 2015 graduating class of National Defense University. He urges them to become strategic thinkers who question assumptions. Work describes a fractured world with new and complex threats. And a military with smaller headcounts that’s in danger of losing its technology edge. He says future leaders must avoid ending up with armed forces lacking uncontested theater access or unfettered operational freedom of maneuver. (Defense Department)
• The pool of money the government uses to fight wildfires is running out. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the fund will dry up by the end of the month. If that happens, he says the Department will postpone as much as half-a-billion dollars’ worth of other projects to free up the cash. Prevention programs may be put on hold. Wildfires have become more common nationwide over the years. There are 30 large fires burning throughout the Western United States now. (WTOP)
• An American major general has died in an insider attack in Afghanistan. Harold Green is the highest-ranked U.S. officer killed in combat since the September 11 attacks. Officials say the gunman dressed as an Afghan soldier. He turned on allied troops at a military university before being killed himself. About 15 U.S. and coalition troops were wounded, several of them seriously. Insider attacks in Afghanistan shot up in 2012. They declined sharply last year after U.S. commanders ordered more precautions be taken. (Defense Department)
• The inspector general says the Defense Department has been slow to transfer service members’ medical records to the Veterans Affairs Department, making it hard for the VA to meet its deadlines for considering benefit claims. The Defense IG also faults military departments for giving VA records that were incomplete. It found, about three-quarters of the time, the Army failed to transfer soldiers’ records within 45 business days. And 3-out-of-10 lacked information. The IG says the Defense Department did not provide clear guidance on the process. The audit looked at records transferred last year. Since then, the services have digitized part of the process that had been done on paper. (Defense Department Office of the Inspector General)
• One of the most volatile regions of Afghanistan could go dark, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction says. A new report calls the departments of Defense, State and USAID’s plan to supply electricity to Kandahar unrealistic. It warns there could be frequent outages for three years after fuel subsidies end in September 2015. And that could endanger the counter-insurgency effort and the local economy. The Defense Department spends more than a million dollars a month on fuel in Kandahar now. (Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction)

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