Those few in the leadership of forensic science deserve that all that power and privilege about as much as Melson deserves his. And, like Melson, they have gained it at the expense of those they claim to be protecting and defending.

But, it will still go on, because that’s the way things work around here.

Melson and his buddies- again, your Dear Leaders of Forensic Science- also have no problem putting innocent people in prison or on death row. After all, these aren’t the kind of people they would have over for dinner, anyway. Who cares?

(Don’t get all excited and self-righteous, Innocence Project. If you really cared about fixing the system, you have would put all your efforts behind Senator Leahy’s forensic science reform bill instead of pushing for a competing bill from Senator Rockefeller’s office from day one. The Innocence Project has more to lose from forensic science reform than your Dear Leaders of Forensic Science. No more bad convictions… no more Innocence Project… no more camera time.)

But I digress…

The last couple of posts here at BP have focused on the goings on with Beth Lavach, the lobbyist of the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations (CFSO), AKA your Dear Leaders of Forensic Science.

The CFSO is, of course,

• American Society of Laboratory Directors (ASCLD)
• American Society of Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB)
• American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• American Board of Forensic Toxicology/Society of Forensic Toxicology (ABFT/SOFT)

The CFSO used to include Forensic Quality Services (FQS), another laboratory accreditation body founded by the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC). However, FQS pulled out of the CFSO just ahead of being acquired by ANSI, a larger accreditation body in late 2011.

The NFSTC is a nonprofit organization that is supposed to take government money and provide services to crime labs. The idea is that it is supposed to be sort of a clearinghouse where services are provided to crime labs in a more efficient manner by making the government funds go further.

The NFSTC was founded by the ASCLDs in the late 1990’s. Other forensic professional organizations have become member organizations over the years (essentially, members of the board of directors). This includes most members of the CFSO.

Supposedly, the NFSTC started a “feud” with the ASCLDs by founding FQS as a “rival” accreditation body to ASCLD/LAB.

Thing is… what is implied by Lavach’s relationships via her troublesome lobbying disclosures is that maybe- just maybe- the relationship between the ASCLDs and the NFSTC is not so troubled after all.

But that story never made much sense to begin with, did it?

So very many things about how our Dear Leaders of Forensic Science operate and why they are allowed to continue to operate don’t make much sense.

And defensive stupidity has become exhausting, guys. It really has. It is hard work acting as stupid as a lab director just to try to survive day to day.

You see, everybody… the first time I asked one of these glorious human beings about Beth Lavach and what was going on with her relationship with ICx (one of Lavach’s oh-so-questionable “clients”) was in September 2010, when the FLIR acquisition was still in progress.

They already knew I was watching Lavach’s clients. And they kept doing this stupid crap anyway.

And they kept getting away with it. They’ve been getting away with it for about 7 or 8 years from what I can figure.

What I didn’t realize was that they would- in true Dear Leader form- rip my life apart to the roots in retaliation. Again. All with the approval and support of those who give lip service to making and defending the laws of this country.

But again, I digress… Getting back to the “feud” between the ASCLDs and the NFSTC.

Supposedly, the NFSTC starts this “feud” by founding FQS in 1998 or 1999.

Except that FQS wasn’t incorporated until 2004 and, prior to that, the NFSTC was doing pre-ASCLD/LAB audits. Even after FQS popped up, the NFSTC was doing these pre-accreditation audits.

The big question here is this: how does the NFSTC start a “rival” accreditation business against a member of its own board?

It doesn’t, that’s how.

The pre-ASCLD/LAB audits offered by the NFSTC were, basically, the same thing that the now-defunct ASCLD Consulting was supposed to be doing.

When ASCLD Consulting was founded, they were supposed to be doing the same pre-ASCLD/LAB audits that the NFSTC was doing… but they were charging a fee, while the NFSTC was doing them for free. So, ASCLD/LAB still benefitted from the NFSTC audits. Also, FQS never seemed to seek clients too far outside of their own board or management list.

So… everything was actually still status quo. Nothing had really changed, it was just the people in the organizations claiming that there was a rivalry.

Why would they do this? Why go through all this trouble?

FQS was incorporated right around the same time that the ASCLDs and the other professional organizations (via the CFSO) were getting the NAS Report commissioned (the NAS Report that everybody hates so much- Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward).

ASCLD/LAB needed a competitor so that it wouldn’t look like the world of forensic science was just one big festering mess run by a bunch of good ol’ boys who sign off on each others’ labs no matter what (which it is).

Speaking of festering messes…

So the CFSO gets the NAS Report commissioned.

Great!

The CFSO and the other existing professional organizations send their people up for a little dog and pony show. Everybody makes presentations that are appropriate for the level of a third grader. (If you haven’t seen them, please take a look.)

After all, it’s understood that the committee is just going to rubber-stamp a report that says “Give the existing orgs everything they want, make them all official, and leave them alone.”

But that didn’t happen.

Even with the CFSO’s own president and his handy blunt instrument on the panel, they couldn’t swing that.

Nope.

Instead, what they got was, “ GOOD LORD, DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON OVER HERE?!? REGULATE THESE IDIOTS!!!”

So… Now they have to fix that mess.

And who does everyone seem to hang their hat on?

Ken Melson.

Ken Melson… long-time ASCLD/LAB board member, former president of the AAFS, and current member of the AAFS ethics (HA!) committee, among other things.

After appointing him to head up the ATF, the White House hands Melson his very own Subcommittee on Forensic Science (SoFS). The SoFS has several working groups devoted to different issues.

Melson stocks the SoFS with dependable members of CFSO organizations… and every member of Mike Sheppo’s office.

Mike Sheppo, “founder” of FQS and supposed sworn enemy of Ken Melson in the forensic science world.

Now, it could be that Melson was forced to accept Sheppo’s entire staff. If that was the case, Melson is just the kind of guy who would have created a whole new working group for his supposed-enemy’s staff and assigned them all to that working group with the task of figuring out why air has no color.

But, no. Every SoFS working group had at least one member of Sheppo’s staff. Every working group had at least one member of certain organizations friendly to the CFSO cause.

Also, Melson chose Robin Jones to be his “exec-sec”- his right hand woman. Yet another move that made no sense in the world of “ASCLDs vs. NFSTC: Enemies for REALS, y’all. No Joke.”

Robin Jones had been a long-time contractor for the NFSTC and her husband, John Paul Jones, worked closely with Sheppo.

Robin Jones was tall, blonde, and attractive. She has recently been replaced by a younger blonde named Brett Steel.

Very cool name. Somewhere Robin Jones must be flipping out.

Another problem that the Dear Leaders of Forensic Science had after the NAS Report was FQS. The NAS Report had not gone as planned and keeping up FQS was costing money.

FQS had never sought clients outside of their own board and management other than a few others (which I’ll get to in a moment). They could not remain solvent.

At some point FQS was forced to move out of their cozy digs with the NFSTC and get their own office space.

That was probably not part of the plan.

So, FQS started looking for a buyer; another organization to take away the financial burden without the NFSTC or the other Dear Leaders of Forensic Science having to show their hand and shut down FQS.

In late November 2011, ANSI issued an announcement that they had acquired FQS. The picture from the announcement is below.

Don’t you think that picture captures Ben Perillo’s happiness with his situation? Just nails it?

But there has been so much more that just didn’t make sense…

For example, ASCLD’s position statement proclaiming that they were against changing the standards that would allow contract labs to upload DNA test results to the national CODIS DNA database.

It has become routine for crime labs to outsource their DNA and rape kit backlogs to contract labs, even when they have the personnel to process the samples.

At the time the ASCLD position statement was issued, the CODIS standards were written so that contract labs, such as Orchid Cellmark, had to report their results back to the crime lab that had contracted them and the crime lab had to perform a Quality Control review of the results before uploading the data into CODIS.

ASCLD’s official position statement was in direct conflict with what was being stated officially by the leaders of the crime labs themselves within their own departments (ASCLD’s own members and leaders).

For example, this emotional and overwrought plea written by one future lab director known for irrational, erratic behavior, often fueled by opiates and muscle relaxers sought for decades-worth of unverifiable soft-tissue injuries:

FACT SHEET

The [department] has outsourced the testing of kits to reduce the backlog; unfortunately, the FBI has a policy that requires all kits that are outsourced must be retested by another public crime lab… to verify results. This delay is outrageous and has created a whole new backlog. There are now 1,102 kits that have to wait an average of 72 days for this SECOND REVIEW! We need to press the FBI to immediately change their policy.

This same lab director was actively pushing for ASCLD’s supposed position on the CODIS issue during the same time period.

The disparity between the official position statement of the crime lab directors and what they actually pushed for behind the scenes might be explained by the huge amount of money being spread around by the contract labs to try to get the CODIS standards changed.

For example, Orchid Cellmark officially spent almost $400K on lobbying in 2010. The CODIS standards were changed to allow contract labs to upload their results directly to CODIS (the change that benefitted Orchid) in 2011. The change was put out for comment in late 2010/early 2011.

Orchid Cellmark lobbying went to zero in the first quarter of 2011. Officially, of course.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, the client list of FQS (the “rival” of ASCLD/LAB) did not meander far outside of the crime labs of it’s own board of directors or management… except to include contract DNA labs.

The contract DNA labs have always enjoyed a cozy relationship with crime lab directors. Too bad crime lab employees have not.

Finally, in this hodge-podge of things that just didn’t make sense (and this is only a few)… There is the enormous amount of money going to the NFSTC and NFSTC-related organizations, courtesy of House Rep. C.W. Bill Young.

Bill Young is the Representative for the district where the NFSTC is physically located.

As I have mentioned previously, the NFSTC has, in recent years, begun receiving defense-related earmarks from Young.

It should also be noted that Young’s son, Billy, works at the NFSTC, that Congressman Young is usually one of the top “givers” in terms of earmarks, and that Young has been investigated (and cleared) before for ethics violations in connection with his earmarks to contributors.

Billy Young, Jr. (Congressman Young’s son) is part of the NFSTC’s NamUs program that has had to go fallow for a year because the Mike Sheppo grant office at the NIJ was forced to give all that money to someone else because there was a little bit too much sunshine coming their way this year. Boo. Hoo.

Don’t worry, guys. You’ll be taken care of, I’m sure.

While the NFSTC has directly received several million dollars from Congressman Young’s earmarks over the past few years, some of the member organizations of the NFSTC have received much, much more.

Most notably, the University of Southern Florida, the University of Central Florida, and St. Petersburg College each receive multiple defense-related earmarks every year from Congressman Young worth several million dollars.

Also, companies that have come to be listed as “partner companies” of the NFSTC’s for-profit venture, the Forensic Innovation Center (FIC), have received earmarks from Young.

All these millions and millions of dollars… concentrated around one little House district… around one little group of people… where one Congressman’s son happens to be employed.

Just as an example… in FY 2010 alone, at least $19.5 million in earmarks went to organizations related to the NFSTC, including the NFSTC, from Congressman Young’s earmarks. That is just money that was directed to go to those organizations and does not include other federal grants or cooperative agreements they may have received.

Another interesting thing happened with the NFSTC’s contractors just before they incorporated their for-profit venture, the FIC.

When a nonprofit corporation (such as the NFSTC) files a 990 form (the nonprofit equivalent of a tax return), they have to list their top five highest paid contractors.

Just ahead of the founding of their for-profit business, the FIC, the NFSTC’s payments to their five highest paid contractors jumped dramatically, from around $180K to $500K.

It could be that the NFSTC suddenly needed a whole bunch of new services from that particular group of five contractors.

Or…

It could be that the NFSTC really didn’t want to have to list certain other contractors or expenditures on their 990 form, so they increased their expenditures to the five listed.

Or…

It could be what someone considered a very clever way to move money around. For example, some of these contractors ended up in the for-profit business (the FIC) as “partner companies” and others are so large that they could contract back to the NFSTC (thereby sending money back to the NFSTC) without having to list the NFSTC on their own tax forms.

Or… all of the above.

I also recently commented that the NFSTC had not made their 2010 tax form available. This would be their tax form for the year that they incorporated their for-profit business, the FIC.

They promptly posted a tax form on their website.

Problem is… it’s not signed. So, it may not be the one they filed. There’s all sorts of problems with the form they made available. But, since it appears to be only a draft version, who knows if it is even legit.

So, ladies and gents… your Dear Leaders of Forensic Science are up to the same old crap. And, as usual, they will be protected from on high, no matter what they do.

The faces may change, but the system will stay the same. And if you value your life at all, just keep your head down and take it.

Because, if you don’t know it by now, take my word for it… What is valued by the “good guys” is a complete vacancy of morals and mediocre intellect.

But what is valued most, evidently is a complete dedication to gaming the system.

I do hope they can handle a dose of their own medicine.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

The Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations (CFSO) is a lobbying group that purports to “speak with a single forensic science voice” in representing “forensic science professionals across the United States.”

The CFSO consists of the following organizations:

• The American Society of Crime Lab Directors (ASCLD)
• The American Society of Crime Lab Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB)
• American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• Society of Forensic Toxicology (SOFT)/American Board of Forensic Toxicology (ABFT)

Beth Lavach is the lobbyist of the CFSO.

The CFSO used to include Forensic Quality Services (FQS), the crime lab accreditation body created by the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC). FQS withdrew from the CFSO just ahead of being acquired by ANSI in late 2011.

Most of the member organizations of the CFSO are also member organizations of the NFSTC, which was connected to ICx Technologies, Inc. through the NFSTC’s new for-profit organization, the Forensic Innovation Center (FIC).

ICx Technologies was the company for which Beth Lavach kept filing lobbying disclosures until the fourth quarter of 2011 claiming that she was their lobbyist, even though the company ceased to exist on October 5, 2010.

Problem is… FLIR Systems, Inc., the company that bought ICx, doesn’t appear to have used any lobbyists outside their own in-house lobbyists during the year Lavach claims to have lobbied for ICx.

And, after I outed her and she still had to account for the supposed FLIR/ICx income, Lavach claimed she was paid $40,000 for doing nothing (a “No Lobbying Issue Activity” filing). I haven’t found any instance of FLIR paying a lobbyist something to do nothing.

While there are a couple of other things that are questionable in Beth Lavach’s client list, let’s just stick with one.

BRS Labs

In October 2009, Beth Lavach registered as the lobbyist for a company called Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Lavach registered her client as BRS Labs. That means Lavach registered as taking in income for the quarter ending September 30, 2009.

Lavach filed a termination report, indicating that her lobbying services for BRS Labs were ending on January 16, 2012, the day after she filed the termination report for ICx Technologies.

That’s about two and a half years worth of lobbying that Lavach was paid for through BRS Labs.

Lavach collected a total of $165,527 through her BRS Labs lobbying disclosures during the time she claimed to be working for that company.

However… every filing disclosure indicates that Lavach never- ever – lobbied for BRS Labs. She just used the lobbying disclosures to account for income she collected.

Let me explain how that works.

Beth Lavach is a lobbyist. Beth Lavach has to account for the income she receives. The numbers on the lobbying disclosures Beth Lavach files with Congress need to match up pretty closely with the numbers Lavach files with the IRS. So…

Lavach files lobbying disclosures saying that she is getting paid to lobby for a company called BRS Labs. Except she’s not lobbying for them. She’s just getting paid.

Lavach registered to lobby on behalf of BRS Labs about eight months after the NAS Report had been released. The NAS Report (Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward) was released in February 2009, much to the dismay of the member organizations of the CFSO.

Just to review, the NAS Report was the result of the efforts of the CFSO to have the federal government assess “the needs” of forensic science (AKA the needs of the leaders of the members of the CFSO). I think it is safe to say that the member organizations of the CFSO did not expect the NAS Report to say this (the full, actual NAS Report Recommendations).

So, the members of the CFSO needed to fix that.

It could be coincidence that Lavach began getting paid to do nothing for BRS Labs around the time the CFSO began working overtime to undo the damage done by the NAS Report.

Maybe Beth Lavach actually was paid more than $150,000 to do nothing on behalf of a fledgling technology company that felt like burning money.

But I’m going to go with “doubtful.”

I have always thought it odd that Beth Lavach devoted so much of her time to the CFSO, which is officially one of her lowest paying clients. Out of Lavach’s approximately $500,000 yearly income, the CFSO has traditionally only accounted for about $45,000.

Maybe one day we’ll get some answers about what is going on with all this.

Until then, here- again- are the full NAS Report Recommendations. As Dr. Marcella Fierro, one of the members of the committee who wrote the report, said during a presentation on the report at the recent American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Atlanta (paraphrasing): it’s written in plain English for a reason. Read it.

Recommendation 1:

To promote the development of forensic science into a mature field of multidisciplinary research and practice, founded on the systematic collection and analysis of relevant data, Congress should establish and appropriate funds for an independent federal entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS). NIFS should have a full-time administrator and an advisory board with expertise in research and education, the forensic science disciplines, physical and life sciences, forensic pathology, engineering, information technology, measurements and standards, testing and evaluation, law, national security, and public policy. NIFS should focus on:

1. establishing and enforcing best practices for forensic science professionals and laboratories;
2. establishing standards for the mandatory accreditation of forensic science laboratories and the mandatory certification of forensic scientists and medical examiners/forensic pathologists—and identifying the entity/entities that will develop and implement accreditation and certification;
3. promoting scholarly, competitive peer-reviewed research and technical development in the forensic science disciplines and forensic medicine;
4. developing a strategy to improve forensic science research and educational programs, including forensic pathology;
5. establishing a strategy, based on accurate data on the forensic science community, for the efficient allocation of available funds to give strong support to forensic methodologies and practices in addition to DNA analysis;
6. funding state and local forensic science agencies, independent research projects, and educational programs as recommended in this report, with conditions that aim to advance the credibility and reliability of the forensic science disciplines;
7. overseeing education standards and the accreditation of forensic science programs in colleges and universities;
8. developing programs to improve understanding of the forensic science disciplines and their limitations within legal systems; and
9. assessing the development and introduction of new technologies in forensic investigations, including a comparison of new technologies with former ones.

Recommendation 2:

The National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS), after reviewing established standards such as ISO 17025, and in consultation with its advisory board, should establish standard terminology to be used in reporting on and testifying about the results of forensic science investigations. Similarly, it should establish model laboratory reports for different forensic science disciplines and specify the minimum information that should be included. As part of the accreditation and certification processes, laboratories and forensic scientists should be required to utilize model laboratory reports when summarizing the results of their analyses.

Recommendation 3:

Research is needed to address issues of accuracy, reliability, and validity in the forensic science disciplines. The National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) should competitively fund peer-reviewed research in the following areas:

1. Studies establishing the scientific bases demonstrating the validity of forensic methods.
2. The development and establishment of quantifiable measures of the reliability and accuracy of forensic analyses. Studies of the reliability and accuracy of forensic techniques should reflect actual practice on realistic case scenarios, averaged across a representative sample of forensic scientists and laboratories. Studies also should establish the limits of reliability and accuracy that analytic methods can be expected to achieve as the conditions of forensic evidence vary. The research by which measures of reliability and accuracy are determined should be peer reviewed and published in respected scientific journals.
3. The development of quantifiable measures of uncertainty in the conclusions of forensic analyses.
4. Automated techniques capable of enhancing forensic technologies.

Recommendation 4:

To improve the scientific bases of forensic science examinations and to maximize independence from or autonomy within the law enforcement community, Congress should authorize and appropriate incentive funds to the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) for allocation to state and local jurisdictions for the purpose of removing all public forensic laboratories and facilities from the administrative control of law enforcement agencies or prosecutors’ offices.

Recommendation 5:

The National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) should encourage research programs on human observer bias and sources of human error in forensic examinations. Such programs might include studies to determine the effects of contextual bias in forensic practice (e.g., studies to determine whether and to what extent the results of forensic analyses are influenced by knowledge regarding the background of the suspect and the investigator’s theory of the case). In addition, research on sources of human error should be closely linked with research conducted to quantify and characterize the amount of error. Based on the results of these studies, and in consultation with its advisory board, NIFS should develop standard operating procedures (that will lay the foundation for model protocols) to minimize, to the greatest extent reasonably possible, potential bias and sources of human error in forensic practice. These standard operating procedures should apply to all forensic analyses that may be used in litigation.

Recommendation 6:

To facilitate the work of the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS), Congress should authorize and appropriate funds to NIFS to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in conjunction with government laboratories, universities, and private laboratories, and in consultation with Scientific Working Groups, to develop tools for advancing measurement, validation, reliability, information sharing, and proficiency testing in forensic science and to establish protocols for forensic examinations, methods, and practices. Standards should reflect best practices and serve as accreditation tools for laboratories and as guides for the education, training, and certification of professionals. Upon completion of its work, NIST and its partners should report findings and recommendations to NIFS for further dissemination and implementation.

Recommendation 7:

Laboratory accreditation and individual certification of forensic science professionals should be mandatory, and all forensic science professionals should have access to a certification process. In determining appropriate standards for accreditation and certification, the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) should take into account established and recognized international standards, such as those published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). No person (public or private) should be allowed to practice in a forensic science discipline or testify as a forensic science professional without certification. Certification requirements should include, at a minimum, written examinations, supervised practice, proficiency testing, continuing education, recertification procedures, adherence to a code of ethics, and effective disciplinary procedures. All laboratories and facilities (public or private) should be accredited, and all forensic science professionals should be certified, when eligible, within a time period established by NIFS.

Recommendation 8:

Forensic laboratories should establish routine quality assurance and quality control procedures to ensure the accuracy of forensic analyses and the work of forensic practitioners. Quality control procedures should be designed to identify mistakes, fraud, and bias; confirm the continued validity and reliability of standard operating procedures and protocols; ensure that best practices are being followed; and correct procedures and protocols that are found to need improvement.

Recommendation 9:

The National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS), in consultation with its advisory board, should establish a national code of ethics for all forensic science disciplines and encourage individual societies to incorporate this national code as part of their professional code of ethics. Additionally, NIFS should explore mechanisms of enforcement for those forensic scientists who commit serious ethical violations. Such a code could be enforced through a certification process for forensic scientists.

Recommendation 10:

To attract students in the physical and life sciences to pursue graduate studies in multidisciplinary fields critical to forensic science practice, Congress should authorize and appropriate funds to the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) to work with appropriate organizations and educational institutions to improve and develop graduate education programs designed to cut across organizational, programmatic, and disciplinary boundaries. To make these programs appealing to potential students, they must include attractive scholarship and fellowship offerings. Emphasis should be placed on developing and improving research methods and methodologies applicable to forensic science practice and on funding research programs to attract research universities and students in fields relevant to forensic science. NIFS should also support law school administrators and judicial education organizations in establishing continuing legal education programs for law students, practitioners, and judges.

Recommendation 11:

To improve medicolegal death investigation:

1. Congress should authorize and appropriate incentive funds to the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) for allocation to states and jurisdictions to establish medical examiner systems, with the goal of replacing and eventually eliminating existing coroner systems. Funds are needed to build regional medical examiner offices, secure necessary equipment, improve administration, and ensure the education, training, and staffing of medical examiner offices. Funding could also be used to help current medical examiner systems modernize their facilities to meet current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-recommended autopsy safety requirements.
2. Congress should appropriate resources to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NIFS, jointly, to support research, education, and training in forensic pathology. NIH, with NIFS participation, or NIFS in collaboration with content experts, should establish a study section to establish goals, to review and evaluate proposals in these areas, and to allocate funding for collaborative research to be conducted by medical examiner offices and medical universities. In addition, funding, in the form of medical student loan forgiveness and/or fellowship support, should be made available to pathology residents who choose forensic pathology as their specialty.
3. NIFS, in collaboration with NIH, the National Association of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, and other appropriate professional organizations, should establish a Scientific Working Group (SWG) for forensic pathology and medicolegal death investigation. The SWG should develop and promote standards for best practices, administration, staffing, education, training, and continuing education for competent death scene investigation and postmortem examinations. Best practices should include the utilization of new technologies such as laboratory testing for the molecular basis of diseases and the implementation of specialized imaging techniques.
4. All medical examiner offices should be accredited pursuant to NIFS-endorsed standards within a timeframe to be established by NIFS.
5. All federal funding should be restricted to accredited offices that meet NIFS-endorsed standards or that demonstrate significant and measurable progress in achieving accreditation within prescribed deadlines.
6. All medicolegal autopsies should be performed or supervised by a board certified forensic pathologist. This requirement should take effect within a timeframe to be established by NIFS, following consultation with governing state institutions.

Recommendation 12:

Congress should authorize and appropriate funds for the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) to launch a new broad-based effort to achieve nationwide fingerprint data interoperability. To that end, NIFS should convene a task force comprising relevant experts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the major law enforcement agencies (including representatives from the local, state, federal, and, perhaps, international levels) and industry, as appropriate, to develop:

1. standards for representing and communicating image and minutiae data among Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems. Common data standards would facilitate the sharing of fingerprint data among law enforcement agencies at the local, state, federal, and even international levels, which could result in more solved crimes, fewer wrongful identifications, and greater efficiency with respect to fingerprint searches; and
2. baseline standards—to be used with computer algorithms— to map, record, and recognize features in fingerprint images, and a research agenda for the continued improvement, refinement, and characterization of the accuracy of these algorithms (including quantification of error rates).

Recommendation 13:

Congress should provide funding to the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) to prepare, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, forensic scientists and crime scene investigators for their potential roles in managing and analyzing evidence from events that affect homeland security, so that maximum evidentiary value is preserved from these unusual circumstances and the safety of these personnel is guarded. This preparation also should include planning and preparedness (to include exercises) for the interoperability of local forensic personnel with federal counterterrorism organizations.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

What’s Going On

So, the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC), a nonprofit organization, founded a for-profit consulting corporation, the Forensic Innovation Center (FIC). Kevin Lothridge, the CEO of the NFSTC, is also the President of the FIC.

This is a problem for a number of reasons.

First of all, prior to the founding of the FIC, the NFSTC was ~99% funded by the federal government (according to their own tax form). So… how can they have a for-profit, “subsidiary” anything? There should be men in bad suits knocking on the door and asking for the keys to that place at any minute.

Secondly, the FIC purports to do most of the things as a for-profit that the NFSTC has established clearly in their articles of incorporation to do as a nonprofit.

Legally, you can’t have an officer or board member of a nonprofit giving preference to a for-profit over the nonprofit. The idea that the nonprofit itself would be giving away opportunities to a for-profit is essentially raising a big red flag to the IRS saying, “Please come take my nonprofit status away so I can’t receive any more money. Thanks! XOXO.”

To make matters worse for themselves, prior to incorporating the FIC, the NFSTC contracted with the “partner companies” of the FIC to deliver services. This just proves that the NFSTC could fulfill any of those services that the FIC would purport to sell.

But the FIC also claims to deliver defense-related goods and services. That’s a problem, too.

The NFSTC has been receiving millions of dollars in earmarks over the past few years through the Defense Appropriations Bill for things like “Expansion of the Forensic Intelligence Technologies and Training Support Center of Excellence.” The NFSTC even provided trailers to the Army for mobile laboratories.

All this was before the incorporation of the FIC. That means that the NFSTC can do anything that the FIC can do. Therefore, the FIC cannot legally take opportunities from the NFSTC.

But all this is mind-numbingly boring compared to the fact that someone in this mess may be using a lobbyist who is registering under a non-existent corporation.

Funny Story…

One of the “partner companies” currently listed on the website of the FIC is FLIR Systems, Inc.

FLIR is a decent sized company (~3,200 employees) that makes thermal imaging equipment that is bought, largely, by the defense sector. FLIR has about $1.6 billion in revenues per year, a good operating margin, and about $375 million in cash.

When the FIC was founded in August 2010, one of the “partner companies” was ICx Technologies, Inc. ICx Technologies was in the process of being acquired by FLIR. The acquisition was completed on October 5, 2010.

The lobbyist for ICx Technologies prior to the buy-out was Elizabeth Lavach (ELS & Associates). Beth Lavach is also the lobbyist for the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations (CFSO).

The CFSO is the lobbying organization of

• American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD)
• American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB)
• National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME)
• American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• Society of Forensic Toxicology (SOFT)
• American Board of Forensic Toxicology (ABFT)

Forensic Quality Services (FQS), the crime lab accreditation body created by the NFSTC as a competitor to ASCLD/LAB, was also a member of the CFSO at the time all this occurred. FQS recently pulled out of the CFSO, just prior to being acquired themselves.

ICx Technologies had been Beth Lavach’s highest paying client.

Oddly enough, ICx Technologies is still Beth Lavach’s highest paying client.

That’s the problem.

According to the Lobbying Disclosure Act, there should be exactly zero lobbyists registered for ICx Technologies, Inc., since ICx Technologies ceased to exist on October 5, 2010.

When two companies merge, the company that “survives” the merger becomes the company that has to register as having a lobbyist.

The real problem for the company is that it’s the lobbyist who actually files the lobbying disclosure paperwork.

If Beth Lavach was still lobbying for ICx Technologies as a subsidiary of FLIR, she should have noted the name change to FLIR in her lobbying disclosure forms. In other words, she should be registering as a lobbyist for FLIR (this according to the real, live people at the Clerk of the House of Representative’s office, after much discussion on the subject).

Instead, there was absolutely no change from the third quarter of 2010 (the quarter before the merger) through any of Lavach’s filings for the next year; Lavach still registered as lobbying for ICx Technologies, Inc.

• 2010 Q3
• 2010 Q4
• 2011 Q1
• 2011 Q2
• 2011 Q3

Why would someone do this and risk getting caught?

Because getting caught filing “defective” lobbying disclosures does not usually carry a hefty penalty.

What Happens Next

To understand what happens with enforcement of the Lobbying Disclosure Act, you first need to understand what happens when laws are passed…

Lots and lots and lots of lobbyists have lots and lots and lots of input on what goes into the laws. Period.

Therefore… this is what happens when someone files a “defective” disclosure under the Lobbying Disclosure Act:

• First, the Secretary of the Senate or the Clerk of the House notifies the lobbyist of the “defective” filing and the lobbyist has 60 days to correct it.
• If the “defective” filing is not corrected within 60 days, OR the lobbyist, client, whoever fails in some other way to comply with any other provision of the Act, they MAY be subject to a CIVIL penalty of NOT MORE THAN $200,000.

As we’ve seen before (1, 2, 3)… when you get to set your own rules, there aren’t really any consequences for breaking them.

However… there’s also this interesting little part…

Whoever knowingly and corruptly fails to comply with any provision of [the Lobbying Disclosure Act] may be imprisoned for not more than 5 years or fined under title 18, United States Code, or both.

And the Guidance to the Lobbying Disclosure Act on the House website makes specific note of the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, stating

The False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, amending 18 U.S.C. § 1001, makes it a crime knowingly and willfully: (1) to falsify, conceal or cover up a material fact by trick, scheme or device; (2) to make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) to make or use any false writing or document knowing it to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; with respect to matters within the jurisdiction of the Legislative, Executive, or Judicial branch. The False Statements Accountability Act does not assign any responsibilities to the Clerk and Secretary.

Therefore, the real issue is proving all that “knowingly” and “willfully” and “corruptly” stuff. Also note that the Guidance states

The False Statements Accountability Act does not assign any responsibilities to the Clerk [of the House of Representatives] and Secretary [of the Senate].

In other words, those two offices know the rules and can give guidance but they can’t really enforce them.

So, if someone files a “defective” lobbying disclosure form or other filing under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and then says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…” they can argue ignorance.

However, if the person has a demonstrated history of knowing better, it’s pretty damn hard to argue ignorance.

SAIC and AMTI

One of Beth Lavach’s other clients used to be Applied Marine Technology, Inc. (AMTI).

In December 2006, AMTI was acquired by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). SAIC is a Fortune 500 company that specializes in science, engineering, and technology applications for clients in the defense, intelligence, and homeland security community, among others.

Lavach’s contract with AMTI was carried over to SAIC for about two years before being terminated in 2008.

Lavach’s lobbying disclosure form in 2006 show that Lavach was lobbying for AMTI. The line for the client name reads

AMTI, Incorporated

However, the very next lobbying disclosure form filed by Lavach after AMTI was acquired by SAIC reflected the merger. The line for the client name reads

SAIC (FORMERLY AMTI)

Therefore, Beth Lavach knows that a merger requires a name change on a lobbying disclosure form to reflect the surviving company.

Interesting Developments

After my last post, Beth Lavach filed her lobbying disclosure forms for the fourth quarter of 2011. Just yesterday, as a matter of fact.

Her fourth quarter lobbying disclosure form for ICx Technologies now claims that she is lobbying for “ICx Technologies, Inc. now FLIR” (line 7, “Client Name”). No amended reports were filed for the previous year’s worth of filings.

There are several interesting things about this filing.

FLIR has its own in-house (staff) lobbyists who are registered as lobbyists for FLIR, plus one outside lobbying firm they have used in the past which is also registered as a lobbyist for FLIR.

However, in 2011, FLIR appears to have only used their in-house lobbyists. The single outside lobbying firm left that is registered to FLIR was not paid and had no lobbying activity. FLIR’s staff lobbyist is the only lobbyist to file lobbying disclosure forms with any lobbying activity for FLIR.

Also, FLIR has had lobbyists for other subsidiaries and divisions of the corporation in the past and has registered those lobbyists properly, crediting the lobbying to FLIR.

What is most interesting is that Lavach claims in the new filing that she was paid $40,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011 by ICx/FLIR, but that she did not lobby for them. This is a “no lobbying issue activity” report; Lavach is simply reporting that she received $40,000 in income from ICx/FLIR.

This would mean that Lavach is on retainer and is paid whether she is lobbying for ICx/FLIR or not.

I can’t find any other example of FLIR paying any outside lobbyist during a quarter with no lobbying activity. None. Going back to 1998.

Also, FLIR is a company that does business primarily in the Department of Defense and Homeland Security-related fields. All the lobbying activity Lavach has been reporting that she has been doing for ICx Technologies since the merger has been related to Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and military issues and funding.

The bill containing funding for the Department of Defense and Homeland Security was winding its way through Congress during the fourth quarter of 2011 and was finally passed as part of the FY 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act on December 17, 2011.

As with most things that happen on the Hill, there was much debate, many proposed amendments, and a lot of horse trading going on prior to the vote. The idea that a defense-related company would pay their lobbyist $40,000 to sit around and do nothing while this was going on is hard to believe.

FLIR’s in-house lobbyist was active during this period and registered as lobbying for FLIR on the FY 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act, among other things.

So, this still doesn’t quite add up.

Why Would Someone Do This?

Why would anyone file lobbying disclosure forms to hide the true client or source of their lobbying income?

The reason the lobbyist would need to file the disclosure form is simple: to account for the income they are getting. They are a registered lobbyist. The income numbers on the forms filed with the House and Senate need to match pretty closely with the numbers filed with the IRS.

A client might need to do this to hide the fact that they are lobbying Congress.

What kind of client would need to hide their lobbying activity? There are a several possibilities here. For example,

• Some person or organization who just plain doesn’t want to be known and has decided to go about it this way.
• A client who isn’t supposed to lobby Congress or who has severe legal limitations how much lobbying they can do, such as a nonprofit organization.
• Federal funds cannot be used for lobbying. That means you can’t use federal grant money to lobby Congress. Any organization that is using federal funds for lobbying would probably want to hide their lobbying activity.
• A group of individuals or organizations that is trying to hide their relationship to one another.

This last example- a group of individuals or organizations- is actually covered by the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

Any member of any group (referred to as a coalition or association in the Guidance on the subject) that “contribute[s] more than $5,000 toward the lobbying activities of the registrant in the quarterly period, and actively participate[s] in the planning, supervision or control of the lobbying activities” must be identified in the filing.

“Actively participates” has several definitions in the Guidance. Having a member or representative involved on a board, committee, or oversight group of the coalition or association is a pretty good signal that you are “actively participating.”

However, the law also says that it doesn’t matter if the coalition or association is “formal or informal.” If you’re mingling around and throwing money at the same lobbyist for the same reason, you’re pretty much an association or a coalition and you need to be identified on the registration or the quarterly disclosure.

So… what’s going on, then?

So far, I have gotten no comment from Beth Lavach or FLIR.

FLIR is still listed as a “partner company” on the website of the FIC.

It is unclear how much involvement the “partner companies” of the FIC have in the actual corporation.

One reason defense-related companies may have agreed to be attached to the FIC is because of the location and who represents that particular district in the House: Representative Bill Young.

Bill Young has been in Congress for 41 years and is in his 21st term. Young sits on the House Appropriations Committee and chairs the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Young usually ranks in the top 3 or 4 (out of 435 House members) in terms of the amount of earmark spending that goes to his home district.

As a result, there are a lot of defense contractors that seem to have made sure that they have an office in Bill Young’s district.

The NFSTC has just jumped on the defense earmark bandwagon with the vaguely named “Expansion of the Forensic Intelligence Technologies and Training Support Center of Excellence” earmark from Bill Young.

However, word is that Young may announce his retirement any day now. The earmarks that the NFSTC has just started to pursue for their brand-new, ill-advised venture may be short-lived.

So, it remains to be seen what will happen with Beth Lavach’s previous filings under the client name ICx Technologies, when the NFSTC’s 2010 tax form will pop up, and who might take an interest in the dealings at the FIC.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

That slippery slope is particularly short for those who constantly skate too close to the line of what is legal- sometimes crossing it with reckless abandon- in their efforts to protect and serve their egos.

Last time on ye olde blog, I filled you in on some background stuff about the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC) and its questionable relationship with one of the grant offices at the National Institutes of Justice (NIJ) where the NFSTC gets its funding.

I also told you about the fact that the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has called attention to the NIJ’s practice of awarding funding in ways that are far outside the bounds of “fair and open.” This has resulted in millions of dollars going to “entities of dubious merit,” as Congress calls them, instead of going to local and state law enforcement agencies and crime labs.

This has also resulted in the strong language in the FY 2012 Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) Appropriations Bill that expressed the anger of Congress at the NIJ and those “entities of dubious merit” who have benefited from the NIJ’s bad practices (remember that wonderful line in the 2012 Senate CJS Appropriations Bill, “The Committee’s patience has been exhausted”?).

While there are several of these “entities of dubious merit” that deserve to be brought into the sunlight… for today we’ll stick to the NFSTC.

The NFSTC was founded in 1995 by the ASCLDs (ASCLD and ASCLD/LAB). The NFSTC is a nonprofit membership corporation, which means that the member corporations have control over the NFSTC and elect the board of directors. ASCLD is still a member corporation, but ASCLD/LAB is not, for reasons discussed below.

Other member corporations include

• American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)
• American Board of Criminalists (ABC)
• Association of Forensic Quality Assurance Managers (AFQAM)
• Florida International University (FIU)
• University of South Florida (USF)
• University of Central Florida (UCF)
• Southeastern Public Safety Institute of St. Petersburg College (SEPSI)

The day-to-day management of the NFSTC is controlled by the executive staff which is headed by long-time NFSTC CEO Kevin Lothridge, a past-president of ASCLD.

However, even though the NFSTC is headed by a past-president of ASCLD and ASCLD still maintains some control over the NFSTC (supposedly), the NFSTC and ASCLD are not on friendly terms at all.

This is important because the tactics used by the management of the NFSTC are very similar to those we’ve seen at ASCLD and ASCLD/LAB, even though the NFSTC and the ASCLDs are not BFFs anymore.

The Reason for the Rift

The reason that the ASCLDs and the NFSTC aren’t buddies anymore appears to be because the NFSTC pulled a very ASCLD-type move on ASCLD and ASCLD/LAB: the NFSTC betrayed the trust of the ASCLDs for its own benefit and financial gain.

In 1999, the NFSTC received a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for “development of an ISO compliant version of the ASCLD/LAB program” (from the NFSTC’s own 1999 Annual Report, under the heading “ASCLD/LAB Program Development”).

Instead of developing an ISO program for ASCLD/LAB, some within the NFSTC saw it as an opportunity to create a new money-making business unit: Forensic Quality Services (FQS), a competitor to ASCLD/LAB.

Except that FQS wasn’t so good getting clients from anyone but their board of directors, which is probably why they were just acquired by ANSI. I hope ANSI has a good due diligence process.

FQS appears to have been forced into this financial position because of the close scrutiny of the Senate. FQS used to share office space with the NFSTC, even after they incorporated as a separate corporation.

FQS had to move out of their cozy digs with the NFSTC ahead of the 2011 CJS Appropriations Bill which called for an investigation into the relationship between the NIJ, the NFSTC, and FQS.

So… remember that December 2007 Crime Lab Report where the ASCLDs argued against capitalism because the NFSTC had created FQS? The article said that if crime lab accreditation (something should be standardized) was allowed to be bid on by multiple competitors that it would, somehow, raise the price instead of lowering it.

The ASCLD’s main complaint in that article (besides arguing that the rules of fair market trade are, somehow, suspended when it comes to bidding out crime lab accreditation) was that the NFSTC and FQS were horribly dishonest because they broke their promises to the ASCLDs.

What they should have argued is that the NFSTC misappropriated government funds by not using the NIST grant to create an ISO program for ASCLD/LAB.

By the way, you can only get that ridiculous December 2007 Crime Lab Report here now, because Crime Lab Report has taken it off their website (as of this writing).

The Wonderful Nebulousness of Nothingness

The tactics that the NFSTC has used over the years to simultaneously pursue funding and shrug off any sort oversight is the same sort of shady, shifty weirdness you would expect from any ASCLD-related organization.

It involves lots of talking in circles and self-certification of being experts in the nebulous idea of forensic science.

You know the drill.

First, they self-certify and hope everybody buys it.

It’s very much like when some nonexpert declares, “I oversaw the [firearms, DNA/serology, trace evidence, whatever] unit for [X] years.” This nonexpert was never actually trained in the field they are trying to lay claim to with that sentence.

The nonexpert who makes that statement is counting on their audience assuming that they are an expert because they have, perhaps, signed time sheets for a group of actual experts. Perhaps they are wishing for some paper-skin contact transfer of knowledge.

The way the NFSTC did this in order to help their friends at the NIJ Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences “justify” sending them money year after year was by submitting the results of two “focus groups.”

But guess who the “focus groups” were that they used for their justification for giving all those millions of dollars to the NFSTC? (From the NFSTC’s own 2003 Annual Report. The “focus groups” are mentioned again in 2004.)

The first [focus group] was convened from the member organization representatives [of the NFSTC] at the time of the annual NFSTC membership meeting in April. The second consisted of the Directors of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD), which met in early May.

Since ASCLD is a member organization of the NFSTC, that means that both “focus groups” were actually just the NFSTC self-certifying how wonderful they think they are so that the NIJ would send them money. Also, these are meetings of a very few people; not surveys of entire memberships of the organizations that they claim to represent.

The reports from the “focus groups” were submitted during a time when the NIJ kept funding the NFSTC by simply extending the contract on the funding they got in 2000. The initial FY 2000 award was relatively small: $414,000.

But the continuation funding that the NIJ gave to the NFSTC by re-upping the contract every year was much bigger:

• FY 2001: $2.6 million
• FY 2002: $8.8 million
• FY 2003: $3.6 million
• FY 2004: $2.0 million

That’s $17 million in continuation funding in 4 years from an original $414K award. Funding that could have gone to crime labs. And that’s just from that one funding contract.

The original award was for “Crime Laboratory Service Quality.” The next couple of years the award was for “Service Quality in Crime Laboratories.” Whatever that means.

All of this funding is coming from the NIJ Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences AKA the Mike Sheppo grant office AKA the office where Mark Nelson also works AKA the office that is supposed to fund crime labs, but, HA! good luck with that how do you like your furlough days, suckers.

But now that the NFSTC is self-certified to the hilt, they’ve got to deliver something with those millions of dollars.

This presented another problem for the NFSTC and, evidently, created some friction with the NFSTC’s day-to-day management team and the board of directors.

In the 2002 Annual Report, the NFSTC’s management team had two notable complaints for its membership corporations (the organizations that send representatives to its board of directors):

1. The amount of funding that the NFSTC is receiving from the NIJ is a “drain on the corporation” because too much of it is just going right out the door in the form of programs the NFSTC is supposed to deliver to crime labs, and
2. The board has recently voted to outsource “all financial processing”, taking control- and any opportunity for financial creativity- out of the hands of the NFSTC’s management team.

Specifically, the report said

Two areas are brought to the attention of members as requiring some consideration in the 2003 fiscal year. The first is the impact of the [NIJ] Cooperative Agreement funds on the corporation. These funds permit us to provide a range of much needed services to public state and local crime laboratories, some of which they would not be able to access on a fee for service basis.

However, providing these programs accounted for 80% of the NFSTC expenditures in 2002. Consequently, there are several downsides. For example, the funds are provided as a cooperative agreement award rather than a service contract. The conditions for administration of such awards are designed for grants to universities and governments and are unfavorable to corporations structured like the NFSTC. They require a substantial investment in administrative resources and are a net drain on the corporation.

Let’s stop right here a moment.

This first gripe amounts to this: the NFSTC’s day-to-day management team is complaining that the NIJ is giving them money to deliver programs to state and local crime labs and… they are expected to spend the money actually delivering programs to state and local crime labs. The NFSTC doesn’t want to let go of the cash they are getting.

The NFSTC was founded 7 years prior to this report based on the idea of taking federal funding and delivering services to crime labs. The NFSTC’s board and managers are current and former crime lab directors who know what sort of strings come with federal funds. Complaining that they are just now noticing that there are administrative requirements associated with NIJ funding is a lame excuse.

Also, keep in mind that this is the high year in terms of that list above of continuation funding. The NFSTC received over $8.8 million in 2002 from the NIJ.

Let’s go back to the gripes in the 2002 Annual Report.

The board has repeatedly asserted that the corporation must be able to balance the valuable services provided under the [NIJ] Cooperative Agreement while not just maintaining but growing the FQS and FQS-I business. Only in that way will the NFSTC continue as a strong, sound corporation.

Growing FQS and FQS-I business leads to the second issue facing us in 2003. In round figures, we ended the year three times larger than we began it. The whole face of the NFSTC is changing.

That had to chap some hides on the board of directors and among the members. This was during a time when ASCLD/LAB was still a member corporation of the NFSTC.

Successful operations based on the close integration and control exercised by a few dedicated staff and a willing board have been replaced by systems that are more impersonal. As an example, already in 2003 the Board has supported the decision to outsource all financial processing. It is our intent to continue in this direction, but we trust that we will never become so large and impersonal that we lose touch with our key stakeholders – our clients in the forensic sciences.

In this last paragraph, NFSTC management is also complaining that the board of directors has taken away management’s day-to-day control over finances by outsourcing “all financial processing.” This probably did away with any opportunities for financial creativity as well.

NFSTC management complains that outsourcing the handling of financial processing is a step toward making the NFSTC “more impersonal” and hints strongly that they could “lose touch with [their] key stakeholders- our clients in the forensic sciences.” This is another unconvincing excuse.

The NFSTC’s clients- crime labs whose accounting is often handled through separate departments far removed from the crime labs themselves- care about the quality of the forensic programs that are being delivered, not about whether their bill is being sent from the NFSTC or from a professional accounting service.

This seems to have been a point when the member organizations tried to exert some control over NFSTC management and may have had some suspicions either about what management was doing with the books or their competency to handle the task.

However, NFSTC management must have complained loud and long about losing control of their financial processing, because that move was soon reversed. The NFSTC now has a full “Financial Services” staff.

But the other complaints from the NFSTC management team about becoming too impersonal and having trouble handling the requirements of their own NIJ contracts and financial operations would become ridiculously ironic very soon.

And here comes the irony…

So, the NFSTC betrayed their founders (ASCLD and ASCLD/LAB) with a move right out of the ASCLDs’ own play book and they’re bringing in millions of dollars thanks to dizzying self-certification (another move out of the ASCLDs’ play book).

Now they have to figure out what they are going to deliver with all those millions of dollars. Time to double-down on the double-speak.

In their 2002 Annual Report, presented in 2003, the NFSTC management team actually said, in black and white, that the millions of dollars they were receiving from the NIJ was a “drain on the corporation.”

The official excuse for this in their Annual Report… issued in March 2003… was that NFSTC management was having trouble handling the administrative burden of keeping track of all that money. The NFSTC board even voted to outsource all the financial processing, taking this duty away from the NFSTC’s management team.

So, in federal FY 2004… which began in October 2003… their friendly friends at the NIJ gave the NFSTC a $1 million grant to… perform “Grant Program Assessments” on all the other grant recipients to make sure everyone else was handling the administrative burdens of their grants appropriately.

The NFSTC continued to receive funding to perform these Assessments from FY 2004 through FY 2011. It appears that well has run dry for the time being thanks, once again, to the close scrutiny of the Senate (FY 2012 Senate CJS Appropriations Bill… “The Committee’s patience has been exhausted”…. “entities of dubious merit”… yep).

In their 2004 Annual Report, the NFSTC also claimed that they delivered what they called “DNA Academy III.” The NFSTC bragged that they

developed an infrastructure partnership with the Illinois State Police (ISP) funding the direct cost of delivery. The NFSTC trained 13 recently hired DNA analysts.

You’ll recognize this as the contract that NFSTC Board President Mike Sheppo funneled to the NFSTC when he was the head of the crime lab at the Illinois State Police. The NFSTC may have bragged about the training they delivered, but the Illinois State Police was not at all pleased with the quality of the training or the fact that they were charged $750,000 for something that could have been done better in-house, thank you very much.

This was all outlined in the investigation that ended with Sheppo being recommended for disciplinary action for, among other things, misleading the Illinois Inspector General’s Office during that investigation into the whole mess.

The investigation also found that the NFSTC had inappropriately charged the Illinois State Police for something that was supposed to be free because the NIJ had already paid for it. Because the whole point of the NIJ giving the NFSTC millions of dollars is so they can deliver services to crime labs for free.

Also, in their 2002 Annual Report, the NFSTC management team lamented that they did not want control over their day-to-day financial processing outsourced because that would make them too “impersonal.”

However, the NFSTC moved fast and furious toward “technology based training” in almost everything they do. Also, the development and delivery of almost all of their products and services is outsourced.

Outsourcing the development of a product that is delivered over the internet or on a CD/DVD to someone you will never meet (and whose name you may never even know) is just about as impersonal as you can get.

But this is a great way to get and keep funding: get funding to develop this kind of training, then get more funding to “maintain” it.

As mentioned in the FY 2012 Senate CJS Appropriations Bill, the NFSTC is not the only NIJ-funded organization to be pulling this kind of stuff, they just make a really good example. The NFSTC is one of several organizations that seem to have friends on the inside at NIJ who make sure that grant money intended for crime labs, law enforcement agencies, and places where it could do some good ends up at “entities of dubious merit” instead.

One way the NIJ did this over the last few years was through its “Center of Excellence” award programs. These vaguely named programs have given huge sums of money to awardees.

From 2007 to 2010, the NFSTC received a minimum of $6 million per year from the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence award program alone. That’s in addition to the more than $2 million per year they averaged under the NamUs program and the millions more they received for other various awards.

But all this hasn’t been enough, evidently.

So the NFSTC also started pursuing a bigger funding pool: Department of Defense funding.

For the past few years, the NFSTC has also been receiving millions of dollars in earmark funding from the Department of Defense. What they’ve been doing with this funding isn’t really clear. The only thing discussed in their annual reports related to the Department of Defense is portable laboratories.

According to their most recently available tax form, only two of the portable labs were actually used by the Department of Defense at a cost of $210,000 each.

I say “most recently available tax form” because the last available tax form for the NFSTC is for 2009. They have not published their 2010 tax form on their website along with their other tax forms and I haven’t been able to find it elsewhere.

Which brings me to yet another ASCLD-type play and a reason why the NFSTC might be hiding all their income from everybody…

The Founding of the For-Profit

In August 2010, the NFSTC incorporated the Forensic Innovation Center (FIC), a for-profit consulting company (sound familiar?). The registered agent and president of the corporation is Kevin Lothridge, the CEO of the NFSTC.

One of the problems with this is that the FIC purports to do most of the things as a for-profit that the NFSTC is supposed to do as a nonprofit. Legally, you can’t have an officer of a nonprofit giving preference to a for-profit over the nonprofit.

Legally, if there is an opportunity available and there is a choice to be made about whether the nonprofit or the for-profit gets to take advantage of the opportunity, you always have to give preference to the nonprofit. Any services that the FIC purports to offer that could be offered by the NFSTC must be given to the NFSTC.

The NFSTC itself reinforced the fact that it offers the same services as the FIC by contracting with some of the FIC’s “partner companies” prior to founding the FIC. These contracts occurred in 2009, the year immediately prior to the founding of the FIC, and were for quite large sums, relative to the amounts the NFSTC usually paid their contractors.

In 2009, the NFSTC contracted with Ron Smith & Associates for just over $300,000 for consulting and training. A year later, Ron Smith & Associates would become a partner company in the FIC.

Also in 2009, the NFSTC contracted with the High Tech Crime Institute for just over $280,000 in training. High Tech Crime Institute would be come a partner company in FIC. High Tech Crime Institute is also the physical location of the FIC, just a few doors up from the NFSTC.

Other partner companies listed on the website for the FIC are predominantly defense sector-related companies.

When the FIC was founded, there was a company listed as a partner company named ICx Technologies. ICx Technologies was in the process of being bought by another company called FLIR Systems.

The acquisition of ICx Technologies by FLIR was officially completed on October 5, 2010. ICx Technologies ceased to exist as a corporation at that time and became part of FLIR.

Here’s where it gets really interesting.

Beth Lavach, the lobbyist for the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations (CFSO… the lobbying group of ASCLD, ASCLD/LAB, AAFS, NAME, IAI, and a few others), was the lobbyist of ICx Technologies.

And, according to the lobbying disclosure forms she’s been filing, she still is.

Beth Lavach has been filing lobbying disclosure forms under the banner of ICx Technologies every quarter for over a year as if the company still exists. No amended registrations. No name changes for the corporation.

According to the lobbying disclosures, ICx Technologies is one of Lavach’s highest paying clients.

And that, according to the Clerk of the House of Representative’s office, is not cool.

Next time (Tuesday, promise)… Who is paying Beth Lavach?

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

Some might argue that all that grant money had to go somewhere, and the NFSTC was just really good at networking.

But, as the recently-passed CJS Appropriations Bill pointed out, the money was supposed to go to crime labs to keep criminalists working to keep backlogs down. The money was not supposed to go to a special interest group of the crime lab managers to create a place for them to hoard money and power for themselves in a way that kept money out of their own crime labs.

And the NFSTC didn’t just become good at networking.

The NFSTC was allowed to put their own people in the National Institutes of Justice [NIJ] grant office where money was being sent back to the NFSTC. People who were still being paid by the NFSTC.

But the NFSTC wasn’t the only organization with friends at the NIJ, nor was it the only organization benefiting from those relationships.

How the Process is Supposed to Work

There are two basic types of awards made by the NIJ (and all government grant-making agencies, really): grants and cooperative agreements. The difference is, with a cooperative agreement, the NIJ expects to have more involvement with the awardee in the execution of the program that is funded by the award.

With both grants and cooperative agreements, the award can be funded through a competitive process or a non-competitive process.

In a competitive process there is an announcement or solicitation for applications, groups apply to have their projects funded, and awards are made.

When making competitive awards, the NIJ is supposed to follow this process:

1. NIJ program managers (grant managers) review applications for completeness and to make sure the application is relevant to the award solicitation.
2. A panel of peer reviewers reviews the applications. These peer reviewers are “subject matter experts” selected from a field relevant to the applications they will be reviewing. The peer reviewers are supposed to be screened to make sure that they don’t have conflicts of interest with the applicants (e.g., that they don’t work for one of the applicants). The panel reviews the applications and makes recommendations as to which applications should be funded
3. The Division Chief of the program office, the program manager of that award, and other NIJ personnel review the peer review recommendations, then make their own recommendations to the NIJ Director.
4. The NIJ Director makes the final award selections.

With the non-competitive process, there are a couple of ways awards are made.

Sometimes non-competitive awards are distributed through formula funding. With formula funding, a certain amount of funding is appropriated for a given purpose and for a specified group. The amount of each award is based on a formula that involves some statistic such as population size or number of juvenile arrests over a given period of time or any other statistic relevant to that award. Only organizations that are part of the specified group can apply, but they still have to submit applications in order to provide the necessary statistics that the formula award is based upon.

Then there are non-competitive awards that are simply given to certain organizations. These are awards that could be announced competitively, but, for some reason, the awarding agency (in this case, the NIJ) decides to just give the award to a single organization without competing the award. In these cases, there is supposed to be a very strong, well documented justification from the NIJ stating why the award is being given directly to one organization without competition. This is also known as sole-sourcing. This is how the NFSTC gets most, if not all, of its money.

The Old News

This stuff might be news to a lot of people, but it’s not to Congress. That’s why Congress is so angry with the NIJ, the NFSTC, and others who have been getting money that was supposed to be going to crime labs all these years.

There have been all sorts of congressionally-directed inspections and inquiries into the money-distribution practices of the NIJ aimed at putting a stop to this stuff. But the various stewards of funding at the NIJ have persisted in finding ways to make sure that the cash that was supposed to go to crime labs and case work just kept flowing to their friends.

One of the best examples of a congressionally-mandated inquiry into the NIJ’s money-funneling practices was an audit conducted by the DOJ Office of the Inspector General [OIG] that was published in September 2009 (Audit Report 09-38). That report was the result of the 2008 Appropriations Bill that, according to the report, directed the OIG to

(1) evaluate whether competitive NIJ grants and contracts awarded in fiscal years (FY) 2005 through 2007 were awarded based on fair and open processes;

(3) identify costs related to NIJ grants and contracts that were administrative in nature and explain how those costs were determined.

The OIG found that the NIJ was not handling its fiduciary duties appropriately, to say the least.

The Executive Summary of the report states:

Overall, for the grant awards we tested, deficiencies in administrative practices and controls did not allow [Office of Justice Programs] and the NIJ to demonstrate that grant award practices were based on fair and open competition. The NIJ did not maintain adequate pre-award records to document that its grant award process ensured a fair and open competition. In addition, we identified instances where NIJ staff involved in the grant award process had potential conflicts of interest with grantees receiving awards, but nevertheless participated in the approval process for the grants in question. We also found that the NIJ’s grant application review process, including initial program office reviews, peer reviews, documentation of program office recommendations, and documentation of NIJ Director selections, raised concerns about the fairness and openness of the competition process. In addition, we found that the NIJ did not have knowledge of grantees’ lobbying activities when making the award decisions because NIJ grantees and sub-grantees did not fully disclose lobbying activities that were potentially related to the NIJ grants or sub-grants.

For the non-competitive grants we tested, the NIJ usually did not document the basis for non-competitively awarding discretionary grant funds. We also found instances where the NIJ improperly directed a grantee to use a specific organization to perform sub-grantee work without documenting the basis for directing that the work be non-competitively awarded to the organization.

Basically, the OIG found that, when NIJ officials decide to send money to organizations in a way that appears to be outside the bounds of “fair and open”, there usually ends up being no record of how or why those decisions were made.

For competitive awards, the peer reviewers’ records disappeared. In particular, forms certifying that peer reviewers had no conflicts of interest could not be found. The peer reviewers’ comments documenting if they agreed or disagreed with the recorded recommendation of the panel disappeared, too.

For non-competitive, sole-sourced awards, the required documentation justifying those awards was often missing. When the OIG asked NIJ officials for the required documentation justifying the sole-sourced awards, NIJ officials told OIG auditors that there was none. The NIJ officials’ excuses were that the decisions were based on verbal conversations and weren’t documented.

“We believe the NIJ has created a strong appearance of a conflict of interest.”

The NFSTC is one of the organizations in the report that gets called out a lot because

• They receive a lot of unjustified, sole-sourced funding from the NIJ, and
• There are a lot of conflicts of interest between the NIJ officials who decide to send money to the NFSTC and the NFSTC.

In the detailed section of the report, the OIG cites several examples where NIJ employees approved grants where they had some relationship that caused a potential conflict of interest with the awardee. Usually, these conflicts were that the NIJ official was a former employee of the awardee or that their spouse worked for the awardee.

The report then lists six specific examples where NIJ officials approved grant awards to organizations where they had one of these conflicts of interest. In five of these examples, the grant award totals are $362K (University of Maryland), $365K (Montgomery County, MD Police Department), $503K (UC-San Diego), $1.9M (Urban Institute), and $3.7M (Lockheed Martin).

Then there is a sixth example (actually, the first in the set) in which an NIJ official has been approving grants to the NFSTC, even though his wife is an employee at NFSTC. In that example, the grant award total is $33.4 million. Even Lockheed Martin couldn’t pull that much.

But what the OIG drew special attention to was the practice of allowing the NFSTC to staff the NIJ’s Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences (AKA Mike Sheppo’s Office) through Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignments. This included a period when the NFSTC’s CEO, Kevin Lothridge, was appointed the acting chief of the Now-Mike Sheppo-run grant office at NIJ (the place where the NFSTC gets its money).

Yes. That’s right. Lothridge went from heading the NFSTC to head the grant office that the NFSTC gets money from, and then went back to heading the NFSTC. Through an Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment with the NFSTC. I just wonder who at the NFSTC made the choice to send Lothridge to NIJ.

The report notes that Lothridge’s duties included “managing all aspects of the Division’s strategic initiatives and programmatic operations, to include planning, implementing, and evaluating the development, application and dissemination of scientific and technological research in the field of criminal investigation and forensic sciences.” In other words, aligning the NIJ funding policies in forensic science to whatever he thought they should be.

Lothridge told the OIG that he was “‘walled off’ from activities involving the NFSTC.” But the OIG found that wasn’t true.

In the NIJ’s own computerized tracking system, the OIG found that Lothridge listed himself as the official point of contact for the NFSTC and as the NIJ point of contact on a grant application for the NFSTC. If Lothridge was this blatant in his involvement in funding NFSTC projects, how “walled off” was he from other funding and policy decisions involving the NFSTC?

The report also notes immediately after this revelation that

Subsequent to the beginning of [Lothridge's] NIJ assignment through July 2009, the NIJ awarded the NFSTC more than $45 million, much of which was awarded non-competitively and without the required sole-source justification, as previously discussed. By allowing [Lothridge] to manage the planning of scientific and technological research in the field of criminal investigation and forensic sciences, especially when such research involves the same type research activities for which the NFSTC receives grant funding from the NIJ, we believe the NIJ has created a strong appearance of a conflict of interest.

After Lothridge returned to NFSTC, the NFSTC sent Mark Nelson to the same NIJ grant office on another Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment. Nelson is still there.

Mark Nelson is the super-duper human being who wrote the evidence withholding policy at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation that sent innocent people to prison and that Nelson is now being sued for by Gregory Taylor. Mark Nelson is THE Senior Program Manager (read: Senior Grant Manager) in the now-Mike Sheppo-run grant office at the NIJ.

There are two truly remarkable things about Mark Nelson’s assignment from the NFSTC to NIJ:

1. How much Nelson was getting paid by the NFSTC to be at NIJ, and
2. How much money started flowing back to the NFSTC when Nelson went to NIJ.

In 2006, the NFSTC paid Mark Nelson $92,690. Nelson worked at the NFSTC from January to September 2006, and at NIJ from October to December 2006. The NFSTC received about $6 million in grants that year.

In 2007, the NFSTC paid Mark Nelson’s salary of $115,809 while he was working at NIJ. That’s about a 25% increase in pay. The NFSTC didn’t see too big of an increase in their grant income that first year: they brought in about $6.8 million.

In 2008, the NFSTC was still paying Mark Nelson’s salary while he was at NIJ. By this time, Nelson was up to $124,875 and was the NFSTC’s highest paid employee other than their executive officers (CEO, CFO, etc.). In 2008, the NFSTC’s grant income more than doubled from the previous year to $14 million.

The IG’s report states that they could find no evidence in the NIJ’s computerized grant management system (the only place they looked, evidently) where Nelson “participated in any activities involving the NFSTC” during the first year of his assignment there (October 1, 2006 to September 30, 2007).

This means that Nelson did not officially assign himself as the NIJ point of contact on any NFSTC grant or contract. It does not appear that the IG’s office interviewed any other personnel to see if Nelson has had attempted to influence the flow of money to the NFSTC. Also, September 30, 2007 was the end of the IG’s audit period for this report, just before the NFSTC’s grant income more than doubled.

The IG’s report did state

However, like for [Lothridge], we believe that allowing key officials for the NFSTC to be temporarily assigned to the NIJ to perform planning activities and grant oversight work for the same NIJ office that awards and oversees grants to the NFSTC creates a strong appearance of a conflict of interest.

The OIG report failed to take note of the “visiting scientist” from the NFSTC who was lodged at the NIJ at the time: Michael Sheppo.

Sheppo sat on the Board of Directors of the NFSTC from from 1996 to 2006 and was President of the Board from 1997 to 2005. Sheppo was formerly the chief of the Illinois State Crime Lab system and was found to have improperly funneled a sole-source contract to the NFSTC during his time there. Sheppo was also recommended for disciplinary action for being a whole lot less than honest with the Illinois Inspector General’s Office when they were looking into that situation.

Shortly after the OIG audit period, Sheppo became the Director of the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences. That’s the same office Kevin Lothridge headed up a few years earlier during his stint from the NFSTC to the NIJ, the same office where Mark Nelson works, and the same office that sends unjustified sole-sourced money to the NFSTC.

With all their ducks in a row at the NIJ, the amount of funding going to the NFSTC has increased significantly.

The money that has flowed to the NFSTC was supposed to go for other things, like to keep crime labs operating at capacity and keep backlogs down.

But it’s hard to legally pull money out of a nonprofit. And what good is all that money and power if you can’t touch it?

Well, it looks like those in charge of the NFSTC might think they have found a way to do just that: by incorporating a for-profit consulting company with an address a few doors up from their own office.

Sound familiar?

Remember, Kevin Lothridge and Mike Sheppo are both ASCLD past-presidents. And the NFSTC is a membership corporation founded by ASCLD. They may be a different side of the coin (and fighting with some of their fellow ASCLD-ians), but we’re still talking about the same group of people here.

But there’s still lots going on with the formation of that for-profit corporation, the involvement of lobbyists and other organizations cited in the investigations by the OIG, and the complete breakdown of oversight of the NFSTC by its member organizations that makes this an even bigger mess.

That and more in the next few days.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

I have also been hearing that retaliation has been stepped up among some of the more overly-sensitive lab directors and other managers in their efforts to drive the point home that nothing is going to change.

Congress begs to differ.

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” Margaret Thatcher

I’m a little bit in awe of the Senate CJS Appropriations Committee right now.

The Senate CJS Appropriations Committee decides where the money will go for the Commerce, Justice, and Science-related agencies, which includes:

• The entire Department of Justice (NIJ, FBI, DEA, ATF, Bureau of Prisons, etc.)
• The Department of Commerce which includes organizations with scientific components such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• Other Science-related Agencies such as the National Science Foundation and NASA
• Other Justice-related Agencies such as the State Justice Institute and Legal Services Corporation.
  

In other words… much of the money that eventually ends up at local police agencies and crime labs comes from the CJS Appropriations Committee in the form of the CJS Appropriations Bill.

Some people will argue that funding for police agencies and crime labs comes from states to local government, which is true to an extent. Some of these same people will also try to tell you that federal forensic reform legislation can’t be implemented because of “states rights.” They are wrong. Very, very wrong.

Most of the time, federal funds get passed through from the state level to the local level. So, a great deal of the funding that ends up at a local police agency or crime lab comes from the federal government, period. That means that any money that comes from the federal level can come with whatever conditions the feds decide to put on it.

What that means is that, if your agency receives any federal funding- whether it is directly from the federal government or from the feds through the state or in the form of training or equipment or whatever- the federal government is going to be able to have a whole lot of say in mandating accreditation of laboratories, certification of forensic scientists, and whatever else they decide to implement (e.g., Senator Patrick Leahy’s forensic science reform bill that has the ASCLDs running scared, the Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Reform Act, S. 132).

One example of how the federal government can very effectively implement changes via funding is when the feds decided it would be a good idea to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 in 1984. That, too, brought up a lot of “states rights” arguments.

So, the federal government told the states that their federal highway funds would be cut until they raised their legal drinking age to 21. Federal highway funds are one of the largest sources of income for states. And… voilá. The nation-wide drinking age very quickly became 21.

States can have all the rights they want, but if they want money from the federal government, it comes with conditions. Or, as one person put it… “that’s a pretty big hammer.”

But let’s get back to what the funding from the CJS Committee is supposed to do.

The intent of the CJS Committee is to see that as many deserving public agencies as possible get funded and to provide as much support as they can throughout the country with the funding that is available. This is so agencies don’t get spread too thin, resulting in enormous backlogs and reduction in critical resources, such as too few officers on the streets and too few scientists in the crime labs… which is the situation we have right now throughout the country.

The intent of the Committee is not to allow a few bureaucrats to pass out almost all the funding to a few of their friends or to hoard away government cash and then funnel it into a place where they can create cushy retirement jobs for themselves.

As I mentioned last time, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences (where all the grant money for crime labs comes from… AKA Mike Sheppo’s office) has, for a long time, apparently just been shuttling money around to their friends and favorite corporations. This has been primarily the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC) and a few others, as I discussed last time.

Some members of Congress have been trying to put a stop to this for a while, through some pointed language, audits, and other look-sees carried out by the Inspector General’s office. Sheppo’s office has been coming up with new and not-so-creative ways of sending money directly to their own friends. One of these is the Forensic Science Technology Center of Excellence [FSTCE] grant that should just be called the NFSTC grant, because that’s where the money goes.

It might be sort of forgivable if the NFSTC had lived up to its mission or claims to “do good things” or promote excellence in forensic science. Instead, according to observers on Capitol Hill, the focus has been on self-promotion and enrichment of those involved with the NFSTC- the purported “leaders” of forensic science.

I have also heard from others who have been sent to training at the NFSTC or who work in labs who have been subject to one of the various audits provided by the NFSTC that these services provided by the NFSTC are not what they should be or what they claim to be.

This was also reflected in the Illinois Inspector General’s investigation into Mike Sheppo’s funneling of a sole-source contract for training to the NFSTC. The Acting Training Coordinator of the DNA section and the Director of Training for the Illinois State Police found that the training the analysts received fell far short of what was expected. This could explain why the quotes the NFSTC puts up on its website proclaiming how great its training and services are come mainly from people who are higher-ups in its member organizations and employees of the public agencies where those people work.

“The Committee’s Patience Has Been Exhausted.”

But the Committee shall have no more.

You don’t have to be a dork like me to appreciate how angry the Senate CJS Appropriations Committee is with our Dear Leaders in the forensic science world.

There is no reading between the lines. There is no subtlety to the language or leaving any room for Michael Sheppo and Mark Nelson at the NIJ to decide where to send the money that is usually destined for the lab directors to squander or the NFSTC, which usually gorges itself on government funds meant for DNA projects that disappears into other areas of their balance sheet.

For those of you whose grant applications have not been funded and you have wondered what was wrong with your application…

For those of you who have felt that your proposals were solid and wondered what the hell else it is that NIJ could possibly be looking for…

It’s not you. It’s them. Congress is aware of that. You should be, too.

There have been numerous previous findings (1, 2) by the Inspector General and the Committee that the NIJ does not hand out funds equitably or in a way that is justifiable. Also, there tend to be conflicts of interest and tight relationships running rampant among the folks who decide where the money goes and where the money ends up going. These things have been uncovered, but, evidently, no Attorney General, past or present, or anyone else in the Department of Justice has done anything about it.

The NIJ is not supposed to be handing out funding in the way that it is. But, I am told, it continues to operate without oversight from within the DOJ and without consequences for its actions. And the rest of the country is left to suffer.

And the Committee makes quite clear how disgusted it is with the state of things right there in the CJS Appropriations Bill (Page 77):

Examination of DNA and Forensic Analysis Grants Uses.—The Committee remains concerned about NIJ’s use of DNA and forensic analysis funding. The primary intent of this funding is to reduce DNA backlogs and enhance the capacity of State and local crime labs to handle and process forensic evidence and ensure that future backlogs do not occur. Despite full DNA analysis funding in the last 3 years, a significant backlog of DNA samples and rape kits remains in public crime laboratories. This backlog imperils prosecutions or exonerations associated with sexual assaults, homicides and other heinous crimes.

In addition, the Committee directs the DOJ Inspector General to conduct an examination of all of the past 3 years of DNA funding awards to nongovernment entities that are not affiliated with a public DNA laboratory. Criteria should include the methodology and merits in creating the solicitations of these funds; if the results of the awards have a direct and measurable impact on reducing the DNA backlog; and how the obligations of the solicitations have been fulfilled.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a big ol’ slap in face to the NFSTC, ASCLD, the CFSO, and a few other associated organizations who have been benefiting from having their friends run amok in the NIJ.

AND… for those of you working in crime labs… you know how you look around at some of the stuff going on in some of the labs out there and you wonder why no one is paying attention to the blatantly wasteful, redundant, or otherwise irresponsible things going on? Well, obviously Congress is wondering the same thing, too.

Along with this very public rebuke and taking away the FSTCE funding from NFSTC, funding for the Coverdell grant program was cut in half while DNA funding was left relatively untouched. Coverdell has always been seen as a benefit to lab directors, so that’s another slap to them.

Why ASCLD, you say? Ever wonder why a lab director would choose to spend all the money from an earmark on sending DNA cases to a friendly (and flush with ca$h) outside vendor instead of keeping the analysts who could perform the analyses in-house from being furloughed or laid off?

Then there are some lab directors who know that allowing backlogs to build up will give them a reason to ask for more money and more people… which gives them more to manage and, therefore, the appearance of greater power.

But backlogs are all about how things are counted, which can vary depending on whether it is advantageous to have a big backlog or not. So… if you need a backlog to justify requesting an earmark or an appropriation, suddenly the number of items in a case may be counted differently than if a lab director needs to be credited with making a backlog disappear.

Also, the NIJ budget request (the money the NIJ requested for themselves) eliminated resources to assist with “critical forensics and DNA research and evaluation.” Not-so-very forward-thinking of them in this time of forensic reform talks. The CJS Committee responded by transferring $5 million from NIJ’s budget to NIST (out of the control of NIJ) so that NIST can keep developing standards and standard references for research.

This budget transfer out of DOJ/NIJ to NIST is significant because a lot of discussion about forensic science reform centers around the question of whether to put any new “forensic science office” in DOJ or in NIST. Remember, the NAS Report recommended very strongly against putting any new national forensic science agency in DOJ because DOJ has given such poor attention to its own forensic science endeavors. The poor decision-making at NIJ and the lack of oversight in general at DOJ seem to be driving that point home.

When the CJS Appropriations Bill came out of the Senate, Sheppo’s office at NIJ seemed to get the hint, but reacted in a typically non-subtle Sheppo-office way. Instead of awarding the FSTCE grant to the NFSTC, they sent all the money (~$6 million) to Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in Research Triangle Park, NC (home of ASCLD/LAB and the North Carolina SBI scandal… ring a bell?). They could have chosen make multiple awards to multiple deserving programs, but they didn’t.

RTI is a well-established scientific organization, but, with $759 million in contracts and grants in 2010 for their entire portfolio, the organization is hardly hurting for funds. The FSTCE grant program funds could have gone to support actual forensic science casework, which is the point the CJS Committee is trying to make. Also, considering the fact that NIJ has instructed grant recipients in the past to use favored corporations to carry out certain parts of grant award contracts, it will interesting to see what RTI’s contract looks like for this award.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) Program grant ($2.6 million), another award that always goes to NFSTC, went to University of North Texas Health Sciences Center. North Texas is home to Dr. Bruce Budowle, Dr. Arthur Eisenberg, and Dr. Jianye Ge who all just spoke out strongly against the FBI’s plan to add more core loci to the CODIS DNA Database.

Eisenberg is also an immediate past Board Member of Forensic Quality Services (FQS), the accreditation body which was founded by NFSTC and on whose Board Michael Sheppo formerly served as President. University of North Texas Health Sciences Center is one of the “colleges and universities” referred to by the Committee in the passage above that has been receiving DNA Backlog Reduction grant money that was intended for state and local crime labs.

The stance by Eisenberg, Budowle, and Ge against adding more core loci to CODIS has brought some attention to them in the press for speaking out against the FBI’s new plans. As Budowle put it when quoted in one BBC article on the subject, “The analysts [in my lab] come to me all the time with difficult cases. They say of the large-fragment ones: ‘Get rid of them because they don’t give results’.”

The “core loci” in CODIS are basically the number of locations on a persons DNA that are compared to evidence samples to determine if there is a match. It isn’t unexpected for a person to have a match on a few locations to other people, which is why multiple locations are used. The more “core loci” that are used, the less chance there is for a bad identification.

Adding more core loci to CODIS will decrease the likelihood of bad arrests and convictions based on incomplete DNA evidence. The BBC article about FBI’s decision to add more core loci to CODIS cited the case of a British man who spent 6 months in jail for a burglary based on a 6 loci DNA match to a sample collected at the scene before his defense counsel was able to get a retest of the DNA using 10 loci. The new test showed that the man’s DNA was not a match to the crime scene sample using the broader 10 loci test.

Sir Alec Jeffreys, who pioneered the use of DNA for forensic science, has advocated the use of a greater number of loci in forensic DNA profiling.

So, the current status is…

…Congress is actively expressing their despair and utter disgust with the NIJ, the NIJ’s practices of waste and abuse, and their history of “dispersing grants to agencies and entities of dubious merit.”

…Congress is actively seeking to end the NIJ’s pattern of waste, abuse, and frittering away of funds meant to serve real forensic science and public agency crime lab purposes.

…The Dear Leaders of forensic science- those who have represented forensic science so damn poorly for all these years and have been both responsible for and the beneficiaries of all this waste, abuse, and frittering away of funds- are actually indignant about all this. They can’t believe that Congress is taking away the money that they think is rightfully theirs to do with as they wish. And they have been raising hell since all this came down from the Committee.

Seriously.

They don’t want money to go to doing away with backlogs and supporting crime labs in ways that will keep criminalists from being furloughed or laid off, the way the CJS Committee has instructed. They want the money to keep supporting their own self-promotion and self-enriching causes that funnel money away from actual casework and leave actual forensic scientists in the lurch.

It is quite a statement about their true intentions when those who are representing themselves as the stewards of forensic science are clamoring against providing for forensic science in ways that will see casework completed, keep forensic scientists in their jobs, and maintain the public safety infrastructure in communities at the local level.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

OK… Let’s see if we can get some of this same-ness mapped out.

Let’s start with who’s who.

Yes, You Are All The Same.

All these people who are fighting each other? They all came from ASCLD. That’s the short story.

Here’s the longer version.

First, you have the ASCLDs. That’s the:

American Society of Crime Lab Directors (ASCLD) and their Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB). ASCLD is the little club that represents civil service middle-managers who “run” crime labs.

ASCLD/LAB is the little club that ASCLD formed to supposedly “accredit” their own labs as a sort of “stamp of approval” to say, “See! We’re doing good work! You can’t come in and see what we’re doing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no… but, just take our word for it. It’s great in here.”

In 1995, ASCLD founded the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC), they claim with a congressional earmark. I say “they claim” because I got the information from the NFSTC’s website, and I’m getting onto the side of the family that is given to great exaggeration, delusions of grandeur, and an uncomfortable relationship with the truth, even by ASCLD standards. The NFSTC was supposed to “focus on elevating the quality and consistency of forensic services in our nation’s crime laboratories.”

According to the NFSTC’s website, they have been diligently schlepping through the waste-high swamps of thankless public service hell to provide free services and training to crime labs across the nation all these years hence.

Actually, what’s really been happening is a few people have been making a lot- and I do mean a LOT- of money with really not much to show for it besides some travel trailers that are starting to stack up somewhere in Georgia. And some really good food at conferences in resort areas. All paid for with tax-payer dollars that were probably supposed to process rape kits. But I’ll come back to that…

In some murky year that isn’t quite clear on the NFSTC’s website… but they seem to imply is in the early-ish 2000’s… the NFSTC created Forensic Quality Services (FQS), or what I have referred to as “ASCLD/LAB-South”. This does not please them.

FQS does accreditations, too. Just like ASCLD/LAB-North.

But, actually, FQS was, according to an e-mail someone from there sent me… “doing ISO 17025 accreditations as soon after the ISO standard was passed in 1998.” So… I guess they’ve been around a while. Good for them.

So, the family tree looks like this:

Also, almost everyone associated with leadership, board positions, etc., etc., etc. with all of these organizations is either an ASCLD past-president, ASCLD or ASCLD/LAB board member or former board member, or married to someone who has held one of those positions. So, yes. You are all the same.

A Word on Accreditation

Let me just explain what accreditation is right here. Accreditation exists in almost every field, in almost every industry. Medicine, oil, chemicals, cars… whatever it is, you can accredit it. The idea of accreditation is that you develop a good process, you validate that process, you show that it works and that it is reliable, and then you write it down in a manual.

That way, anybody you hire or anybody who walks into your factory or your lab can pick up that manual and know what it is you’re supposed to be doing. Also, if you are accredited to a certain standard, it means that whoever uses your products or services can be guaranteed that you are performing up to the same standard every time because everybody knows what they are supposed to be doing.

For example, if you’re buying tires, you want to buy tires from a factory that makes tires the same damn way every time, not from some idiot who doesn’t want to be “constrained” by “rules” or “processes.” And you want Mr. Tire Man to allow you to check out his factory and supplies to make sure he’s always manufacturing quality new tires and not just putting out retreads from the junk yard. You also don’t want to buy tires from someone who tries to convince you that his idea of “round” is so special and so secret that he just can’t explain it to you because you wouldn’t possibly understand.

Putting people in jail is no different. If anything, it’s more important to make sure crime labs are accredited. And if someone can’t or won’t explain to you how they do what they do, but they want to put people in prison and on death row with it, that’s pretty messed up and you should not trust them.

However, accreditation is only as good as the process and only as good as the standard. Even with ISO accreditation, ASCLD/LAB and FQS (and A2LA) set their own “supplemental standards.” To put it in slightly simplified terms… ISO 17025 is the general standard for scientific testing and calibration labs; the supplemental standards are the specifics for forensic testing and calibration labs. So, even with ISO… there’s room for an accreditation body (ASCLD/LAB, FQS, and A2LA) to make the standard mean as much or as little as they want.

ASCLD/LAB allows its “Delegate Assembly” to set its accreditation standards. That’s not good. That means that the labs that are being accredited set the standards by which they are being judged. And they haven’t set the bar very high.

ASCLD/LAB is correct, for example, when they defend the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NC SBI) as having been “in compliance with accreditation standards” when they withheld exculpatory evidence resulting in the conviction of innocent people. The NC SBI was in compliance with the ASCLD/LAB accreditation standards that allowed them to write evidence withholding policies into their procedures manual. Right up until 2010.

Also, ASCLD/LAB recently pulled together a few people for quick-and-dirty round tables to rubber stamp some “uncertainty measurements” in a week or less. So that should make everybody feel great about the scienterrificalibility of their stuff.

FQS has vague references to “deriving” their supplemental standards from the guidance documents of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), which is a good thing to reference. But no further indication on what that means or who was involved in deriving or contributing beyond that. Don’t know if it was the few forensic labs that 13-year-old FQS counts as clients or if the NFSTC used some of the tax-payer money it funnels to its various self-serving functions or what. I asked FQS for an answer on this and got a very vague non-answer that just told me what the documents were, not who contributed to them.

Also, you have to buy ASCLD/LAB’s documents if you want to see them. FQS implies the same. A2LA’s are on their website for everyone to see. Another reason I like A2LA. Also, A2LA invited me to sit in for a day on one of their Forensic Examination Advisory Committee meetings. It was very impressive. To clarify, I was not working for A2LA, I was only there as an observer.

Now, back to how all these people who came from the same place think they’re different…

The CFSO and The NFSTC

At some point, it looked as though someone in the CFSO decided that they needed to destroy the NFSTC, soap opera-style.

The CFSO is the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations, which is a lobbying group. Until recently, the CFSO consisted of seven organizations, including FQS. Someone from FQS contacted me very recently claiming that FQS pulled out of the CFSO “several months ago” because it “had taken a direction that is only beneficial to ASCLD-LAB and not the rest of the forensic community.”

I don’t know how they count up to “several” at FQS, but it can’t have been that long ago. They were still in as of the end of March of this year and the CFSO’s website was just updated. And the last e-mail I got from someone at FQS (before a few days ago) was August 30, which was full of complaining about ASCLD/LAB and mum on the issue of pulling out of the CFSO.

This is where I usually list out the organizations that make up the CFSO. But what I’d like to do first is explain the corporate structure of the NFSTC.

The NFSTC was founded by ASCLD, but incorporated in Florida as a nonprofit membership corporation. What that means is, throughout the years, the membership corporation has become made up of various member organizations who each send representatives to sit on the board of directors, kind of like the CFSO.

So…

The CFSO members (until yesterday or whenever) are/were:

• ASCLD
• ASCLD/LAB
• American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• Society of Forensic Toxicology (SOFT)/American Board of Forensic Toxicology (ABFT)
• FQS

The NFSTC members are (keeping in mind that FQS was housed at NFSTC until very recently):

• ASCLD
• American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)
• American Board of Criminalists (ABC)
• Association of Forensic Quality Assurance Managers (AFQAM)
• Florida International University
• University of South Florida
• University of Central Florida
• Southeastern Public Safety Institute of St. Petersburg College

ASCLD/LAB used to be listed as a member of the corporation, as did the DEA, but they aren’t any more.

If you’d like a side-by-side comparison on that…

So, yes… you are all the same.

You are even responsible for the same messes that you have created for yourselves, whether you think so or not. Let’s take a look at that, shall we?

The Stupid, Stupid Origins

When I was looking through all of this, it became pretty apparent that these organizations- the CFSO, NFSTC, and all their related organizations- are so organizationally and legally intertwined that there was simply no way that they didn’t know what was going on with the other.

But I’m always getting “leads” and “information” from some source or another that supposedly indicates that they are the bitterest of enemies. The problem with that is… they are all legally bound to the mistakes of each other, for the most part. And the mistakes have been building up rather rapidly lately in ways that have some pretty dire legal consequences for the group.

Which is why, for a little while, I thought that there was the distinct possibility that this whole “war” between these organizations was just a show they were putting on for certain people who have a distinct disdain for some of these organizations in order to try to divert attention away from what was really going on with them.

Because that would be a clever thing to do. Now, however, I’m back to thinking that they are just that stupid.

Going back to December 2007, Crime Lab Report (yes, those geniuses. The ones who brought you that amazing defense of Jill Spriggs et al. regarding withholding evidence and putting innocent people in prison), published a rant on NFSTC starting their own accreditation arm, FQS. In their typical “how dare you do this to a lab director” way, Crime Lab Report lays out their characteristically shrill case for why accreditation of forensic labs is different and can’t possibly be comprehended by anyone but them.

They denigrate ISO 17025 accreditation for being “relatively new” and “not specific to forensic science” because “it is for evaluating the operations of all kinds of testing and calibration laboratories throughout the world.” Yes. What a horror, to be thought of on the same level as other kinds of science. ASCLD/LAB was offering ISO accreditation at the time, by the way.

Like most with a dictatorial bent, Crime Lab Report also argues against free market competition for accreditation bodies because, unlike other free markets, it will drive down standards, raise costs, and lower quality. Because fair and open competition is not really what it seems, our friends at Crime Lab Report tell us. It seems counterintuitive, but we’re just too stupid to understand, so just shut up and trust them. Also, accreditation decisions should not be left up to some “procurement official”, because government officials are… bad? Like lab directors? Local government middle-management think at its best.

Ah, Crime Lab Report. The gift that keeps on giving.

As always, the message is hammered home that forensic science belongs to lab managers and absolutely no one else… not forensic scientists or even the general public that forensic science is supposed to serve; only to those with the… umm… hell, let’s call it a skill… to pass a civil service exam and get to middle management in local government.

But, mostly, the December 2007 Crime Lab Report sets out to show what slimy bastards those people down at NFSTC and FQS are, because they created a competitor to ASCLD/LAB. It lays out the non-compete clause that Bill Tilstone and Jo Ann Given signed and then broke and talks of how, “astonishingly”, NFSTC “committed itself to both supporting and competing against ASCLD/LAB.”

Crime Lab Report is what happens when ASCLD finds itself without an official outlet for retaliation.

The December 2007 Crime Lab Report also puts down the scopes offered by FQS, arguing that offering accreditation on a unit-by-unit basis instead of for a full laboratory is irresponsible. Of course, ASCLD/LAB was doing the same thing, allowing labs to pick and choose which units they accredited. This was put on grand display by the incident with the New York State Trace Unit and Gary Veeder just a few months later. ASCLD/LAB will also accredit almost any scope you can imagine.

Over the past couple of years, with the NAS Report, the threat of forensic reform legislation, and a few other developments, the ASCLD folks and the NFSTC folks have stepped up their game to get themselves positioned to receive some real money and power. To do this, they appear to have a few key players in place to help them.

The Mascots

There are some people who have taken “sides” in this whole thing. For example, Ken Melson, former Director of the ATF and seemingly-eternal ASCLD/LAB board member, is a loyal ASCLD person. Michael Sheppo, current Director of the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences at the National Institutes of Justice (NIJ)- where all the grant money comes from- is very definitely an NFSTC person.

For those of you who have been under a rock, Ken Melson is the former Director of the ATF and All-Purpose Bureaucrat who was oh-so-aware that his agency was allowing guns to “walk” to Mexico during the fatally reckless Operation Fast & Furious. Yes, there are surely others who share responsibility, but Melson did his part and did it apparently without a conscience. But, as he’s shown before, other people’s lives and mortality aren’t really his concern. Must be a lawyer thing.

During Operation Fast & Furious, good ATF agents were ordered to stand down and just watch as known straw buyers (people who can purchase guns legally in the US) bought AK-47-type rifles and 50-caliber BMG rifles and then transferred them to suppliers of Mexican drug cartels. There was no attempt to render these firearms inoperable or fit them with tracking devices. They just let them go.

The ATF agents eventually blew the whistle on the whole thing because, as they predicted, innocent people were being killed with these guns, including U.S. law enforcement. Again, judging by his self-promotional tour, not really something that Ken Melson appeared to be concerned about. According to e-mails sent just after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry who was killed with guns smuggled during Operation Fast & Furious, Melson was, in the traditional ASCLD fashion, not concerned with doing the right thing. He was just concerned with retaliating against the ATF agents who reported the flaws in Operation Fast & Furious. Awesome priorities, Ken.

While at ATF, Ken Melson seemed to be mostly concerned with his White House Subcommittee on Forensic Science, which he stocked with a lot of people who have histories similar to his: ASCLD past-presidents and board members, ASCLD/LAB board members, past and present, and those who have demonstrated that they are like-minded with traditional ASCLD policies. These include policies of cover and concealment of major problems in the laboratory (W. Mark Dale, 1, 2), retaliation against those who would want better for their labs (everyone associated with the DOD labs, 1, 2), and “forensic scientists” who have screwed up so bad (and denied it) that they were probably just glad to be included, much less “asked” for their “opinions” (Terry Green, Michael Wieners, 1).

The whole point of this seems to be to put ASCLD and friends in control of the forensic science system of the United States. Because that has worked oh-so-well for the last few decades that Congress is now calling for mandatory forensic science reform. Message obviously not received.

Michael Sheppo, on the other hand, is so, so, so much different than Ken Melson and those other damn ASCLD people. Or so I’m told. Ummmm… right.

Michael Sheppo is a past-president of ASCLD, former head honcho at Illinois State Police crime lab, member of the Board of Directors of the NFSTC from 1996 to 2006 (president from 1997 to 2005), founder and former president of FQS, and (as I said above) current Director of the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences (AKA, Head Money-Shoveler) at the NIJ.

Sheppo has also shown more than a little talent for retaliation, deception of superiors and other authorities, covering up problems where he works, and attempting to funnel money and power to his friends. Such a breath of the exact same air as we were just talking about.

As I’ve discussed here before, Sheppo very carefully misled the Inspector General’s office of Illinois to get them to approve his involvement with the NFSTC so he could subsequently sole-source training projects to them. An Illinois State Inspector General’s investigation found that FQS actually carried out some if not all of the training.

Not only that, but NFSTC provided training that cost much, much more than in-house training would have ($750,000 estimated by Sheppo to send the analysts to NFSTC versus $228,315 for in-house training). And the training was deemed to fall far short of the standards of the Illinois State Police by the Acting Training Coordinator of the DNA section and the Director of Training for the Illinois State Police.

Also, the NFSTC charged the Illinois State Police $81,200 for the use of facilities, even though it was specifically stated during an NFSTC board meeting regarding the Illinois State Police training contract that “the NIJ funded facility and equipment will be used free of charge.” AND… Illinois State Police paid NFSTC for the entire contract up front- $755,398- even though they only ended up owing $612,200. NFSTC gave Illinois State Police a “credit” back. Like “NFSTC Bucks”, to be used on other NFSTC products and services. They ain’t gonna give the money back. That is definitely not how it works.

The entire reason for the above mentioned investigation was that Sheppo retaliated against two employees who complained about the NFSTC sole-source contract, resulting in their 30-day suspensions, without pay. The investigation into Sheppo’s misconduct ordered that the employees be reimbursed for that loss in pay.

The investigation also resulted in Michael Sheppo lying, repeatedly, to the Inspector General’s office. The investigation recommended that Sheppo be disciplined for his failure to cooperate with the investigation. This discipline was apparently never carried out before Sheppo left to go work at NFSTC in the capacity of Special Envoy to NIJ Office of Sending Money to NFSTC as Sole-Source Funding (or something like that).

Mike Sheppo left his post on the Board of Directors of NFSTC in 2006, just before heading over to NIJ. Wouldn’t want the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Just before Sheppo took the helm of the forensic science grant office at NIJ, the office was being directed by Kevin Lothridge, the current CEO of NFSTC. Kevin Lothridge is another past-president of ASCLD. Lothridge went to NIJ from NFSTC and returned to NFSTC from NIJ. But he sent Sheppo and Mark Nelson to keep the NIJ forensic science grant office running smoothly. Mark Nelson is the Senior Program Manager (read: Senior Grant Manager) for Sheppo’s office. And he went to that office on yet another “Interpersonnel Loan” from NFSTC. Yeah.

Mark Nelson is also the guy who wrote the evidence withholding policy for the DNA unit at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation that sent Gregory Taylor to prison for 17 years for a murder he didn’t commit. And now Nelson’s in charge of the DNA funding for the country. Because NFSTC put him there and paid his salary from 2006 until at least 2008. Prior to that Nelson was in charge of recruiting and training auditors for NFSTC’s DNA audit program and reviewing the work of the NFSTC’s DNA audit team. Because he’s the guy you want doing that.

A 2009 DOJ Inspector General’s report found that Kevin Lothridge wasn’t completely honest with them about whether or not he was involved with NFSTC’s grant funding when he was running the NIJ forensic grant office. Wish I could say I was surprised.

Some Stuff About NFSTC

I started talking to Kevin Lothridge about NFSTC over a year ago. My impression of him is that every time I talk to him he sounds like I just caught him burying a body and he thinks I can’t see the shovel behind his back.

At one point in August of last year, Lothridge asked me to be a lobbyist/spy for NFSTC. The lobbyist part was clear: speak for them on Capitol Hill. The spy part was to show up at meetings like the ASCLD Symposium and start trouble. One of the problems with this is that, as a 501(c)3 organization, the NFSTC can’t have a lobbyist. This hasn’t stopped them from hiring lobbying firms in the past, but that’s something I’ll get to later.

So, I sent Lothridge a proposal, with two quotes, with and without expenses, for what he was asking for, to see what he would do. His immediate response was that NFSTC didn’t want to retain me right now because they “like to stay above the fray.” From what I can tell, NFSTC is the fray.

I continued watching Lothridge, talking to him occasionally, and doing research. Then I wrote the piece on this website regarding the “competitive advantage” that ASCLD Consulting (a for-profit) was whining about that the NFSTC (a supposed nonprofit) had from offering free DNA audits versus the fee-for-service audits that the now-defunct ASCLD Consulting was offering. I concluded that, when it comes to free vs. fee-based, that’s probably the source of the competitive advantage and that ASCLD Consulting needed to stop whining. And stop filing official documents with fake business addresses.

A few days later, NFSTC posted an announcement on their website that they had opened a new for-profit business, the Forensic Innovation Center. This was basically an identical move to that tried by ASCLD.

I looked at the companies involved in the Forensic Innovation Center (FIC), and whaddya know, one of them is ICx Technologies. ICx is the highest paying client of the CFSO’s lobbyist, Beth Lavach. Pays her 4 or 5 times what the CFSO, mortal enemy of NFSTC, is paying.

I asked Kevin Lothridge about FIC and about the connection to Lavach. He plead ignorance. ICx was also in the midst of being bought out by FLIR Systems, Inc, a very large company. I asked if Lavach was going to be replaced or if Lothridge felt that this was a conflict of interest since I had heard so much from him about how the CFSO was out to get him. I got a lot of mumblings in the general direction of “I don’t know.”

I decided to keep watching and see what the merger and the next quarter’s lobbying disclosure forms brought.

Lavach has never been replaced by ICx. In fact, Lavach is now the only lobbyist for ICx Technologies (they had a couple of other lobbyists they paid much smaller sums in previous years). ICx has been Lavach’s top paying client for the past 5 years. In February 2011, FIC changed the attribution of ICx as a partner company on their website to ICx’s parent company, FLIR. That was not to throw me off; Lothridge knows I was aware of all those relationships.

As I reported last time, the CFSO is a mess, FQS has defected, and, judging by the presentation given by Beth Lavach at the International Association for Identification (IAI) a couple of months ago, it does not appear that the CFSO has Beth Lavach’s full attention. I just wonder if the CFSO knows that their lobbyist’s biggest paycheck comes from a partner company for the NFSTC’s new for-profit venture. Seems like they would want to know that.

But here’s where the problem with FIC becomes a legal one: a nonprofit can’t found a for-profit that is operating in direct conflict with the nonprofit. Duty of care, right of first refusal, conflict of interest, etc., etc. And all those members of the nonprofit and board members who, no doubt, had to have signed off on the formation of FIC? Yep, you’re liable. Officers of the corporation, too. Can’t do that, fellas. HUGE no-no with the IRS. And with anyone who feels like suing you for violating your duty of care as board members and officers of the corporation.

But there’s all kinds of screwy things that NFSTC has done with their finances that are soooo far from kosher (with lots of help from NIJ, of course), which I’ll get to next time (with possibly a short post in between). And how there are all kinds of people floating in between the two camps (ASCLD/CFSO and NFSTC) and who knows what those relationships are about.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

Things aren’t going so well for the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations (CFSO), the lobbying group that represents the ASCLDs and their not-so-friendly friends.

In case you have forgotten, the CFSO consists of:

• American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD)
• American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB)
• Forensic Quality Services (FQS)
• American Association of Forensic Sciences (AAFS)
• International Association for Identification (IAI)
• Society of Forensic Toxicology (SOFT)
• American Board of Forensic Toxicology (ABFT)

Uneasy Alliances

The CFSO started as a lobbying group founded about 11 or 12 years ago to further the needs of its member organizations and to get some funding for things like the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants. It quickly devolved into a self-important freak show for a few people who watch too much “CSI” and who should know better. What it has turned into is a promotional machine for the ASCLDs (ASCLD and ASCLD/LAB).

It is not clear whether the rifts in the CFSO existed before the organization became so ASCLD-centric or if the move toward shameless, single-minded promotion of the ASCLDs was what caused the problems, but the damage is undeniable now.

And now things in the CFSO aren’t so friendly anymore.

First, (actually, not the first sign of trouble in paradise, but first for this list) there was the statement from AAFS Past-president Tom Bohan published in the Raleigh News & Observer last fall

Tom Bohan, immediate past-president and one of the most respected figures in the AAFS, has publicly advocated pulling the AAFS out of the CFSO because the CFSO has been “captured by ASCLD and run for its benefit.”

And now I hear that, for the second year in a row, FQS has filed a complaint against ASCLD/LAB with either the InterAmerican Accreditation Cooperation (IAAC) or the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) or both.

That means that FQS is essentially trying to get ASCLD/LAB’s international accreditation recognition revoked. If that happens, all the crime labs with ASCLD/LAB accreditation would be screwed, even the ones with ISO accreditation. FQS probably thinks that this would make them the default accreditation body for U.S. crime labs, even though there is another option, the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), which is a real accreditation body that accredits all kinds of labs, not just crime labs, and doesn’t do this kind of crap.

Don’t get me wrong, ASCLD/LAB is doing plenty of things that need to be checked out and probably should have their recognition pulled. Between their pride in their bad conviction rate, the collection of unethical horrors that is their Board of Directors, the questionable scopes they offer some of their labs, the fact that they don’t even have subject matter experts auditing lab units during their accreditation inspections, and the other scary, unscientific, and thuggish crap they pull, they really shouldn’t be in business.

But the fact that the full-frontal assault is coming from FQS- an organization that was also founded by some ASCLD past-presidents and is operating on the same ethical plane- has gotta hurt.

Let me say here, since I get so many e-mails about it…

FQS and ASCLD/LAB are definitely on opposite sides of their little battle with each other. The people who side with either of them, at any given time, are not friends. For example, Ken Melson is an ASCLD/LAB person. Michael Sheppo is an FQS person. Each is very definitely working to promote the interests of their own organization. They are not on the same side.

However, all these organizations were started by ASCLD presidents or past-presidents and are still associated with those people, which is why I have mentioned that. Just because I mention these people in the same posts or in the same sentence does not mean that they are on the same side. It is very important to them (and others) that everyone knows that they are not on the same side, even though they all sprang from the same puddle of gooey nonexpertness.

My very next post will describe all this, in detail. Relax.

But, for now, these guys are all paying the same lobbyist to promote their mutual interests, of which they have perhaps one: don’t let anyone else make decisions for us.

In ASCLD’s newsletter earlier this year, their President Greg Matheson stated about the Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Reform Act (CJFSRA, S. 132),

Many people ask why a Bill of this type is necessary and why we should participate in something for which many would rather see buried. Unfortunately, we do not have direct influence on what a Senator or a Member of the House chooses or chooses not to introduce. We can bury our heads in the sand and let other people have all the control over our profession or we can become involved and try to influence the Bills’ directions.

This, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this… and they are still wondering why legislation is necessary. Nice. So that’s what the members of the CFSO are working on.

You’re Paying Beth Lavach How Much For This?

Speaking of their substandard lobbyist…

Beth Lavach is the CFSO’s lobbyist. She also lobbies for a few other companies who pay her more money than the CFSO. Why I will never, ever know.

Here’s what tens of thousands of dollars will buy you from Beth Lavach.

The Shelby Letters

Remember those awful letters that went out from Senator Richard Shelby’s (R-Alabama) office last year alleging indirectly that ASCLD/LAB was at a competitive disadvantage to the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC) because FBI employees were allowed to work for the NFSTC?

These were the letters that misstated the file numbers of Inspector General’s Audits, referring instead to completely non-existent reports. And mischaracterized the NFSTC, an alleged nonprofit, as “DNA lobbyists”. (By the way… the NFSTC is to FQS what ASCLD is to ASCLD/LAB. And ASCLD is involved in all the organizations. That will get addressed next time, too.)

These same letters from Senator Shelby’s office ended up triggering an Inspector General’s investigation into the relationship between the FBI and the NFSTC. The investigation discovered that the NFSTC had FBI employees working for them, which they decided was OK. But a couple of FBI employees were working for the NFSTC who shouldn’t be, so they were notified and they stopped.

The investigation also found that the NFSTC did not have a competitive advantage because ASCLD/LAB also had a whole bunch of FBI employees working for them for free… during work hours.

Stellar planning, Lavach. I don’t know what’s more impressive… the typos or the misrepresentations of fact leading a senior senator to send letters to the Director of the FBI triggering an Inspector General’s investigation with an outcome embarrassing to both the senator and your client.

There is plenty for the IG’s office to look at on all sides of that whole ASCLD/LAB-NFSTC-FQS-NIJ-FBI alphabet soup relationship. Wonder why Lavach couldn’t get it right when she was pointing them that way. Huh. We’ll have to look at that next time, too.

Whatever This Is Supposed To Be

I wasn’t able to go to the International Association for Identification (IAI) meeting a few weeks ago, but I am sure sorry I missed it now.

The IAI recently posted Beth Lavach’s presentation on their website. At the very top of the Current Events page. For all the world to see. Here it is in case they take it down.

Admittedly, there are not a lot of people who can put together PowerPoint presentations that look… well, put together. But, good lord, Lavach.

First, in case you were in doubt of what the CFSO was about, there’s this slide (slide 18)

So, the CFSO is primarily concerned with making sure that “providers”, defined as “lab(s)” and their supposed leaders (the ASCLDs) get heard. Not forensic scientists. Lab directors.

As one lab director said when I visited his crime lab in the last few months (who I won’t identify here because of the backlash I am sure he would get from the ASCLDs), it is his forensic scientists that the Senate and the House need to be listening to, not the lab directors.

Another thing that should catch your eye is that they are still trying to get “funding that is needed for capacity building.” A couple of slides later Beth Lavach implores the audience to call your Member of Congress and ask for the Coverdell grant to be funded. This is a goal that the CFSO has failed to realize for more than a decade.

What many in the forensic science community may not realize is that the Coverdell grant has never been fully funded. Beth Lavach and the CFSO have supposedly been working on this for at least a decade. For FY 2012, the Coverdell grant is funded at half the level it was for 2011 while most other things in the same part of that appropriations bill that was just released, including DNA grants, remain relatively untouched. There are other interesting things in the appropriations bill aimed at all these lovely people and their past idiocy, but we’ll talk about that next time.

What the CFSO did work very hard to get funded- and succeeded- was the NAS Report. That was supposed to be a study that would give lab directors lots and lots of money to do with as they wished… woops. Even with good ol’ Pete Marone (ASCLD/LAB’s CFSO representative) and Jay Siegel (you really must experience the blunt force of him in person) on the Committee, they didn’t manage it.

If you look at the meetings of the National Research Council (NRC), the Committee that wrote the report, you’ll see that it looks very much like the members of the CFSO got to put as many of their friends in front of the NRC as they could. See how many forensic scientists- real forensic scientists, people you have actually seen lay hands on case work- you can count on that list.

What those people managed to convince the NRC of was that the field of forensic science and, therefore, the general public of the United States are both in serious trouble and need help immediately, in the form of oversight, formal education, and collaborative research.

But let’s get back to Beth Lavach’s awesome PowerPoint.

For someone who has been repping accreditation organizations for more than 10 years, you would think she would know how to spell it by now…

But, then again, Lavach can’t quite get her titles straight, either (these slides are sequential in the presentation).

Then there are gems like this that you’re expected to read.

And, of course, Lavach has to misstate what Senator Patrick Leahy’s bill actually says, as did Kenneth Melson in his presentation at the meeting of another CFSO member organization, the AAFS.

Nowhere in her presentation does Lavach correct this misleading statement.

This is something that the ASCLDs and others in the CFSO seem to be saying to try to scare everybody to death about the bill: the Director (some bureaucrat!) or the Forensic Science Board (a bunch of defense lawyers and non-scientists we don’t like!) will decide what the certification standards will be for forensic scientists if this bill gets passed. This is not the first (or second, or third, or…) time I’ve heard this from these people. So I guess this is their latest strategy to get real forensic scientists on board with their “let’s defeat the Leahy bill” movement.

Once again, here is the actual basic structure that will be set up by the bill:

And here is what the bill actually says about setting certification standards for forensic scientists:

SEC. 303. STANDARDS FOR CERTIFICATION.

(1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 2 years after the date on which all members of a Committee have been appointed, the Committee shall make recommendations to the Board relating to standards for the certification of relevant personnel in each forensic science discipline addressed by the Committee.

But what about who’s on those Committees?

Committees are going to be made up of scientists and only scientists. No defense attorneys, prosecutors, or CFSO board members for that matter… which is what has got their panties in a bunch.

What the bill actually says regarding the membership of the Committees- in total- is:

MEMBERSHIP.—

(C) have a membership that represents a variety of scientific disciplines, including the forensic sciences.

The next subsection of the bill does go on to state that “scientist” includes “(A) a statistician with a scientific background; and (B) a physician with expertise in forensic sciences.” But does not require that those people be on each Committee. I hope that doesn’t bother anyone.

Also, lest anyone be under the impression that the recommendations of the Committees are going to be modified once they start their way up the chain…

Here is what the bill actually says about the fact that no one can make any modifications to the recommendations of the Committees.

(B) PROHIBITION OF MODIFICATION OF DECISIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.—Any recommendations of a Committee and any recommended standards, protocols, or other materials developed by a Committee may be approved or disapproved by the Board, but may not be modified by the Board.

Also, if there is nothing coming out of a Committee (e.g., if the Board keeps rejecting whatever they send up), there is a provision in the bill to look into why that is, too.

And… because I know Ken Melson implied in his presentation that existing certification programs would not be considered, so that is probably still being said… that is not true, either.

(2) REQUIREMENTS.—In developing recommended standards under paragraph (1), a Committee shall—

(B) consider relevant certification standards and best practices developed by qualified professional or scientific organizations;

The writers of this bill have worked very hard to be inclusive of REAL forensic scientists and their professional organizations and certification programs. That is obvious in the language of the bill.

You should be asking yourself what, exactly, the CFSO is so scared of, since this bill actually does include real forensic scientists and their real professional organizations in the decision-making processes. And why the CFSO is lying to you about it.

Speaking of which… did the CFSO- your lab directors and all those people who were trotting in front of the NRC when the NAS Report was being written- did they let you know when that was happening? Did they ask for your input and help then? Did they want you telling the NRC what you do or what help you need to do your job? Some members of the CFSO went in front of the NRC twice to present on different issues.

But they sure as hell want your help defeating a bill that wants to include you and your professional organizations in the decision making now.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

When our country started out, the people who thought up our first laws had the resolve and moral fortitude to fight a war from their own homes against the world super-power of their time- and they won- because they believed in the ideas of self-governance and personal liberty that strongly.

These real patriots- not smiling shiny guys with good hair and flag lapel pins, but actual patriots who would do things like fight bad guys so their kids didn’t have to and run into burning buildings for each other- also apparently believed that their future generations would share their convictions, grit, and perhaps a little bit of their common sense. As such, they made our first few laws very simple and, therefore, sweeping in scope…

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (First Amendment)

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. (Eighth Amendment)

Today, we fight like hell every day over what these laws mean… these basic rights… more than two hundred years later. And each side of the debate, in its quest to expand or restrict the meaning of these few, simple words, often claims its argument is based in good common sense.

The way laws are made today, most politicians are trying to limit what they dole out to their rivals’ constituents while keeping as much as they can for their own. Sorry, folks, that’s just the way it is.

Because all most politicians in Congress care about is the next election. Because that is how our system is set up. In order for them to make anything meaningful happen, they need to be able to stay in office for long enough to gain seniority with the other politicians around them. For that to happen, they need to get re-elected. To get re-elected, they need to keep their party happy (not the people who elected them, the people who are their superiors in Congress) so that those people will make sure to protect them during their re-election. Then, after a while, they can start bringing home the bacon and screwing over other people’s districts.

Such is the American Way. You people who voted out your incumbents (particularly Republican incumbents) for Tea Partiers, who evidently don’t believe in bringing home the bacon, are idiots. You’re getting’ nothin’ for Christmas. Other districts will be happy to let you have all the spending cuts you want.

But let’s get back to the subject at hand…

The Zadroga Law cancer problem can be viewed as being screwed up two ways: politically and bureaucratically. There’s really only one fix for it, though.

The Political Part

Politicians have long used First Responders- police, fire, and rescue personnel- as easy political props. First Responders pull on everyone’s heartstrings and no one can deny that they are patriots and heroes, blah, blah, blah.

And then politicians don’t do a damn thing for you. Nothing.

I don’t care what politicians tell you. I don’t care what your unions tell you. I don’t care how many newsletters, e-mails, and pictures someone sends you telling you how they were invited to the White House, summoned to some Senator’s office, included on important meetings, whatever… no one in Washington- no one- gives a shit about any of you. Except maybe Senator Jim Webb (D-VA). I’ll give him that. But he’s not running for re-election, which is a shame.

And would you like to know why none of these fine individuals gives a rat’s ass about you people who give your lives for the rest of us, day in and day out?

Because they already know how you’re going to vote. And you’re going to vote Republican.

I’m not here to tell you not to vote Republican. I don’t really care. It’s just a fact of life that most people in the First Responder category are going to vote Republican by a very, very wide margin.

Because everyone already knows how you are going to vote, no one in Washington- Democrat or Republican- has to pay attention to anything you have to say. Therefore, the money that you spend on lobbyists and union offices in Washington is a huge waste of resources that could be going to something else, like finding ways to shore up your benefits and pensions at home.

Washington knows what’s important to you. You guys (and gals) are not subtle in your ways. They just don’t care. Telling them year after year what you want does not require an office with a view of the Capitol or the Washington Monument. What it does require is a way to make them care about it.

To illustrate just how very, very little your Congress cares about you because of the fact that they already know how you are going to vote, I give you… the Zadroga Bill.

The Zadroga Bill was introduced and passed in the House, then went over to the Senate. It was passed by a voice vote in the Senate, which means that the support was so overwhelming that they don’t even have to really take a vote. Joe Biden just sits up there and says, “All for? Against?” And then he says whether or not it passes based on if it sounds like there are more “yeas” than “nays”. That’s just how voice votes work. It also means nobody has to go on the record.

Some reports say the Senate voice vote was unanimous. OK, whatever. It’d be a first for those guys in a while. What’s really interesting, though, is the House vote.

Here’s the list of everyone who voted against the Zadroga Bill in the House (if their name and state aren’t there, they’re already gone and I didn’t bother to look it up). Out of 178 Republicans in the House, only 17 voted in favor of the Zadroga Bill. Twelve of those 17 were from New York or New Jersey.

That’s right. All that voting for Republicans that you all do, and none of them voted for the Zadroga Bill.

Almost every Republican- including now-House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Republican presidential candidates Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul- voted against the Zadroga Bill.

Perhaps the best illustration of just how little anyone in Washington really cares about First Responders and how much of a political football First Responders really are is by looking at how Scott Garrett (R-New Jersey) votes when it comes to First Responders.

The only two Representatives from New York or New Jersey to vote against the Zadroga Bill were Christopher Lee of New York, the guy who gave up his seat after his little Craigslist problem earlier this year, and Scott Garrett of New Jersey, both Republicans.

The Zadroga Bill was voted on in the House on September 29, 2010, almost one year ago.

Scott Garrett then turned around and co-sponsored the Brian A. Terry Memorial Act (H.R. 2668) with other Republicans earlier this year on July 27, 2011. That bill honors Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry who was killed with guns that Obama-appointee Ken Melson and others in the ATF allowed to be smuggled from the US to drug cartels in Mexico during Operation Fast & Furious.

The Brian A. Terry Memorial Act is a Republican bill and a big slap in the face to the Obama administration over the whole ATF/Fast & Furious gun smuggling thing. The Brian A. Terry Memorial Act will name one Border Patrol Station in Arizona (you know, the state that is oh-so-near Garrett’s home state of New Jersey) after Brian Terry.

Naming a single Border Patrol Station after a guy who was killed with guns smuggled to drug cartels with the knowledge and help of our own government is, indeed, a damn small start in saying, “Sorry our government knowingly and intentionally helped criminals kill your son, your brother, and one of our own law enforcement officers.” But it’s a start.

The next bill better be the Brian A. Terry Memorial Requiring The Press To Cover The Damn Story If They Want Anymore Access To Congress Because It’s Bigger Than Watergate Act. But, yeah… a Border Patrol Station in Bisbee, Arizona… nice work.

It’s a very good thing to honor Brian Terry and everyone should support that bill. But everyone should have supported the Zadroga Bill, too, and Scott Garrett voted against the Zadroga Bill, which was written and sponsored by Democrats. But Scott Garrett felt it necessary to co-sponsor the Brian Terry bill which was written and sponsored by Republicans.

The Bureaucratic Part

In their efforts to politicize the hell out of the Zadroga Bill, Republicans fought it tooth and nail, adding things like the Stearns Amendment. This was the amendment added by Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL) that requires all World Trade Center First Responders to provide their names, addresses, places of birth, government ID numbers, and other personal data and information that has to be checked by the FBI against the terrorist watch list before the First Responders can receive any treatment through the Zadroga Bill.

For their part, the Democrats, being Democrats, accepted this sort of thing, supposedly in lieu of other “poison pill” amendments (which the Stearns Amendment was likely intended to be, anyway) on other issues such as abortion and immigration. A “poison pill” amendment puts language in a bill that is so horrifically objectionable that no one would ever vote for it, making a bill unable to pass simply because of those two or three lines.

The Democrats also screwed up the Zadroga Bill, the way that they will, by including so damn many regulations in it that, eventually, something like being unable to cover cancer would happen and they would be too scared to fix it.

Instead of saying, “If you were a World Trade Center First Responder or you worked in [this area during this period] and you get sick, you get help,” they started listing very specific diseases you needed to have. They were bound to get this wrong.

The way our government is structured today, precious few government employees are allowed to exercise good common sense, good judgment, or any judgment at all, really. There are government regulations restricting what decisions government employees can make and what choices they are limited to when they are faced with actually making decisions.

Whenever someone meanders into a position where they have the latitude to make a bona fide decision, it is usually someone who shouldn’t be there and who seems to be on a mission to do the worst job possible (Mike Sheppo, Mark Nelson, Ken Melson, pick a politician, any politician). That gives lots of people plenty of ammo to say, “See? We can’t let the government make decisions for us!”

And, instead, there are more restrictions put in place so that the decisions that need to be made can’t get done. And the Sheppo’s and Nelson’s and Melson’s of the world are left to continue to do their own thing, untouched and unbothered.

Some of these restrictions work pretty well because they are intended to let the public know when a big decision is going to be made that affects the public. But, they also create quite a hassle and those who have to abide by them complain… a lot.

The way it is written, what is now the Zadroga Law (Public Law 111-347, full text here, if you’d like to see it) covers what it calls “WTC-Related Health Conditions” as defined by the bill. As I’ve said earlier, these are very, very specific. For example:

WTC-RELATED HEALTH CONDITION DEFINED .—

(B) DEFINITION .—The term ‘WTC-related musculoskeletal disorder’ means a chronic or recurrent disorder of the musculoskeletal system caused by heavy lifting or repetitive strain on the joints or musculoskeletal system occurring during rescue or recovery efforts in the New York City disaster area in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

They did all of that, and more, but for cancer, the bill says this:

(5) CANCER .—

(A) IN GENERAL .—The WTC Program Administrator shall periodically conduct a review of all available scientific and medical evidence, including findings and recommendations of Clinical Centers of Excellence, published in peerreviewed journals to determine if, based on such evidence, cancer or a certain type of cancer should be added to the applicable list of WTC-related health conditions. The WTC Program Administrator shall conduct the first review under this subparagraph not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this title.

So, not only did the Democrats who wrote the bill put in this language passing off all responsibility for adding cancer to the list onto a program administrator somewhere down the line, but there are also sections just beyond this part making the WTC Program Administrator have to go through the federal rulemaking process should he or she decide to put cancer on the list.

I am generally in favor of the federal rulemaking process, but let me explain what this is. It is the process by which some federal official, in this case, the WTC Program Administrator, has to publish a proposed new rule or regulation before it can be enacted. In this case, the WTC Program administrator would have to publish the recommendation to add cancer to the list of diseases to be covered by the Zadroga Bill to be treated and reimbursed by that monetary fund, with all supporting documentation.

Then that recommendation has to be published for a period of at least 30 days in the Federal Register and allow “interested parties” the opportunity to make comments and recommendations to the proposed rule. Then the WTC Program Administrator has to take those comments and recommendations into some consideration and decide whether to extend the period for comment, alter the proposed rule, or do something completely different. It is not an easy process.

Establishing a direct link between any disease and a specific cause takes many years of research. To conduct research takes time, planning, and funding. Once you do all that planning and research, then you have to write it up, get some one to peer-review it, then get it published. That adds even more time.

Add in to all of that the amount of time that cancer itself takes to develop before it is noticed.

What the writers of the Zadroga Bill would like to happen is for enough people to develop cancer in enough of a pattern for it to be noticed by researchers (who presumably aren’t busy with anything else) so that it will be written about and published in peer-reviewed journals so that the WTC Program Administrator and others involved in conducting the review will be able to pick up on it in their yearly literature search for articles about whether or not anyone has studied the incidence of cancer in WTC responders.

Because that’s how it is currently being done.

Every year, some people will do a literature search of a few key words (seriously… I was a little bit horrified) to see if they can find any articles about cancer and the World Trade Center. So, unless there are people actually doing research to see if there is an increase in the incidence of cancer among World Trade Center responders, nothing is going to happen.

Let me rephrase that… unless there are people writing peer-reviewed articles about the increase incidence of cancer among World Trade Center responders, nothing is going to happen, under the current system.

Many people are very, very angry with the WTC Program Administrator and the WTC Health Program Cancer Working Group who made this decision not to put cancer on the list.

After all, most of the things that they list that they know the WTC Responders were exposed to are known or suspected carcinogens. But, if you read their report closely, even though the few articles they were able to find do not suggest dangerous, sustained levels of exposure to most of the toxins and other chemicals in the report, the report acknowledges huge gaps in the measurements of many of the studies they reviewed.

Gaps such as “none of these samples represented breathing zone concentrations in the dust cloud when the WTC towers collapsed.” Or this

A large number of ambient air and settled dust samples were collected within the first months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but relatively few personal air samples or biomonitoring [blood and urine] samples were collected. Ambient area air sampling, which comprises most of the air sampling associated with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is not generally considered to be standard practice for determining exposures among workers.

So, the information used in the studies isn’t really applicable to determining exposure in workers. Good to know.

I also didn’t see any mention of any of the studies’ authors running toward the collapsing towers to get their samples.

Keep in mind, however, that the WTC Program Administrator and the WTC Health Program Cancer Working Group did not design these studies. The only thing they can do is review what is given to them. Because that’s how the law is written.

The WTC Program Administrator is also the guy who is forced to send out the letters to every World Trade Center First Responder telling them that they can’t get treatment until they prove that they also aren’t a terrorist. Thanks to Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida.

The WTC Program Administrator has to be wondering what Representative Cliff Stearns, House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and the rest of their buddies would do if he tried to interpret the very vague law that really doesn’t allow him to put cancer on the list of diseases covered by the Zadroga Law any differently.

The WTC Program Administrator and the WTC Health Program Cancer Working Group are in a very difficult situation: they are just enforcing the law. A poorly written, unpopular law.

Any police officer who has been asked, “Why don’t the cops just stop enforcing marijuana laws?”… or noise ordinances (because it’s just a party and we’re not hurting anybody)… or whatever other laws that inconvenience someone and you’re just being an asshole and you could just look the other way because, really, it’s your decision… and you’ve had to explain that you just enforce the laws, you don’t write them.

This is very much the same situation.

So, what to do , what to do…

Back To The Political Problem

What you do is you fix the damn law, that’s what you do.

Ever since this determination came down from the WTC Program Administrator & Friends that cancer would not be added to the list this year, the lovely folks up in Congress have been trying to blame it on them (the WTC Program Administrator & Friends) for not getting it right.

But, see, the people in Congress who put the bill together knew just as well as anybody else that there were known and suspected carcinogens at Ground Zero when the bill was introduced in early 2009. So, they could have made the language more definitive and included cancer or made it easier for the WTC Program Administrator to include cancer, but they didn’t.

Some Representatives and Senators have actually even tried to get the WTC Program Administrator to do the review again, right now, instead of waiting until the next review next year. As if that’s going to create more crappy studies for him to look at, when they are the people who could actually do something about it and fix the damn law.

So, that is where the fault lies, as usual: with Congress.

What To Do

Here’s what we’re going to do, ladies and gents. We’re going to tell Congress what they should do to fix the bill. But we have to tell them exactly what to do to fix the bill, otherwise, they would screw it up.

Congress needs to amend the Zadroga Law to include cancer. What everyone needs to do is write and call their Senators and Representatives to make this happen, but it needs to be organized.

Here are instructions on how to write and call your Senators and Representatives (it’s one page and it only takes a few minutes). These are general instructions, not specific to just this issue, so you can use them again.

Also, here is the language for a bill amending the Zadroga Law (all of this will also be posted at the bottom of the page). This language should be included in any letters you send to your Senators and Representatives asking for a bill amending the Zadroga Bill.

Those of you who are First Responders (WTC or otherwise), get your unions involved. And do not accept any answers from anyone that they will bring this up at a meeting some months from now. There are appropriations bills being written right now and this language would fit in nicely as a rider. Everyone in DC knows that.

One really good person to introduce this bill amending the Zadroga Law would be Representative Peter King (R-NY). He has taken up the cause of 9/11 like nobody else, according to many news sources. I’m sure he would be happy to introduce this bill amending a flaw in the Zadroga Law. I would strongly recommend that everyone send a letter to Rep. Peter King in addition to sending letters to their own representatives urging him to introduce this law. Rep. Peter King’s party is in power in the House of Representatives, so he is the perfect person to introduce this law.

Another good one is Representative Michael Grimm (R-NY). He’s new, but he’s from Staten Island and has also just introduced a 9/11 Memorial Cross bill.

Anytime you hear a politician bitching about how the Zadroga Law should cover cancer, send them a nice letter telling them what they can do to help. All of the Democrats from New York (Senators and Representatives) have been the ones asking for the WTC Program Director to revisit his determination. Remind them of the power they have to make a change in this and suggest that they do something.

I have created a Facebook page specifically for this cause where you can find the language for the bill that would amend the Zadroga Law. Send your friends there and it will direct them to this page.

You can track the progress of this in the future on the Facebook page and on the BulletPath Legislation channel. I’ll also be watching the Brian A. Terry Memorial Act.

And the next time you go to vote for someone, check first to see if they voted for you.

Facebook page for the Zadroga Law Cancer Amendment

Instructions on how to write your congress members.

Language for a bill amending the Zadroga Law.

List of everyone who voted against the Zadroga Bill.

Contact info for House of Representatives.

Contact info for Senate.

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

Surprised? Me neither.

Ken Melson has been gunning down people for a job where he could do his best to influence forensic science policy for years. Hell, he showed up in Phoenix to lay claim to the train wreck that was Operation Fast & Furious so that he could boost morale with the unfortunate boots-on-the-ground just so he could go back to doing his promotional tour of his White House Subcommittee on All Things ASCLD.

If you’d like to know how Ken Melson and his buddies will handle forensic science policy for the United States once they get ahold of it, just take a look at what Ken Melson did for gun running in the southwestern states. He only killed a couple of our own law enforcement agents and maybe a few dozen Mexicans (and he probably thinks they hardly count, anyway), and that’s just what we know about. And what we don’t know won’t hurt us. Just ask Greg Taylor.

Or, if you want to see what Ken Melson and his buddies would do to our forensic science policy, just look at what they’ve done so far: endorsing bad science and bad convictions, accrediting bad crime labs, and being the very reason that we are at the point where the country needs laws mandating forensic science reform. You are the problem, Ken; not the solution.

One thing’s for sure. Eric Holder is a spineless ninny. And I’m only using that phrase because so many of you are behind government firewalls that you wouldn’t be able to load this website if I called him a low-functioning FOTA.

Now Holder is knowingly housing

• Ken Melson, who, in the same week
  • Endorsed the horrific reporting practices of the NC SBI that everyone knows put innocent people in prison, one day shy of the one year anniversary of Greg Taylor’s exoneration.
  • Attended the funeral of Immigration Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed in Mexico with a “walked” gun from Dallas.
  • Made his presentation at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences that was highly critical of the Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Reform Act (S. 132) that had been introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).
  • All this was more than two months after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed with an AK-47 that was “walked” across the Mexican border from a Phoenix gun store during Operation Fast & Furious. Melson’s sense of… whatever it is that he shoved in there to fill up the spot where his sense of right and wrong fell out… was unfazed.

• Michael Sheppo, about whom the Illinois Inspector General said, “failed to adhere to even modest ethical standards.” In addition to being an ethical failure, Sheppo failed to adequately manage his grant funding during his time running the Illinois State Police crime lab. Now, he runs the grant funding for all the crime labs in the country.
  

  Sheppo appears to have slipped into the back door of the NIJ through the National Forensic Science Technology Center’s (NFSTC’s) Interpersonnel Governmental Assignment (IPA) program. It was his attempts to sole source to the NFSTC at Illinois State Police that earned him the stamp of ethical sterility (in Illinois, of all places). Almost everyone in Sheppo’s office came to NIJ through the NFSTC program. NFSTC is another ASCLD subsidiary; Sheppo is another ASCLD past-president (as is Kevin Lothridge, the CEO of the NFSTC). Almost all funding going from the NIJ to the NFSTC is sole sourced. And the NFSTC recently started a for-profit arm.
  

  How a nonprofit company that has been funded 85-90% by the federal government suddenly spawns a for-profit arm and increases its revenues (of the nonprofit) by 75% in the first year should concern the Attorney General a great deal. Especially since the for-profit was only in operation for the last quarter of the year. If not, perhaps it will concern the House Oversight Committee. I will elaborate on this more in the near future.

• Mark Nelson, the guy who wrote the evidence withholding policy at the NC SBI that sent innocent people to jail, including Greg Taylor. Mark Nelson now controls most of the DNA funding in the country. How’s that for ironic? The guy who literally wrote the book on putting innocent people in jail by withholding DNA evidence is now in charge of funding the very evidence that is used to exonerate those who are wrongly convicted in many cases.
  

  I also hear that Mark Nelson takes lots of liberties with reallocating funding after grants have been awarded because he’s just that kind of shiny happy guy. That means that even though a lab has been awarded funding, Mark Nelson will come in and stop the award and give some of the funding to another lab just because he feels like it. Super-duper human being you got running the DNA Show there, Holder.

• The rest of Mike Sheppo’s office, who only seem to give money to people they and Sheppo have a personal or fiduciary interest in.
• A bunch of guys across more than one unit/discipline at the FBI lab that everybody (at least everybody at their lab and in their chain of command) knows have made bad IDs (that’s right… I know), most of whom are on Melson’s Subcommittee.
• Scott Oulton of the DEA and current SWGDRUG chair, another ASCLD/LAB Director who also endorsed Mark Nelson’s evidence withholding policies at the NC SBI. This endorsement was just issued on February 18, 2011, by the way.

So, yeah. That’s just a few of them, and that’s just from the forensic science perspective. Just one big, happy, incompetent, ethically crippled family.

There’s also the idiots who planned and carried out Operation Fast & Furious (most of whom just received promotions, by the way).

To be fair… ish… most of these people were in place before Eric Holder was Attorney General or Barack Obama was President. But, obviously, Operation Fast & Furious happened entirely on their watch. Regardless of who knew what, Holder put Ken Melson at the ATF and Melson demonstrated that he knew Fast & Furious was going on. Somebody needs to Janet-Reno-up, say “The buck stops here,” and get to the damn bottom of it.

And I haven’t quite figured out exactly what it is Eric Holder does. Because he certainly doesn’t lead or manage or pay a modicum of attention to the Department of Justice. Having people like Michael Sheppo in your ranks is unforgivable. The guy is from Illinois. The same state as the President and most of his buddies. Somebody in the administration should have known that there was more than a mild issue with the guy in charge of funding the nation’s crime labs.

So, yeah… Ken Melson didn’t lose his government benefits today, he gets to walk around saying he’s influencing forensic science policy, he probably gets to keep his ASCLD-sponsored White House Subcommittee, and, in spite of all their bluster, nobody is going to do anything about the dozens and dozens of people who have been and will keep being killed by the guns the moron helped deliver into the hands of known criminals.

And Melson still doesn’t care about the people who have been killed (law enforcement or civilian) or wrongfully imprisoned because of the actions or inactions of himself and his colleagues. And that’s OK by the DOJ.

And you?

Contact Darrell Issa (R-California), Chair of the House Oversight Committee

House Oversight Committee Phone: (202) 225-5074

Contact Attorney General Eric Holder

E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Comment Line: (202) 353-1555

©2012 BulletPath. All Rights Reserved.

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