Path to Power
Devaney knows how to investigate crime; he has been doing it since he attended Franklin and Marshall College. He graduated from the Lancaster, Pa., college in 1970 with a government degree, but while he went to school, Devaney also became a Massachusetts police officer. After graduating, Devaney joined the Secret Service, where he would work for 21 years as a special agent.
Early in his secret service career, Devaney protected presidents. Once, a deranged woman mistook Devaney for President Gerald R. Ford, and shot at him. She missed.
By the time of his retirement from the Secret Service in 1991, Devaney stopped protecting presidents and became a specialist in white-collar crime. Soon after he left the secret service, he joined the Environmental Protection Agency as its director of criminal enforcement and managed the agency’s Forensic Service Center.
After his time at the EPA, Devaney joined the Interior Department, becoming its inspector general in August 1999. While at the Interior, Devaney investigated a variety of internal department problems. He has been embroiled in some high-profile investigations that brought the department some glaring black-eyes.
Abramoff Scandal
In March 2006, Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist that represented at least six Indian tribes, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy for his role in faking a $23 million transfer in order to obtain a $60 million loan for the purchase of SunCruz Casinos in 2000. He received 10 years on state and federal charges. Due to his cooperation during a federal investigation, the terms run concurrently and he is due to step out of prison in September 2012.,
Devaney was in charge of the internal Interior Department investigation into deputy secretary J. Steven Griles, a former Bush administration official who eventually pleaded guilty to falsely testifying before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005 about his relationship with Abramoff.
Griles claimed Abramoff had no special access to the Interior, when email documentation surfaced in the federal probe into Abramoff’s lobbying contacts that showed otherwise. Griles also misled lawmakers about an affair he had with lobbyist Italia Federici who ran a non-profit to which Abramoff contributed, allegedly to gain access to people like Griles.
A federal investigation proved Griles perjured himself when he testified about his and Abramoff’s relationship, with the help of a report by Devaney that was released in 2003. In it, he reviewed Griles’ interactions with former clients. He concluded that the Interior Department’s ethical standards were a mess and in 2004, as the Abramoff investigation began gaining steam, Devaney called Griles a “train wreck waiting to happen” while testifying on the Hill. In March 2007, Griles confessed to perjury. Described by Abramoff as “our guy” at the Interior, Griles got ten months for his crime.
Sex, Drugs and Oil
In September 2007, Devaney released a scathing report that highlighted unlawful practices at the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS). The MMS handles natural resources on the continental shelf, and collects $11 billion a year in royalties from oil and gas companies. Devaney’s report recommended disciplinary action for employees at MMS that partook in gifts from oil companies, including attending concerts, golf outings and a ski trip. Government employees are forbidden to accept a gift worth more than $20 or take more than $50 worth of gifts per year from one source.
But this report highlighted even more disturbing stories within the MMS offices in Denver, Col. and Washington, DC that included accusing a management official of having sex with his subordinates, as well as purchasing cocaine while on the job. The report concluded that two other female employees had relationships with customers of the MMS, but did not recuse themselves from their lovers’ companies’ contracts.
In response to Devaney’s investigation, six employees were fired or disciplined.
