[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 23 (Wednesday, March 6, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H720]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          INTEGRITY ABOVE ALL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Crenshaw). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, this morning the Committee on Resources 
heard testimony from investigators and from the Forest Service, Fish 
and Wildlife and others in regards to a scheme put forward by several 
Federal employees to alter a lynx study in the northwestern part of the 
Nation.
  It is very important for us as government employees to maintain the 
integrity of the process, and a part of that goes clear down to our 
field employees upon whom we depend very heavily to deliver a product 
that they are required by protocol to deliver. What do I mean by this? 
What happened is we had several biologists, Ray Scharpf, Mitch 
Wainright, Sarah LaMarr and Tim McCracken, Federal employees involved 
in a lynx study in the northwest part of this Nation. These are 
professional biologists or associated with professional biologists.
  Their job was to go out and determine whether or not there was any 
evidence of lynx in a forest, to then determine whether or not further 
investigation was necessary. What these individuals did was go out and 
planted evidence. They planted evidence, just like a bad cop goes into 
a house and plants drugs. They planted lynx hair and submitted the lynx 
hair to the laboratory in hopes that the laboratory would assume that 
there were now lynx in this area that they had studied.
  The average biologist that we have working for the Forest Service or 
for the Fish and Wildlife are people of high integrity. I cannot think 
of a biologist that I have met that I have not been fairly confident of 
the integrity and the standards that they rise to.
  But in this case, these Federal employees brought a disgrace upon the 
United States Government and brought a disgrace upon these agencies by 
planting evidence and submitting false samples for a survey. 
Unfortunately, these employees are still employed by the Federal 
Government. Fortunately, we had a whistle blower. An employee on his 
last day called in the fact that false samples had been submitted to 
this survey.
  My point in taking the floor today is that I appreciate the Members 
who attended the hearing today, and I especially appreciate the 
investigators who went out and came up with these conclusions. We know 
that these employees knew that what they were doing was wrong and 
outside their protocol, but they still carried out their actions.
  Mr. Speaker, today we had a good hearing about it, and I think we 
will be able to install some fire walls that will prevent this type of 
scheme from happening again. In the meantime, it has unfortunately cast 
a small shadow upon the profession. What we need to do is assure that 
that profession has no shadow at all because their importance in our 
studies out there are absolutely critical. We depend on them very much, 
very much; and we have good reason to depend on them. They are the 
experts, but integrity comes first and above all.

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