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Phillip Swarts

pswarts@washingtontimes.com

Phillip Swarts was an investigative reporter for The Washington Times.

Articles by Phillip Swarts

(Screen shot of Deputy Inspector General Charles K. Edwards from http://www.oig.dhs.gov)

No ‘widespread’ misconduct in Secret Service hooker scandal - IG

A year after a high-profile scandal where members of a U.S. Secret Service advance team for President Obama hired prostitutes while in Colombia, an internal investigation has found no widespread problems in the agency, stating that the bad behavior was limited to a few individuals.

December 20, 2013
Charles Edwards was to testify before Congress on Thursday about suspected wrongdoing before he stepped down this week as acting inspector general. (Associated Press)

Former Homeland Security Inspector General target of abuse complaints

The embattled inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security was the target of a number of internal employee complaints for abuse of power before his surprise decision to step down this week, according to documents shown to The Washington Times by an outside watchdog group.

December 18, 2013
(Screen shot of Deputy Inspector General Charles K. Edwards from http://www.oig.dhs.gov)

IG faced internal complaints at Homeland Security, record show

The embattled inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security was the target of internal employee complaints for abuse of power before his surprise decision to step down earlier this week, according to new documents supplied to The Washington Times by an outside watchdog group.

December 18, 2013
The most egregious examples of government waste, fraud or abuse.

Medicare pays full price for half-empty vials of medicine

After the Obamacare fiasco, the Health and Human Services Department must be a glass-half-empty kind of place. Just ask the folks at Medicare, who wasted $24.2 million paying for partly used vials of a type of breast cancer medicine.

December 12, 2013

Report: Old courthouses need $760M in repairs

The cost to the federal government to build new courthouses could be much higher than originally thought, a new report has found, as estimates often leave off the costs of repairing and selling old structures the new construction will replace.

December 9, 2013
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican (Associated Press)

Homeland Security at risk of computer breach

Created to safeguard the nation, the Department of Homeland Security is instead having difficulty ensuring its own computers are protected from hacking and cybersecurity breaches, a new report says.

December 4, 2013
The most egregious examples of government waste, fraud or abuse.

Golden Hammer: Autism research gets federal aid not once, but twice

The latest case of duplicative spending is the roughly $1.4 billion the government spent on autism research from 2008 to 2012. But investigators at the Government Accountability Office, Congress' watchdog arm, are concerned that as much as 84 percent of that money was spent on redundant research.

November 28, 2013
In this photo provided by NASA, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Maven spacecraft launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. NASA’s Mars-bound spacecraft, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. (AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls)

NASA under fire for bonus payments to contractors

The internal watchdog for NASA says the nation's space agency has doled out tens of millions of dollars in bonus money to its contractors — without even first making sure whether they had done the work well or not.

November 25, 2013
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, has opposed using the Yucca Mountains in his home state for the storage of nuclear waste. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Nuclear waste site evaluations to restart over Reid’s objections

Saying it was responding to an order from the courts, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday it has resumed staff work on the feasibility of the long-stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, despite the fierce opposition of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and President Obama to the Yucca site.

November 18, 2013