Fraud, waste & abuse and
the Recovery Act

Gary Leonard, Fermilab General Counsel, wrote this column.

Gary Leonard, Fermilab general counsel

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will provide Fermilab with $103.1 million. The discovery and reporting of fraud, waste and abuse that involves misuse or mismanagement of Recovery Act funds is a high priority for the federal government.

As a recipient of stimulus funds, it is our duty to ensure that any report of fraud, waste and abuse is addressed in an appropriate and prompt manner.

The Recovery.gov Web site and poster provide information on how to report allegations, as well as "whistleblower" protections for individuals making disclosures concerning fraud, waste and abuse.

An example of fraud could involve an individual bribing an official to get a federal contract. This act wastes taxpayers' money because the best contractor for the job wouldn't get hired. It also abuses the official's power by taking personal gains over public trust.

Fermilab has always had programs against fraud, waste and abuse and will continue to uphold the same high ethical standards for stimulus funds. These programs instruct employees and users how to report misuse of federal funds as well as concerns regarding public health or safety. "Whistleblower" protections ensure that you cannot be discharged, demoted or otherwise discriminated against as a reprisal for reporting an incident of fraud, waste and abuse.

If you see fraud, waste or abuse of Recovery Act funds, please be prepared to provide the identity of the violator, corroborating information or persons, as well as a description of the documentary or physical evidence.

If you would like more information or wish to report an allegation, please contact my office at x3252 or e-mail ethicist@fnal.gov. While anonymous complaints are welcome, please understand that a lack of sufficient and specific information may lead to an inability to investigate the allegation.

South Dakota Governor
Mike Rounds tours Fermilab

South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds and Fermilab Director Pier Oddone talk over coffee on Wilson Hall's 15th floor. Gov. Rounds visited Fermilab on Aug. 24-25 to learn more about science done at the laboratory. The Homestake Mine, located in South Dakota, is the site for a proposed underground laboratory.

MINOS co-spokesperson Rob Plunkett gives South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds a tour of the MINOS experiment's near detector hall, located 350 feet below ground.

Taking a tour of the MINOS underground hall and tunnel (from left): Kevin Lesko, UC Berkeley/DUSEL; Jim Soyer, Governor's Office; Bill Harlan, South Dakota Science & Technology Authority; Governor Mike Rounds; Kevin Forsch, Governor's Office; Ron Wheeler, South Dakota STA; and Bill Roggenthen, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology/DUSEL.

The Large Hadron Collider redux: hoping for a long, hard slog

From Science, Aug. 26, 2009

As they prepare to restart the Large Hadron Collider, accelerator physicists are confident that, instead of suffering a second catastrophic breakdown, the world's largest atom smasher will perform to the standards set by its predecessors-and give them lots of smaller headaches to struggle with.

In 1991, as accelerator physicists at the Deutsche Electron Synchrotron (DESY) laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, turned on their new $650 million particle smasher, they ran into some technical glitches. Researchers found one problem in the circuits meant to protect the superconducting magnets at the heart of the 6.3-kilometer-long Hadron Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA) from destroying themselves in an emergency. But in trying to fix the problem, they made it worse, recalls Karl Hubert Mess, then a DESY staff member.

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