Perhaps you’ve wondered why, exactly, it seems so many Bush administration officials seem unqualified and incapable. As it turns out, the answer is getting clearer.
At least 135 federal employees, including a White House staff member and National Security Agency employees, bought bogus online college degrees from a diploma mill, a lawyer in the case against the mill operators said.
Some of those who paid thousands of dollars for phony diplomas include a senior State Department employee in Kuwait and a Department of Justice employee in Spokane, defense lawyer Peter S. Schweda said Wednesday.
The bogus degree purchases by the federal workers were revealed Wednesday during a U.S. District Court status conference for five defendants in the case against the mill, The Spokesman-Review reported Thursday.
The officials in question were not identified yesterday, though the U.S. Attorney in the case said names will be disclosed during the trial.
Of course, the case isn’t about administration officials directly; this is about criminal charges brought against the alleged ringleaders of a bogus diploma. As part of the investigation, the Justice Department learned of at least 135 government employees who bought bogus degrees to help get a promotion or a pay raise.
Now, to be fair, when I say “Bush administration officials,” that may not be entirely descriptive. Of the officials who bought bogus online college degrees, some may have started working in government long before Bush took office. Chances are, this isn’t a problem unique to this particular administration.
Nevertheless, it is a controversy rife with problems.
First, in many states, using a phony degree to get a government job is against the law. The legal case is against the ringleaders, but how many of these 135+ federal employees might soon face charges of their own?
Second, it’s not exactly comforting to think that some officials have been given weighty responsibilities without formal academic training.
Alan Contreras cracks down on diploma mills for Oregon, a state that’s taken the lead on this issue.
“You don’t want somebody with a fake degree working in Homeland Security,” says Contreras. “You don’t want somebody with a fake degree teaching your children or designing your bridges.”
But we found employees with diploma mill degrees at the new Transportation Security Administration, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Departments of Treasury and Education.
Indeed, as recently as 2004, the man in charge of personnel and readiness issues in the military doesn’t hold a real degree in, as his biography states, “Human Resource Management.”
That can’t be good.
Post script: Any time the issue of diploma mills comes up, I immediately think of this hilarious article Gene Weingarten wrote on the subject a few years ago. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Weingarten gets a degree in “outer space physics” from “Brentwick University.” It’s a riot.