The Seattle Times points out how companies can put pressure on auditors to sugar-coat their findings:

Warnings by a Seattle-based engineering firm about problems with BP’s monitoring of its Alaska oil pipelines were significantly toned down after the company complained that the report was “extremely negative,” according to documents now under review by a federal grand jury.

The draft report by Coffman Engineers, published in November 2001, raised concerns about the way BP was tracking and reporting Prudhoe Bay pipeline corrosion, which this year resulted in oil spills and forced a partial shutdown of those fields.

Although Coffman will have to explain why they toned down a report, the lion’s share of blame should still remain on BP for failing to take reasonable measures (smart pig and coupon) to detect areas of corrosion and prevent a spill:

In the aftermath of last March’s spill, BP acknowledged that the transit lines in western Prudhoe Bay had gone without a smart-pig inspection since 1998, and it has been scrambling to make those inspections.

BP officials say workers have frequently pigged many other lines at Prudhoe Bay. But the transit lines appeared to be at low risk of corrosion compared with other lines that handled saltwater, gas and oil, and they say they thought monitoring efforts without pigging were adequate.

Ok, so that lays the backdrop to a company that manages blind. They thought efforts without pigging were adequate, but based on what data? A lack of pigging and no coupons meant they had no facts upon which to make this risk calculation. Reminds me of a VP I once worked with who told me that anti-virus software was not necessary on his Microsoft Windows computers because they had no viruses. “How do you know?” I kept asking him…when I finally convinced him to let me audit the systems we found literally tens of thousands of infections and spent months cleaning up the environment. So I know exactly what Coffman was facing when BP apparently insisted that negative comments be downplayed in favor of positive ones:

In a memo sent to Coffman and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, BP said the reviewers lacked balance and stressed problems rather than accomplishments.

Balance? A reviewer’s job is to review the situation and give an honest report. Thus, a good report by a experienced professional would be a result of the actual conditions and not the bias of the reporter. It seems clear that BP was taking a big risk but wanted to believe, against the advice of experts, that there was no risk at all. Perhaps they had other motives or another data set, but the fact that they told their auditor to be more positive and tone down their warnings shows a style of management that usually leads to predictible disasters.

Apparently a man’s suggestion at a Corp of Engineers hearing about how to help fish were misreported and then forwarded to the FBI as evidence of a possible terrorist threat:

Within days, the FBI had Bensman on the phone, asking whether he was any threat.

“To think I’m a terrorist is utterly ridiculous,” Bensman, 46, said from his home in Alton, just north of St. Louis. “How could any reasonable person think a terrorist is going to come to a public meeting held by the Army Corps, let them know who they are and announce their terror plot? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

I actually agree with that. The man was engaged in a civil conversation, and a newspaper report about the meeting was the real cause of alarm, rather than comments at the meeting:

During the 90-minute hearing that included on the agenda whether to build a fish channel, Bensman says, he reiterated he’s no fan of dams, contending they’re environmentally destructive and amount to billions of dollars in corporate welfare for boating interests.

He urged that the dam be torn out. He said he never mentioned blowing the dam up, though the corps’ presentation of possible options included a picture of a dam being dynamited.

So if the Corp’s own presentation included a dam being dynamited, shouldn’t they have turned themselves into the FBI as possible terrorists? Or would that only happen if a newspaper article reported that the Corp was considering blowing their own dam up? Hard to understand why the Corp did not just contact Bensman directly. Certainly shows how alienated and unresponsive the government agencies can get from the people they are supposed to be serving, using fear of extremists as a convenient excuse.

The real tragedy is not that there is an ignorant and hateful person in office, since there is some hope that she can be removed democratically. The tragedy is her legacy, that this is the person who was Florida’s Secretary of State in 2000 and oversaw the presidential ballot recount:

Separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told,” Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is “wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.”

“If you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin,” Harris said.

This nut is about as un-American as they come, taking illegal campaign contributions and obfuscating a suspicious ballot fiasco, yet thumping a bible and saying her kind should be in control of “average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better”.

I see absolute evidence that ballot-boxes will not be safe from radicals like Harris without true transparency and fail-safe audit trails.

Incidentally, take a look at her answer to a question about whether she is “involved in a local place of worship? If so in what way?”

Calvary Chapel in Sarasota is my base. I grew up as a Presbyterian, in the PCA (the USA is more liberal), and here I attend the Calvary Chapel. My heritage, my grandfather was a missionary in Africa and my aunt and uncle were missionaries in India and now they head up Arab World Missions. My brother-in-law is a Christian singer who has won number one song of the year, every year, his name is Wes King. So, I had a godly family.

Seems like a simple enough question, but she appears unwilling or unable to answer. Apparently she would rather talk about coverting foreigners to Christianity than admit how/whether she involves herself at a local level. What does her relationship to Christian missionaries in India and Africa and a singer have to do with what she herself does for a place of worship in Florida? Am I missing something here, like the code phrase for personal activism is “my aunt and uncle…head up Arab World Missions”? No wonder her campaign workers are leaving in droves.

Who can trust someone that avoids questions like this and throws out loaded buzzwords here and there? Her comments about Christianity seem more about trying to trick real Christians to vote for her so she can keep her power over them — a classic case of Machiavellianism more than an expression of real values.

This interview is really over the top in terms of a candidate expressing her distance from basic core American values (e.g. Truth, Popular Sovereignty, Diversity, Liberty, Common Good) and so one can only hope that she has done herself in this time.