Page 615 - WhyAsInY

“resolvinG tHe Crisis; restorinG tHe ConfiDenCe”
then I would have known, said he, that I was obliged, at the conclusion of an out-of-town meeting, to fly back to Washington. After that, I was then free to board the shuttle for LaGuardia. I didn’t understand the problem; I had put in a full workweek and had checked first to make sure that my triangulation practice had cost the government nothing. No matter, said he.
I ended up having to pay the United States Treasury One Thou- sand One Hundred Twenty-nine and 50/100 Dollars! That was the amount that the I.G.’s report to me, cc: to the general counsel (who hap- pened by then to be a good friend of mine), calculated that I had saved myself by not going through the motions of flying back to D.C. late on a Friday afternoon and then walking to the shuttle area and boarding the next flight that I could get on. Arguably, he should have also included the major savings that I generated for myself by avoiding having to take the Metro from my office to Washington National on the Friday after- noons in question, but somehow that thought eluded him. I don’t think that he was motivated by charity.
In any event, what we had here should have been a failure to trian- gulate. So, thank you, Harvey, for what was essentially the volunteer work that you performed on behalf of Uncle Sam.
I am not absolutely certain that Ron Wilburn was the little birdie that whispered in the Inspector General’s ear, but I do point out that, shortly before the I.G. knocked on my door, Mr. Wilburn left the RTC to return home to Florida—and take a position in the private sector with guess what Wall Street house.
As for me, I must say that, notwithstanding the fact that my vigi- lance likely cost me more than one thousand dollars, I would not have changed anything in the way that I handled the review of Wilburn’s case, even if the only issue were preserving the story value of this episode.
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The last thing that I want to do, however, is to leave you with the impres- sion that Washington was all politics to me, or anything resembling a
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