'Back-Door' Base Closures
Biden Talks Loss With Fallen Troops' Families
Neely Out at GSA
More USPS Buyouts
Gimme My Discount! Deals for Feds
Buyout Watch: Who's Offering What
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Insider Advantage
October 1, 2006 Thomas Casadevall and quick-thinking U.S. Geological Survey regional managers launched boats and rescue teams in New Orleans in the hours following Hurricane Katrina. The events of late August and early September of 2005 are now painfully familiar: Hurricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast, the devastating winds and storm surge, ...
A Lucky Mistake
October 1, 2006 A mathematical error proved fruitful for Norden Huang-and other scientists trying to interpret data. Norden E. Huang considers himself a lucky man. In 1995, he wrote a paper for Advances in Applied Mechanics in which he used-incorrectly, as it turned out-a set of mathematical formulations called the Hilbert Transform, named ...
The Mastermind
October 1, 2006 When American service members and civilians are captured or missing in Iraq or Afghanistan, it's the work of Ron McNeal that guides their safe return. Some of them-like Jessica Lynch and Jill Carroll-have become household names. But there have been many others: American service members and civilians missing or captured ...
Justice Served
October 1, 2006 Martin Harrell, a prosecutor at EPA, fights to ensure America stays green. The warehouse was, quite literally, a disaster waiting to happen. Located near a hotel and community college in downtown Pottstown, Pa., it served as a storage facility for Pyramid Chemical Sales Co. Pyramid's owner, Joel Udell, had been ...
Seeing the Big Picture
October 1, 2006 Mark S. Ward was the go-to guy for allocating federal aid after the Asian tsunami and the earthquake in Pakistan. It was one of the worst natural disasters on record. On Dec. 26, 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a series of tsunamis that devastated coastal areas in ...
Preparing For the Worst
October 1, 2006 Despite not knowing much about bird flu at the start, Nancy Powell led a U.S. initiative to establish a worldwide protocol for response to the virus. Nancy Powell didn't know much about avian influenza beyond what she'd read in newspapers. During her nearly 30 years at the State Department, Powell ...
Legal Eagle
October 1, 2006 Heading up the legal office at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Christina Sanford helped craft a plan for replacing Iraq's interim government. When Christina Sanford turned 30 in August 2004, she celebrated the milestone by going out with friends and colleagues. The gathering was far from your typical birthday party, ...
More Than a Clock Watcher
October 1, 2006 A Nobel Prize winner in physics, William D. Phillips has done more than just improve the accuracy of clocks-he's an ambassador for public service. For a world-renowned scientist, William D. Phillips is surprisingly easy to talk to. In 1997, he became the first government employee to receive the Nobel Prize ...
Defensive Line
October 1, 2006 Chasing the evolution of influenza has kept Centers for Disease Control and Prevention virologist Nancy Cox on the run for 31 years. Nancy Cox wants to stop playing defense. As a virologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1975, she has spent her entire career chasing a ...
I'm OK, You're Outstanding
July 1, 2006 Under new performance-management systems, not everyone gets to be a star. The e-mail is of dubious origin and has likely circled the Internet multiple times. It claims to contain "actual quotes" from federal employee performance evaluations. Among the zingers: "This young lady has delusions of adequacy," "He brings a lot ...
