counsel, were you aware of that? >> i was not aware of that. >> it's interesting that back in may, you advised ed a minute stt for johnson -- >> chairman micah, i did brief administrator johnson on the interim report. >> i told the regional adm administrator to get a handle on -- >> that was ruth cox? >> ruth cox. then we have a strip by neely to hawaii in october, another trip to atlanta, another warning,

susan britta warned, i guess you, about an upcoming 17-day south pacific junket headed by neely. >> actually, mr. micah, we were so concerned about it, we contacted ms. britta, the deputy administrator. >> and ms. britta, you notified mr. cox about the upcoming junket and expressed concern, right? >> i did. >> what exactly happened? >> i asked her to review the plans -- >> and that called it off, didn't it? no. then another junket, that one to california, the hawaii-guam stipend trip with staff. four-day site visit to hawaii.

and then this offsite trip to napa, is that california? you got to go to the wine region. i see why mr. neely is not with us today and the only pictures i can get of him are in his hot tub suite. but i thank you, ms. britta for your coming forward and for your trying to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars, yield back. >> thank you mr. micah. mr. shaw? >> thank you for having this very important hearing today, needless to say i was appalled when i first heard about some of the things that the gsa administration had paid to the taxpayers or their conference. this congress has had its share of disagreements over the past how to reduce the federal

spending and how to address the deficit issue, however, i think that we all can agree on that there's no place for this type of a taxpayers abuse of funds. the employees that put together this conference forgot that the federal government is supposed to work on behalf of the tax payers, families and small businesses throughout maine should not have to pay for employees of gsa to take lavish vacation vacations anywhere else around the country. and i hope we can get to the information we need here today to make sure that this does not happen again, additionally, i plan to offer an amendment to the financial service and general government appropriation bill to prevent gsa from holding this type of conference in the future. but this is just extremely disturbing.

i do want to commend ms. britta for what you have done, and are going to do. hopefully with the agency, i guess my question is for the inspector again and ms. britta or both, since this has been brought to light in the public's attention, what has been done or will be done in the future to ensure that this does not happen again and for the inspector general, mr. miller, has the ig looked at other agencies that you're aware of for a similar type of abuse that might have occurred or is occurring? >> we are currently looking at all the conferences in region 9, and we're looking at conferences in general. >> just region 9?

>> we're focusing on region 9 right now, but we are generally looking at congress fenferences receiving a number of hot lines about other regions throughout the country. >> administrator tangalin has agreed to do a complete accounting of the -- management and overall service delivery of the agency. >> is the acting director also looking at making sure that the federal government's reimbursed? >> yes, sir, he's already taken action in that regard, three letters were sent out and additional letters will be forthcoming, yes. >> and mr. miller, what do you expect or what should congress do to make sure that this does happen again, not only with gsa

but other agencies when it comes to these kind of conferences. >> i think that supporting igs is something that helps, we have to investigate these frauds and abuses and waste. unfortunately you can't legislate good management. >> as far as gsa, are you understaffed in the inspector general's office for gsa and how many vacancies do you currently have? >> i'll leave that to the judgment of the appropriators, we currently have 70 special agents, they actually interview witnesses.

>> thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> mr. peck, what were your impressions of the -- for your work on the stimulus program? >> mr. crawford, there was a reception, i think the afternoon, i got there, it was outdoors at the hotel.

i wasn't aware what it cost, i don't remember what the food was because i don't think i ability very much of it. nor was i aware that there might have been an awards ceremony there to justify food expenses. that's not something i would have thought of and it's not a rule i believe i was familiar with. i thought as part of a hotel package, i had seen in both the public and private sectors before that those were provided as part of a hotel package. so i thought at the end of a stay, not knowing the expense, i didn't think it was out of the ordinary. may i say one thing about the awards? >> yes. >> if i have an opportunity, i would like to say something about coins. when i left the government in 2001--civilian agencies had coin, everywhere i went,

somebody gave me a coin from one of their agencies. when i was told they were running out and that we needed to order more, i was asked how much they cost, i was told about $10 apiece, if i want to give somebody an atta boy, i can give them a certificate. i was concerned about the coins, i can say that about that. >> let me ask if they will put a slide of up the 2,400 square feet suite. what was your impression. >> that was ludicrously large and kind of like you would see in las vegas and i also, as i noted in my testimony immediately asked what the charge was for this suite and whether there was an extra charge for it. >> i have an e-mail here that's dated october 28th. it's from you to jeff neely and states, jeff, that conference is

unbelievable, awesome a terrific lesson to all our folks about preparation, professional and a sense of prospective. thanks for inviting me. you want to comment on that? >> yes, sir. at that time, remember, i had arrived on monday afternoon, or late monday morning, what i had seen were during the presentations that i saw the one day that i was there, a number of presentations that were all substantive about the work of the building services, i thought that the presentations prepared by the four regions were good. the conversations that i saw during these sessions were about the work of pbs and how we could get work done better, i thought that was professional. >> when you decide to throw a party in your suite, who ended up paying for the alcohol which was about a $2,000 bill for the

food. you indicate that you actually paid for the alcohol? is that correct? >> had bartenders and staff there for the party? >> no, sir. >> no? >> not to the best of my reck collection. why would it be okay to bill the taxpayers -- >> since i was not a part of an official function, i had a practice, when i went to meetings, whether they were in regional office buildings, of trying to meet the gsa employees and mostly talk shop. i specifically said i was not a part of conference program. i would pay for it myself. i was not prepared to pay for fancy food, that's why i said beer, wine and chips.

then all this food arrived and they said it's covered in conference contract. and i asked if there was a separate charge and they said no. i asked an agent, when he told me about the money, whether that was afternon additional amount it covered by the -- i had no intention of charging it to the taxpayer, i did not believe it was a legitimate taxpayer expense, and i yesterday sent a letter to the -- >> oig reports are a great window on how well or poorly the agency is being run. across the government and be provide with a opportunity to know why they're important?

>> i think that would help. we have a website where you can access our public reports and every ig does. there's also a website called ig.net.gov that will give you all the websites. today is the packs deadline. we asked on facebook, do you

think you pay your fair share? go to facebook.com/cspan. >> let me read to you what his wife said in her affidavit. i laura bennett do propose and state in 1999 or 2000, he said he had had a conversation with him using human growth hormones. i remind you you're under oath. you said your conversation with mr. petit never happened. if that was true, why would laura petit remember telling --

andy and it's relation husband close enough to know, i had known that he had done hgh which i now know, if he had known that i was taking hgh, we would have discussed it. he would have come to me to ask about the effects of it. >> with over a quarter century of american politics and publicly affairs on your computer. >> next, part of a recent forum on islamic political parties. while libya is not in the drafting stage yet, party representatives from each of the countries say they shared the same goal of achieving democracy. from the carnegie endowment for peace in washington, this is

approximately 30 minutes. >> have you heard that? let's go ahead and get started. we're moving now, our panels, we're moving slightly in the countries that are willing represented up here. i wanted to begin this session with a very brief personal know and then a very general note. we're focusing now on constitutional issues and that's something that's been a personal interest of mine for a couple of decades. when i studied this in 1990, you talked to constitutional law professors and so on. if you picked up a newspaper, in many of these countries they would be barely aware of the existence of their constitution. we're moving from university

seminar rooms to hardcore politics. that's one thing i hope we'll focus on here. the more general note, i wanted to point out something that i heard this morning. what i heard this morning from representatives in the foreign movements that were up here, was a tremendous sense of excitement and responsibility and a real interest in essentially getting to work, taking the pgrams that they have been developing, often in opposition, sometimes in prison and actually applying them to government in operation. so i want to build on that in this session and eventually take a very practical look. we have had some very general overviews in the first session, but what i'm trying to do is to move with our guests' permission is to move intropractical detail. we have up here and i'm just going to introduce them very, very briefly because their bios are in front of you and i think we would like to hear from them more than hear about him.

this is what amohammad gyier fr muslim brotherhood in libya. i'm going to start with a question about the constitutional process and i'm going to ask them to give us an idea of where the constitutional process stands and i'm going to ask the question in a specific way. for egypt, what i'm going to ask you, is essentially we heard an awful lot about need for a consensual constitution and we heard from your calling this morning, in essence how it is the freedom and justice party thinks that it is argumenting consistently with the referendum, the constitutional amendments and so on in the way that it has proceeded. when i listen to him, i think, if i were his lawyer, and i'm not his lawyer, i would think i

have a very strong case. if i were a political advisor i would say you've got a mess on your hands. because essentially a body is supposed to write a constitution in a process where a third of the people are refusing to take their seat. so my question to you is how is the justice party going to present that. my question for you is a little bit about tunis. we talked about administrative press, which very few political forces would disagree about and we have heard about some concessions in the sense that he is willing to make. you've got a constitutional process that is actually now well underway. so where are you finding that the consensus begins to break

down? what are the issues that are dividing you from the other political forces? and mohammad, my question for you about libya is this, when i look at your callings from other countries, they represent places with long congressional traditions, tunisia, in libya you've got a very disorganized political scene and what is supposed to be a very quick constitution writing process. so how are you going to take this much more unorganized environment and manage to come one a consensus document that represents all libya? >> so let me go to you. >> i would actually like to

start with a statement. the statement i want to make is that what he commented on related basically to the nature of this -- but this is actually a historic moment, as you said a moment in history, when we see actually history in the making and this is the statement which we live by day in and day out and this is actually how we see the situation and of course not being with my colleagues from here in america, is also historic. but the -- narrative of nations and groups of people who have really suffered extreme oppression and actually decided in a very idealistic way to take the methods into their own hands in a very nonviolent way, if i talk specifically about egypt and tunisia and i think that the libyans started this in the

beginning and this is the intent and what we wanted to bring peace and democracy into the region, all egypt ians. some governments and norths that actually present them as we have. we actually need it and we are in the first few steps towards democracy and we're trying to have the entity that is based on democracy, freedom and rule of law, and these are values that are now universal and now the majority of nations would like to achieve it and perceive it in this way. we actually extend ouring hands, we understand those values, we want you to help us, we want you

to give ideas and actually believe in these values and believe in the right of nations to achieve these -- our constitution writing process is a integral portion of this. we started off with an election for people's assembly of parliament in two chants and we express the idea that freedom -- they came in with a very hyper sensitive occupation, almost all of this is into those -- came in to we're actually -- and we now have a government, a parliament

that is actually involved in the evolutionary spirit. so this was the first building block that was done out here. the second one is even more challenging. the department of course pulls back on to the ballot box and accepts the reality of political participation and political rivalry and actually winning seats and percentages, et cetera, but constitution writing has to be done by consensus, has to be inclusive, has to include all sections of -- i'm glad that the assembly, this constitution will serve us and serve our children. it has to include our apicture rations, has to prepare us to be part of this more global community than the interconnected global community. it has to put us along those lines and this cannot be done by one party or one world view. in egypt, we enjoy now, after

suppressive and oppressive regime, we now have pluralistic, at least political environment and now we're still in the spirit of some political rivalry when we have all the different views and experience, and it is a difficult process to reach consensus, we agreed on the process, that the process, the minimum level for it has to be -- and again, as you said, this is why in the legal sense, the process now is okay. the challenge actually is to go beyond our rivalry, our political life, our different world views, kind common grounds on the actual issue which is the constitution, which is the constitution which has to be presented to it. so this is the challenge. sometimes particularly when there is a big majority, the minority feels that they're

excluded. and it's their right to feel this way. but we have to rise above this competitiveness, and start looking on what is it? and our friend, we try to do so. we have the process itself started off -- the parliament will pick the 100 people. and then the parliament itself was even a bigger majority voted on the process of how the composition of business is. so there is actually a democratic process there. so we actually decided to reduce our representation in this assembly so that more people can actually participate. or proxy alone in the parliamentarians. i had actually 40% participation

in the parliament, with the coalition around 35%, which is way less than hour representation. and we understand that this is not the wish the issue is -- to make an agreement on this, with many parties actually refusing to be part of the process, we're still talking with them and this discussion still is useful. we extended it for many technical convictions that are open for anybody to participate. and to the different -- and i have two lost things that i need gestures, and we are special,

and it was something that was of symbolic nature to us. the last -- the last meeting we had, the official visit came from the muslim brotherhood. this was the last meeting and -- he jotted down the names of the representation of the -- into our constitutional. the constituent writing and we actually stuck to this -- this is where we actually take it and we actually stand for this. we would effect extremely -- to deliver our parties and we made

sure that the heads of those two parties -- we are -- the gentlemen to have our process based on consensus and the constitution is actually presentable to the egyptian population. >> let me just ask your forgiveness, one quick follow-up question, if you don't get them back on board, if you do not come to an agreement with them, will you continue with the process as it is or will you try to somehow go back to the drawing board and come up with a new process? >> we have actually two challenges, the first challenge basically is the time is not in favor of reform.