[Infowarrior] - DOJ Awards $500,000 Grant to Golf Group

[Richard Forno]

Justice Department Official Awards $500,000 Grant to Golf Group
Former Staffer Tells ABC News Anti-Crime Funds Given to Programs With  
The "Right" Connections.
By BRIAN ROSS, ANNA SCHECTER, and MURRAY WAAS

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5033256

June 9, 2008 —

A senior Justice Department official says a $500,000 federal grant to  
the World Golf Foundation is an appropriate use of money designed to  
deal with juvenile crime in America.

"We need something really attractive to engage the gangs and the  
street kids, golf is the hook," said J. Robert Flores, the  
administrator of the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice  
and Delinquency Prevention.

The Justice Department, in a decision by Flores, gave the money to the  
World Golf Foundation's First Tee program, even though Justice  
Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104  
applicants. The allegations were first reported earlier this year by  
the trade journal Youth Today.

"I don't know why people insist on denigrating it, it's a sound  
program," Flores told ABC News.

Current and former Justice Department employees allege that Flores  
ignored the staff rankings in favor of programs that had political,  
social or religious connections to the Bush White House.

The honorary chairman of the First Tee program is former President  
George Bush. On a videotape presentation, the former President Bush  
praised the program for "serving others and building character and  
building values."

The director of the golf program, Joe Louis BarrowJr., said the  
program would help teach inner city children because "golf is a game  
where values such as honesty, integrity and sportsmanship are  
essential."

The golf program grant is one of a number of Justice Department grants  
now coming under scrutiny by a Congressional committee which will hold  
hearings next week.

A key witness will be a former employee of Flores' office, Scott  
Peterson, who says the grants were awarded based more on politics than  
merit.

"This is cronyism, this is waste, fraud and abuse," Peterson told ABC  
News in an interview aired on Nightline Monday night.

Peterson says the money for the golf program is one of a number of  
grants awarded to lower-ranked applicants rated in rankings compiled  
by Justice Department staff members.

"It's a lot of our taxpayer money that's supposed to go for some of  
our most vulnerable children," Peterson said.

Peterson says current employees smuggled documents out of the Justice  
Department so he could provide them to ABC News as proof of the  
favoritism.

"More than a half dozen career employees through faxes, FedEx, made  
sure that you had this stuff," said Peterson.

Many top-rated programs were denied federal grants.

A program to help troubled teens in San Diego, Vista, was ranked  
number two by the staff out of 202 applicants in its category of  
prevention and intervention but was turned down for a grant to help  
deal with inner city teen violence in San Diego.

Another program, designed to train adult guards to deal with teens in  
custody, also was denied federal money even though it was ranked by  
the staff number 2 out of 104 in its category.

"What Flores did in this situation is he just stomped on the heads of  
kids who are very much at risk and in trouble in this country," said  
Earl Dunlap, who runs the guard training program for the National  
Partnership for Juvenile Services.

"He determined what the rules were gonna be and who was gonna play and  
who was gonna be welcome in his club. And everybody else could take a  
hike," said Dunlap of Flores.

In a telephone interview with ABC News, Flores defended his decisions  
as in the best overall interest of dealing with teen crime.

He said he was never bound by his staff's recommendations and that he  
made decisions based "on the overall" need in the country.

Flores was appointed to the position by President Bush six years ago  
and has overseen about $1.5 billion dollars in grants during that time.

His former employee, Scott Peterson, said Flores holds daily prayer  
sessions in the Justice Department office and frowns on giving grant  
money to organizations that provide sex education or condoms to  
teenagers.

Instead, said Peterson, Flores favors programs that promote sexual  
abstinence.

A Washington, D.C. program, Best Friends, that promotes abstinences  
was awarded $1.1 million by Flores even though it ranked 53rd on a  
list of 104 applicants.

Best Friends is run by Elayne Bennett, the wife of Bill Bennett, a  
former Republican cabinet member and now political commentator.

"We're really about positive friendships," she told ABC News at a  
recent charity gala that included many of Washington's GOP elite. "A  
good, solid friendship is a beautiful thing," she said.

Murray Waas is a Washington-based investigative reporter who primarily  
covers national security and law enforcement issues. He is a  
contributing editor to the National Journal and has also written for  
the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and other  
newspapers and magazines.

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