Michael Volpe

March 28, 2013

Dr. Donald C. Arthur

Dr. Donald C. Arthur parlayed a number of bogus academic degrees into an extremely successful career in the U.S. Navy, rising all the way to surgeon general of the Navy. He even had the nerve to wear a combat action ribbon as part of his official uniform at his retirement in 2007 despite never having been involved in combat. 

by Michael Volpe

The book Stolen Valor was released with some fanfare in 1998.  It detailed a bevy of individuals who falsely claimed combat action, especially during the Vietnam War. Since then, the Stolen Valor team, led by B. G. Burkett, has gained a reputation for exposing hucksters who falsely claim to have been in combat. Those individuals include Brian Leonard Creekmur, who falsely claimed to be a Navy Seal and sniper. Another individual exposed by the Stolen Valor team was Bill Hillar. Hillar falsely claimed to be a Green Beret and wound up being sentenced to 21 months in prison as a result.

In 2005, the Stolen Valor team began investigating Dr. Donald C. Arthur, then the surgeon general of the U.S. Navy. That’s because Dr. Arthur was seen wearing a combat action ribbon as part of his official uniform at his retirement in 2007 even though there was no record he’d seen combat.

March 11, 2013

Cardinal Donald Wuerl (Photo: World Tribune)

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of the Washington, D.C. Diocese, has an undeserved reputation as a “zero-tolerance” prelate when it comes to dealing with pedophile priests.

By Michael Volpe

As cardinals from around the world filed into the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, March 12, 2013, to elect the successor to Saint Peter, a great deal of pre-conclave speculation focused on the possibility of the election of the first American pope in history. The names of three U.S. cardinals were mentioned in a report on NPR’s “Morning Edition” by political reporter Cokie Roberts: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. Roberts cited Dolan for his telegenic, charismatic personality, O’Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan friar, for his down-to-earth humility, and Wuerl for his “management” expertise. There is a notion that the Vatican needs to undergo a sea change to regain its role as a moral authority, thus the focus on out-of-the-box thinking that might open the door at St. Peter’s to an American prelate. The odds against that happening are extremely long, but having Cardinal Wuerl in the mix may be a reflection of his “zero-tolerance” for pedophile priests that won him public acclaim during his years as a bishop. 

The new Pope will also have to face the charges of mismanagement at the Vatican bank and somehow find a way to move beyond the devastating revelations about the bitter infighting in the Vatican’s central administration known as the Curia. This embarrassing episode was set off in early 2012 when the Pope’s butler leaked an enormous stash of papal documents to an Italian reporter that provided an unprecedented inside look at the dysfunctional workings of the Vatican. Known as VatiLeaks, the expose was, no doubt, among the factors that led to Pope Benedict’s stunning announcement in February that he would end his eight-year reign and become the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years.

But no matter what else the new Pope does, he must be able to move the Catholic Church beyond the priest sex-abuse scandals that have engulfed the church for the last three decades. Other issues are also important, but cleansing the clergy of pedophiles is the most basic challenge the new Pope must meet.

Dec. 25, 2012

Emory University Medical School

Back in 1999, Dr. James Murtagh, a member of the faculty at the Emory University Medical School, had the temerity to cooperate with a National Institute of Health investigation of widespread grant fraud being perpetrated by his employer. Emory retaliated, ousting Dr. Murtagh and making his life as miserable as it can.

 by Michael Volpe

Emory University in Atlanta is a relatively small university with a very prominent reputation. It’s often referred to, along with Duke and Davidson and a few others, as being part of the “Ivy League of the South.” Because of Emory’s superior academic qualifications, its graduates dominate the ranks of the employed of most of Atlanta’s media, courts, business, and political worlds. But under this veneer of respectability that Emory projects, a great deal has been and continues to be amiss in its Medical School, particularly its dealings with Grady Hospital, one of the largest public care facilities for the poor in the world.

Emory’s treatment of Medical School faculty member Dr. James Murtagh has opened up a Pandora’s Box of ills. Rather than deal with the many issues of fraud and conflict of interest uncovered over the last 13 years by the National Institute of Health and other government agencies, Emory has persisted in stonewalling instead of reforming.

When Dr. James Murtagh first began cooperating with investigators from the National Institute of Health in 1999, he never imagined that the consequences of that would still be playing out in an Atlanta courtroom more than 13 years later.

Oct. 22, 2012

When roofer Gerald Beloin blew the whistle on a multi-million dollar roofing scam in New Hampshire in 2002, he became a target for government retaliation rather than a hero. Well into 2013 he is still paying the price for his temerity.         

by Michael Volpe

A roofer by trade, when Gerald Beloin came across a roofing scam in 2002 he subsequently discovered corruption at almost all levers of Hillsborough County government. At the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office he encountered grave indifference. The attorney general then was Kelly Ayotte, who is now a U.S. senator from the Granite State. 

Beloin said that in 2002, while preparing to bid on a job on the roof on his daughter’s school in Groffstown, not far from Manchester, he discovered that the roof was made of a material called tectum decking. Beloin felt this made the roof a ticking time bomb for caving in because of tectum’s sensitivity to moisture.

Beloin said he kept investigating and found that his competitors’ bids were far more expensive than necessary. On his website, he pointed to a Lowe’s roofing project in nearby Gilford, New Hampshire which he said cost a fraction of the bid on his daughter’s school. That project was 170,000 square feet and it cost $6 million. Meanwhile, the winning bid on his daughter’s school was $12 million and that project was for 25,000 square feet. Beloin’s own bid on that job was just under $5 million.