Top General Services Administration officials learned of a troubling discovery by the agency's watchdog office back in December: a GSA executive responsible for intelligence agency customers had gone to China a year earlier without telling anyone. The official not only held a top-secret compartmented information clearance that required him to report the trip, he failed to disclose decades-old felony arrests or report multiple contacts with foreign nationals, according to a Dec. 6, 2013, memo from the GSA Office of Inspector General to the agency's top acquisition and human resources officials.
There was more: The GSA employee misused a government travel card, made false statements on ethics and national security forms and failed to disclose an airplane he owned as an asset in a 2008 bankruptcy case, among other serious misconduct findings.
| The Times confirmed he is Norman Wear, a GSA employee working in the agency's Office of Customer Accounts and Research |
The investigation ended quietly without criminal charges late last year when the Justice Department declined to prosecute, according to the memo, which The Washington Times obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. |