John C Beale lied about CIA job to avoid doing his job

THIS man lied about being a CIA operative to avoid doing his actual job for months at a time. Instead he read books at his holiday house. How did he fool his bosses for so long?

ONE of the US's leading climate change experts should go to prison for 30 months because he lied about being a CIA operative to avoid doing his actual job, prosecutors say.

John C Beale, formally the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) highest-paid employee, pleaded guilty earlier this year to cheating the government out of almost $US1 million over a decade and is set to be sentenced in Washington DC.

Prosecutors said his lies amounted to a "crime of massive proportion" that were "offensive" to real members of CIA, NBC reported.

Beale's lawyer has asked for leniency in his sentencing and has attributed his strange stories to psychological issues.

Beale pleaded guilty in September to defrauding the US government. He was paid a salary and bonuses of $206,000 per year but did not show up for work for months at a time. His longest absence stretched over 18 months, starting in June 2011 during which he did "absolutely no work".

He would explain his absence by saying he was doing CIA work at agency headquarters or in Pakistan.

Instead Beale would spend time at his home in Northern Virginia "riding bikes, doing housework and reading books", or at a holiday house on Cape Cod.

Beale's attorney John Kern wrote: "With the help of his therapist Mr Beale has come to recognise that, beyond the motive of greed, his theft and deception were animated by a highly self-destructive and dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behaviour."

Beale was driven "to manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives … that are fuelled by his insecurities," Mr Kern said.

EPA assistant inspector general Patrick Sullivan, who led an investigation into Beale's fraud, said he was shocked at the extent of the deception.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, how could this possibly have happened in this agency?' I've worked for the government for 35 years. I've never seen a situation like this."

Reports by the EPA inspector general's office concluded that the agency "enabled" Beale because they did not verify any of his fake cover stories about CIA work.

EPA officials also failed to check the validity of bonuses and travel expenses incurred by Beale - including first-class trips to London - which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Beale retired in April after learning he was under investigation.

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