The victims of Bernard Madoff's
breathtaking $50 billion swindle may be short on cash these
days, but they've got plenty of blame to pass around. A recent
target: Meaghan Cheung, the 37-year old S.E.C. regulator who gave
the Manhattan-based fraudster the all-clear back in 2006, despite
warnings from tipsters and her own probe in which she found
"no evidence of fraud." Turns out, there was plenty. Now
- thanks, Google! - Cheung will forever be linked to the
world's most notorious scammer. "I worked very hard for 10
years to make a career and a reputation that has been destroyed in
a month," she whimpered to a reporter earlier this year. Other
recent incidents have us wondering whether these cases are examples
of a
sloppy work ethic, incompetence, or wince-worthy proof that women
still feel hamstrung about dissenting in the office.
Some highlights:
Andrea Hurst, Julia Flescaker and Natalee
Rosenstein
Herman Rosenblat's agent, publicist and editor (respectively)
allegedly pushed for publication of his fabricated Holocaust memoir
Angel at the Fence, despite troubling questions raised by scholars
and Rosenblat's own family. After two appearances on Oprah, a
children’s book spin-off and movie deal in the works, the book was
finally scuttled just three months before it was supposed to have
hit shelves.
Anda Ray
The top environmental official at the Tennessee Valley Authority
kept insisting that a massive pre-Christmas spill of toxic coal ash
- the gritty, arsenic-laced byproduct of coal-burning power plants
- was virtually harmless, and that, at worst, it might create
respiratory problems "like from a dust storm." A month
later, Congress had convened hearings into what it dubbed a
"manmade disaster" and chided Ray for her assessment.
"This isn't harmless mud," snapped California Senator
Barbara Boxer.
Kaye Whitley
One in seven women deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan reports being
harassed or assaulted during her military service. As Director of
the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program,
Whitley is responsible for dealing with the epidemic, so we were
left scratching our heads last summer when, at the command of her
boss, she defied a subpoena to testify before Congress on that very
matter. "I have always followed orders from my
superiors," she explained curtly a month later, when she
finally did show up.
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