Robert Gibbs White House Press Briefing 1/28/09 PODCAST

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar MP3 52 mb James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 1:36 P.M. EST MR. GIBBS: Good afternoon, guys. Before we get started, I wanted to introduce Secretary Salazar, who is going to make his second trip as our Secretary of the Interior tomorrow -- he's going to go out West.

And I've invited him here to talk a little bit about the reform agenda that he's going to take with him on that trip, and answer a few questions. And then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So, Secretary.

SECRETARY SALAZAR: Thank you, Robert.

President Obama has immediately set high ethical standards for all of government as part of his reform agenda. As part of that commitment and implementing the reform agenda, I intend to do my part in the Department of Interior to make sure that scandals that have occurred in the past are properly dealt with, and that the problems that we uncover are fixed so that they don't occur again.

President Obama immediately made clear that the type of ethical transgressions, the blatant conflicts of interest, waste and abuses that we have seen over the last eight years will no longer be tolerated. Nowhere is President Obama's commitment to reform and to cleaning up the waste, fraud and abuse of the past more important than at the Department of Interior, which I now lead on his behalf.

Over the last eight years, the Department of Interior has been tarnished by ethical lapses, of criminal behavior that has extended to the very highest levels of government. The former deputy secretary of the department under the Bush administration, Steven Griles, was sent to prison. It is a department that the American people associate with Jack Abramoff. And it is a department that was tarnished by a scandal involving sex, drugs and inappropriate gifts from the oil and gas companies that the employees were in charge of overseeing.

The Lakewood, Colorado, office of the Minerals Management Service is taxed with making sure that taxpayers, the American taxpayers, collect their fair share from oil and gas development on their public lands. Last year that office collected $23 billion. That's $23 billion on behalf of the American people. Yet during the last administration, some of the employees of that office violated the public trust by accepting gifts and employment contracts from the very oil and gas companies that they were supposed to be holding accountable. FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

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