U.S. Senator Charles E. GrassleyU.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley is investigating travel spending by the Smithsonian Institution and its leader.

The Iowa Republican has asked the Smithsonian's Office of the Inspector General – which is charged with rooting out waste and fraud – for travel records for Secretary G. Wayne Clough and his wife, Anne.

Grassley's inquiry came in response to a story published by JunketSleuth on Feb. 2, which reported that Clough and his wife spent $112,000 on travel between July 2008 and July 2011.

The story said records the Smithsonian turned over in response to a request under the federal Freedom of Information Act showed that outside sources paid for all of the travel, which included trips to France, Antarctica, Africa and Alaska.

The story also reported that Clough frequently cited a medical condition to get approval to travel first class or business class, even for domestic flights.

G. W. Clough at a fossil digOutside sources financed more than $112,000 of travel for the head of the Smithsonian Institution and his wife, including trips to France, Alaska and resort destinations in Colorado and Florida.

Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough took a total of 59 trips over a three-year period, according to records obtained by JunketSleuth.com through the federal Freedom of Information Act. His wife accompanied him on at least 10 of those trips, records show.

All of their trips were financed by private donors and other sources outside the Smithsonian.

Between July 2008 to July 2011, records show, Clough spent 191 days traveling – an average of more than 63 days a year.

Although the Smithsonian provided basic details of Clough's travels in response to our Freedom of Information Act request, it redacted other pertinent information, including people he met with, places he visited and individuals or organizations that covered some of the costs.

American Samoans in Washington DC The Social Security Administration spent more than $400,000 on an awards ceremony in Baltimore last year, even as the system that provides retirement and disability payments to millions of Americans slipped into the red for the first time since the early 1980s.

An examination by JunketSleuth.com, which obtained records through the federal Freedom of Information Act, shows that the spending included $11,000 to fly three agency employees from American Samoa.

Pafuti Ana Tupua, Rowena L. Jennings and Nina Patu-A’asa traveled more than 7,000 miles at taxpayer expense in September 2010 to receive an award for their role in recovery efforts after a devastating tsunami hit the U.S. territory, a chain of islands in the South Pacific.

Prague. (Photo by Petr Novák, Wikipedia)As the fund that insures pensions for more than 44 million Americans slipped deeper and deeper into deficit, employees of the federal agency overseeing it spent more and more money on travel.

Between 2007 and 2010, travel spending for the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation increased 24 percent, from $819,190 to more than $1 million. During the same period, the number of employees increased 12 percent, to 948.

In just one year, from 2009 to 2010, travel spending increased about 21 percent, while the number of employees increased 3.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the gap between the assets the PBGC manages and the benefits promised to retirees widened.

Open Season on OPMThe federal Office of Personnel Management is not just denying JunketSleuth’s repeated requests for employee travel records.

It’s ignoring every request we made.

For 21 months, the agency, which recruits and helps retain the federal government’s workforce, has simply refused to officially acknowledge the repeated requests and appeals that JunketSleuth sent to the address listed on the agency’s website.

The requests were filed under the Federal Freedom of Information Act, a law that helps ensure open government – and our democracy – by ensuring citizens access to government records.

Elvis Presley US postage stampThe federal agency that oversees the Voice of America spent thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to cover the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth, and even a paintball re-enactment of the Battle of Stalingrad.

That agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, also spent more than $35,000 in federal money on trips with stops for a Voice of America soccer tournament in Burundi and an anniversary celebration for its radio station serving Bangladesh.

All of those trips were included in the $19.4 million in travel spending that the agency racked up between 2007 and 2010.

JunketSleuth examined more than 20,817 electronic records related to 4,785 trips by employees of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which also operates Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and a number of other television stations, radio stations and Internet sites.

FDIC logoThe Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. recently confirmed that it possesses the employee travel records that JunketSleuth has been seeking for nearly two years.

By complying – for the first time – with a very specific request we submitted under the federal Freedom of Information Act, the agency showed that it:

– Knows where to find the records.

Tel Aviv HiltonIn June 2009, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Kathleen L. Casey began a whirlwind of travel that took her to Israel, Japan, Switzerland and France in the space of a month.

While in Israel, Casey rang up $36 in hotel charges in a single day for soft drinks, cashews and almonds.

In Japan, she made a telephone call that cost $64.

In Switzerland, Casey’s bill for two nights included $213 in phone charges. And in France, her one-night stay at the Castile Hotel in Paris included $308 for the room, $272 in meal charges ($187 of that for dinner), and $36 in mini-bar charges.

Travel records obtained by JunketSleuth through the federal Freedom of Information Act show that that Casey was hardly the only SEC representative whose trips included questionable charges.

Bolongo Beach Resort, St. ThomasChina, Kenya, Jamaica and Norway are a long way from the Beverly Bus Garage Federal Credit Union on Chicago’s far south side.

But the credit union’s 985 members, many of them workers who drive and repair Chicago Transit Authority buses, helped finance trips to those countries by employees of the federal agency that oversees the nation’s credit unions.

Employees of the National Credit Union Administration, which is financed mainly by the institutions it oversees, also went to Japan, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Poland and many other foreign destinations.

The list includes the Mexican resort cities of Acapulco, Cancun and San Jose Del Cabo, and a German ski area called Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

FTC logoNearly one of every three travel dollars spent by employees of the federal agency charged with combating unfair trade practices went for trips to foreign nations, which are not under the agency’s jurisdiction.

Between August 2006 and December 2009, Federal Trade Commission employees took 718 international trips, to 117 destinations.

Paris was the most popular city for foreign travel, with 62 trips, followed by Brussels – the headquarters of the European Union – with 47 trips. But the destinations also included tourist spots such as the Caribbean island of Aruba and the South Korean island of Cheju.

JunketSleuth obtained the FTC’s travel records in response to requests made under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Today, we are posting the FTC travel database, which contains 6,022 trip records. We’re also posting copies of hundreds of pages of hotel receipts, airline reservations and other paper records documenting trips by former and current agency officials.