Wednesday federal headlines – September 24, 2014

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive and In Depth radio shows each day. Our headlines are updated twice per day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — with the latest news affecting federal employees and contractors.

• The U.S. leads the first airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria. Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S. in the strikes. Qatar played a supporting role. The strikes began Monday, and the Pentagon says more can be expected in a persistent campaign. Reuters reports that Saudi sent four F-16 fighter jets, the UAE contributed four warplanes, Bahrain contributed two, and Qatar used a Mirage jet, which did not drop any bombs. The U.S. also used the strikes to introduce it’s most advanced fighter plane into the fight. An Air Force official said using the F-22 Raptor in combat was a “unique and momentous decision.” (Reuters)
• The man who gained entry to the White House after scaling a fence was interviewed twice this summer by Secret Service agents. A federal law enforcement official said Secret Service did not consider Omar Gonzalez a threat. Agents questioned Gonzalez after he was arrested in July at a traffic stop with a shotgun and a map of Washington, D.C., with the White House circled. In August, he was stopped by agents when found near the White House with a small hatchet. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson is expected to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee next week. (Associated Press)
• TechAmerica fires Mike Hettinger, its senior vice president for public sector, only nine months after hiring him. It’s the latest incident in a year of turmoil at the trade group. It hires two outside consultants to take over the federal practice. Hettinger was brought in after four senior executives marched out together to join the rival Information Technology Industry Council. Another trade group, CompTIA, acquired Tech America in May. Sources tell Federal News Radio, since then CompTIA has been steadily reducing the budget of TechAmerica’s public sector section. (Federal News Radio)
• Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning is suing the Defense Department to provide increased therapy for her gender identity disorder. Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, is serving a 35-year military prison sentence for leaking millions of classified military documents in 2010. Her lawyer says DoD is failing to provide her with necessary hormone and other treatments. The lawyer says Manning is at risk of self-castration and suicide. He calls the lack of treatment cruel and unusual punishment. Manning switched her gender identity shortly before her conviction in 2013. She’s serving her sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There she receives psychotherapy, but her lawyer says that’s not enough. (Associated Press)
• The Defense Department hopes to get a more accurate picture of sexual assault in the military with a new survey. Navy Times reports, more than 550,000 service members are asked to fill out the questionnaire, which was sent to all military women and 20 percent of men. The web-based survey is designed to be confidential and can be filled out on a home computer or smartphone. Previous surveys have been criticized for vague and ambiguous wording. The Pentagon hopes the detailed nature of the new survey will contribute to future policy on sexual assault prevention. (Navy Times)
• The Veterans Affairs Department needs to enlarge its team of ethics officers. That’s according to a new review by the Office of Government Ethics, which oversees ethics standards across the government. VA has just 19 lawyers and paralegals to ensure compliance by the department’s nearly 343,000 employees. VA General Counsel Tammy Kennedy says the team is big enough. She cites online training and ethics counseling by phone, email and video chat. Still, the VA ethics group is small in comparison with other departments. The OGE finds VA’s ratio of employees to ethics staff is four times that of Agriculture, the department with the next-smallest ethics staff. (Federal News Radio)
• Activists concerned with prescription drug abuse call for the top official at the Food and Drug Administration to step down. More than a dozen groups ask the Obama administration to replace Dr. Margaret Hamburg in a letter released today. They say her leadership has contributed to the national epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse. Hamburg says the drugs help the millions of Americans who suffer chronic pain. Yet, activists point to deaths linked to addictive painkillers, which have tripled in the past twenty years. (Associated Press)
• The FAA’s signature air traffic system upgrade is failing to gain altitude. An audit by the Transportation Department’s inspector general finds, the public costs now outweigh the benefits by nearly $600 million. The IG looked into the satellite navigation portion of what the FAA calls the Next Generation Air Transportation System. FAA has completed 624 towers of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADSB. But few airlines are using it, and the IG says full use is likely to be years away. That’s because of incomplete requirements and the cost associated with re-equipping planes. ADSB will eventually let aircraft navigate by GPS instead of ground-based radar. (