Taxpayer Dollars Spent on Trysts, Golf, Skiing

From an extra day's hotel stay so military officials can fit in a round of golf to federal workers who fly business class instead of coach, questionable travel expenditures have remained a persistent problem across the federal government in recent years, the Washington Times reports.

At the State Department, for instance, nearly 80 percent of the more than $300,000 in airfare reviewed at one little-known office in fiscal 2007 and 2008 went to pay for business-class airline tickets, and many of those purchases violated federal travel policy.

One senior manager at the National Science Foundation took or extended taxpayer-funded trips totaling more than $10,000 to facilitate liaisons with women in Paris, Tokyo and Vancouver.

And a former deputy secretary at the Pentagon repaid more than $17,000 after investigators said he extended official travel for personal reasons on more than a dozen trips, a finding the former official said he strongly denies.

The Washington Times obtained information about these and dozens of other internal travel-related investigations through Freedom of Information Act requests to federal agencies across government, as well as a review of public reports, audits and court records.

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