Three top officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rigged an economic study to justify spending $1 billion to expand a system of locks along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, according to a Pentagon investigation released yesterday. The report by the Army’s inspector general also found that the agency has an institutional bias toward huge river construction projects regardless of their cost. Corps leaders had predicted in congressional hearings that the report would fully vindicate their agency, but instead it supported several of the allegations of whistle-blower Don Sweeney. Sweeney was removed as head of the economic study on the locks system after he found that the costs of the system would outweigh the benefits.
