The role of the US Fish and Wildlife Service is to administer the program by distributing the collected funds to the states. Despite the program being entirely domestic in nature and FWS's role being legally limited to administration of the funds, FWS officials used funds from the Federal Aid Division to travel to Japan, Brazil, Holland and Italy while the Chief of Federal Aid had over 30 trips in a year and a half period which were approved by a subordinate.
New information reveals that the travel abuses reach well beyond the Washington office.
All but one of the trips were by FA employees from the Atlanta Regional office. Cleophas Cooke, the Assistant Regional Director for Federal Aid approved 19 of the trips and another FWS official approved 9. According to FWS officials, typically a regional office might send federal aid staff to one of the states within its region 2 to 4 times a year. Discounting the regional coordinators' meeting, the number of trips to Puerto Rico probably exceeds the average number of trips to any given state by regional Federal Aid staff by 2 to 5 times. Mr. Cooke said that because traveling there is expensive they try to address as many issues as they can in any given trip.