Dead Buffalo Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test
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A senior Interior Department official was awarded his own buffalo to hunt and kill on a billionaire’s private ranch a month before his office designated Houston as a port for exotic wildlife -- a move that benefited the ranch owner.
The official’s involvement “was inappropriate and violated the appearance standard,” the department’s inspector general said in a report.
The official, David P. Smith, was deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks when he shot and killed the buffalo in the first weekend of December 2004.
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