Tax problems have plagued presidential cabinet picks before.

Jocelyn Elder's confirmation as President Bill Clinton's U.S. Surgeon General was held up in 1993 after questions were raised about her finances, including her husband's failure to pay Social Security or income taxes for a nurse that cared for his mother.

A decade later, former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was criticized for a whole host of tax and benefit issues that his former employees alleged at Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad company, CSX.

Both Elders and Snow were confirmed, albeit after somewhat-contentious confirmation hearings.

Timothy F. Geithner

But revelations that Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to run the Treasury Department, failed to pay parts of his income taxes -- a sizable problem for the incoming secretary of the nation's chief financial body -- has not drawn much ire from lawmakers or the public in the midst of an economic downturn.

The Treasury Secretary nominee failed to pay self-employment taxes on his International Monetary Fund income from 2001 to 2004. Geithner has paid $34,023 in back taxes along with $8,679 in interest for the mistakes -- uncovered in part during a 2006 audit and in more fully in recent vetting by Obama's transition team.

Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, Geithner told lawmakers that he had failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes because he mistakenly thought that his old employer was deducting those taxes from his paycheck.

A summary of Geithner's tax troubles:

More Investigations Documents

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In the Nick of Time » It only took $10 million, but a Justice Department official says that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer to the National Archives 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files. The plaintiff's lawyer in the lawsuit responds with: "I'll believe it when I see it." — Washington Post

Charges Filed Against 'Missing' Pilot » Marcus Schrenker, the Indiana businessman who allegedly faked his own death amid a crush of financial and legal problems, favored Armani suits, drove a silver Lexus and flew his own Piper aircraft. Now, the "daredevil" pilot faces federal charges after leading U.S. marshals on a multi-state scramble. — New York Times, Washington Post

The FBI's Prying Eyes on Blago » According to the Chicago Sun-Times, federal authorities trained a video camera on Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the final weeks of 2008 before his arrest. Fast forward to today, and another surreal scene unfolds: Blagojevich this morning presided over the Illinois Senate's swearing-in ceremonies shortly before the same lawmakers were seated as jurors in his impeachment trial. — Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune

And What of Rep. Rangel? » The ethics probe that dogged Charles B. Rangel late last year still hangs over the New York Democrat's head, but it hasn't limited his ability to negotiate a sweeping package of tax cuts being pushed by President-elect Barack Obama. — Politico

Swindlers Feast on Foreclosures » As home values across the country continue to plummet, the authorities say a new breed of swindler is preying on the tens of thousands of homeowners desperate to avoid foreclosure. — New York Times

Speaking of Swindlers » Thousands of investors who sought a piece of the action when oil and gas prices were soaring are looking to federal and state regulators to address complaints that they were lured into fraudulent investment schemes. The Securities and Exchange Commission says complaints from energy investors more than doubled between 2004 and 2007. — WSJ

After the jump...

BEST OF THE REST

In 2001, President Bush is sworn in by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, right, as wife Laura, center, holds the family Bible and daughters Jenna, second from left, and Barbara, right, watch. (Post / Frank Johnson)

By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post Staff Writer

Selling tickets to President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony on the National Mall isn't a crime. At least not yet.

Earlier this week, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to criminalize the scalping of next Tuesday's inaugural tickets. The bill, which would make it a misdemeanor to sell or try to sell tickets to the swearing-in ceremony or create fake tickets, now heads to the House for approval.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, has pledged to require everyone receiving a ticket from her office to promise not to re-sell the passes, or risk having them revoked.

"The Presidential Inauguration is one of the most important rituals of our democracy," Feinstein said in a statement. "The chance to witness it should not be bought and sold like tickets to a sporting event. These tickets are free and they should remain free for the American people."

The committee is distributing 240,000 free tickets through congressional offices, most of which have held lotteries or figured out other methods to give away tickets to constituents (those without tickets can watch the ceremony on one of nearly two dozen Jumbotrons).

Some well-known sporting and entertainment ticket Web sites, such as StubHub and eBay, have agreed not to sell Inauguration Day tickets. But others are still taking part in the lucrative trade.

Inside Sports & Entertainment Group, a New York-based marketing group specializing in hard-to-get tickets for events such as the Oscars and the Super Bowl, is still offering high-priced passes for Obama's swearing-in ceremony, including a $20,000 ticket for a VIP "yellow" area complete with a color-coded map showing how close they can get to the historic event.

If there had been other attacks, large attacks, many attacks, quite frankly--and this doesn't speak well to the country-- probably these things wouldn't have been an issue, people would have accepted it and the dark side would have been okay.

— Bob Woodward

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "believed another attack was very likely imminent," says Barton Gellman, the author of the Cheney book, "Angler."

At the beginning, a fear of what could happen next permeated throughout Washington, Gellman says.

Bush and Cheney believed "that there were crucial things they didn't know and that something worse might be around the corner," he said.

Woodward, who authored four books on the Bush presidency, said Cheney became the "self-appointed examiner of worst-case scenarios."

Bush recalled the intensity of those days during his closing news conference Monday: "Do you remember what it was like right after Sept. 11 around here? People were saying, 'How come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots?' Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do.

"When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about how come you didn't know this, that or the other ... and then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, 'How come you're connecting the dots?' "

How far to go when gathering such intelligence has been a running controversy of the Bush presidency. Lawmakers, policy groups, government officials and activists battled over disclosures of harsh interrogation tactics that many called torture, wiretapping of domestic phone conversations and secret prisons to house suspected terrorists in Europe and elsewhere.

The Bush-Cheney Legacy
The Washington Post's key coverage of George W. Bush's presidency, plus, a roundtable discussion by the Post's Bob Woodward and Barton Gellman.

See what else we're reading by subscribing to our GoogleReader feed, or following us on Twitter.

Official: Detainee Was Tortured » Susan J. Crawford, a retired judge who was named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured. Meanwhile, a former military prosecutor has filed a declaration in support of an Afghan detainee, citing chaos in the handling of Gitmo terror cases. — Washington Post

Political, Racial Bias Alleged at Justice » A former Justice Department official entrusted with enforcing civil rights laws refused to hire lawyers whom he labeled as "commies" and transferred another attorney for allegedly writing in "ebonics" and benefiting from "an affirmative action thing," according to an internal investigation released yesterday. — Washington Post

Geithner Grilled on Taxes » Timothy F. Geithner, Barack Obama's choice to oversee the Internal Revenue Service, spent yesterday explaining to senators how he made almost $43,000 worth of mistakes on his own tax returns, complicating what had been a smooth confirmation process. Meanwhile, as hearings begin for Transportation Secretary nominee Ray LaHood, watchdog groups cite concern over the former congressman's unapologetic advocacy of earmarks, a practice Obama opposes. — Washington Post

UnitedHealth Pays $50M in Fraud Case » Ending a practice doctors say underpaid them and led to higher costs for patients, UnitedHealth Group has agreed to pay $50 million to establish a new database to set payment rates. — Chicago Tribune, AP

Report Faults Iraq Contract » A $722 million contract to rebuild Iraq's oil and gas production facilities was marked by multiple changes, cost overruns, failure to meet schedules and lack of oversight, according to a new inspector general's report. — Washington Post

After the jump...

BEST OF THE REST

President George W. Bush says history will be the final judge of the success, or lack thereof, of the Iraq War.

Bob Woodward, the investigative reporter who has authored four books on Bush's presidency, agrees that the legacy of the war has yet to be determined. He calls the conflict a "war of choice" that hasn't come to a conclusion.

"As we know the war is not over, 146,000 troops there, almost the same number of civilian contractors," Woodward said. "It is a massive land army presence in the heart of the Middle East. Gen. (David) Petraeus is keeping that large force there because he know it's not over, it's not stabilized."

Woodward said Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was part of his "freedom agenda" and that the president believed he had "really pulled something off that was going to be important."

"You had the support, the encouragement of Cheney, the intelligence community saying Saddam has weapons of mass destruction," Woodward said during a Post roundtable discussion on Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's legacies. "And Bush looked at this as an opportunity."

In his closing news conference yesterday, Bush acknowledged that historians were poised to analyze every facet of his decision-making, including his then-unpopular decision to commit an additional 30,000 troops in 2007.

"The situation was, looked like it was going fine, and then violence for a period of time began to throw, throw the progress of Iraq into doubt," he said.

"And rather than accepting the status quo and saying, 'Oh, it's not worth it,' or 'the politics makes it difficult,' or, you know, 'the party may end up being -- you know, not doing well in the elections because of the violence in Iraq,' I decided to do something about it and sent 30,000 troops in as opposed to withdrawing." (A year before, U.S. officials estimated 1,000 attacks per week on U.S.-led forces. The surge helped stabilize the war-torn country and has caused the number of troop deaths to drop.)

The Bush-Cheney Legacy
The Washington Post's key coverage of George W. Bush's presidency, plus, a roundtable discussion by the Post's Bob Woodward and Barton Gellman.

"Washington Watchdogs," a periodic feature of the Post's Investigations blog, looks at the findings of the federal government's official investigators.

In Justice Department attorney Bradley Schlozman's world, "real Americans" were "right-thinking" conservatives and he sought to "gerrymander all of those crazy libs" out of the department's civil-rights division he headed, according to an exhaustive report released today by the department's inspector general into alleged politicization in hiring processes.

Investigators found that Schlozman, 37, who later went on to serve as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, routinely hired conservative attorneys over qualified lawyers perceived as "libs and commies."

As a result, many of the new hires Schlozman approved had little background in civil-rights law and had very little or no federal criminal experience. Instead, Schlozman largely pulled applicants from the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, colleagues said (supporters argued that Schlozman simply broadened the applicant pool to include lawyers from second- and third-tier law schools and that more conservative-leaning attorneys had applied after Bush was elected).

But a deputy attorney under Schlozman, Wan Kim, described his former boss as "ridiculously brash" and a man who made bold and sometimes reckless statements to impress others.

And several "unqualified applicants" hired by Schlozman included the niece of an "agency head in the Bush administration," a personal friend to former Virginia U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty and the girlfriend of a fellow attorney who had allegedly lied on her resume, investigators found.