Did lower-tier officials think some complaints were unreliable?
A study shows how citizen complaints posted publicly online in a Chinese city are concealed from upper-level authorities when they implicate lower-tier officials or associates connected to lower-tier officials through patronage ties.
The vast majority involved are second-tier officials of the Clinton administration, eager to help another Democrat take control of the White House.
Seizing the moment, three second-tier officials — Michael V. Forrestal, W. Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman — set out to provide it.
In their investigation of the email archive, Pan and Chen found it contained not just internal communications among lower-tier officials of the city but messages they sent to senior authorities as well.
People at the pinnacle of power saw him as a threat and wanted him behind bars; their efforts were supported by corrupt middle-tier officials who wanted to raid the assets of Yukos, the company he built.
Television reports about second-tier officials being arrested are seen by the public not as part of Mr Putin's anti-corruption campaign but as confirmation that corruption is ubiquitous.
Whitley Bruner, a retired intelligence officer who was a senior member of the C.I.A.'s task force on Iraq a decade ago, said that the new interim government in Iraq is urgently seeking ways to provide affordable security for second-tier officials — the men and women who make the government work.
In another ominous sign, Prime Minister Youssef Chahed — who gained popularity for openly declaring a war on corruption several months ago — formed a new government in a ministerial reshuffle days before the passage of the reconciliation law that includes Ben Ali's finance minister, Ben Ali's education minister and other second- and third-tier officials from the former ruling RCD party.
The law similarly gives the DNI control over the agencies' personnel, but here too there is devilment in the detail: in practice, the DNI can veto the appointment of some second-tier officials, but he will not be able to sack agency chiefs.To shore up the DNI's putative powers, Mr Bush has suggested that Mr Negroponte, not Mr Goss, will deliver his morning intelligence briefing.
On the other hand, these upper-tier officials are not manipulated by numbers.
