This month marks 10 years since John C. Beale, the highest-paid employee at the Environmental Protection Agency, was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison. Beale told his bosses he was a CIA spy working in London, India and Pakistan when he was actually kicking back at his vacation home. That fakery was hardly his only problem.

When he applied with the EPA in 1989, John Beale claimed he had worked for former senator John Tunney of California. He didn’t, and nobody bothered to check. Beale said he served in Vietnam, where he contracted malaria and therefore needed a handicapped parking spot. He didn’t serve in Vietnam, and didn’t contract malaria. Nobody checked those claims either and Beale got his handicapped parking spot.

In 1994, Beale told his bosses he was a secret agent for the CIA but nobody at the EPA picked up the phone to verify that whopper. That empowered Beale to take more than two years off, with full pay, claiming to be in London, India, and Pakistan when he was actually performing no work. Beale pulled off his CIA ruse for nearly 20........

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