UPDATE: Salazar deputy thrown overboard

WASHINGTON - Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the head of the troubled agency that oversees offshore drilling has resigned.

Salazar announced the news Thursday at a congressional hearing where Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum was scheduled to testify. She did not appear.


Birnbaum and her agency have endured scathing criticism in the weeks since the Gulf oil spill over alleged lax oversight of drilling and what President Barack Obama has called an overly cozy relationship with industry.

Salazar said that Birnbaum resigned on her own terms and of her own volition.

Her departure came just hours before a news conference where Obama plans to address the spill and announce new safety protocols and an extension of a deep water drilling moratorium.

5 weeks since Gulf spill, Salazar's rhetoric ringing hollow

Exactly five weeks since the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, as oil continues to floor the southern coast, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar continues to talk tough about controlling the spill and cracking down on the corruption within his department that catered to the wishes of oil companies while ignoring environmental concerns.

But, increasingly, less people are buying what the Secretary is selling -- and some are even calling for him to step down.

"Ironically, two of the people who have been most integrally involved in destroying the Gulf Coast live in Colorado -- 'Heckuva Job [Michael Brown] Brownie', and 'Heckuva Job Kennie Salazar'," said David Sirota, a progressive radio host based in Denver.

After Salazar last week announced plans to split the Minerals Management Service into three divisions to root out the conflicts of interest between agents who grant drilling permits and those that accept royalties from oil companies, at least one senator is challenging Salazar to do more than simply reorganizing MMS.

"While I appreciate your recent announcement that the Department will reorganize MMS, I fear that a culture of incompetence and corruption will still exist at the agency unless broad scale personnel changes accompany that reorganization," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D- New Hampshire, in a letter to Salazar sent Wednesday morning. "It is time to abolish MMS and start anew with a new agency and new people."

Shaheen's letter comes a day after a new inspector general's report that documented "a revolving door of employment between MMS and the oil and gas industry"; and, in addition, there are reports of MMS employees using illegal drugs and looking at pornography on agency computers, although most of those transgressions occurred before Salazar took over at Interior last January.

Salazar took over promising to reform MMS and crack down on corruption within his department after a public sex scandal involving an MMS employee and someone in the oil industry -- evidence writ large of a wider pattern of fraternization and cozy relationships between the industry and the agency that is supposed to be regulating it.

Although Salazar has fired several of the individuals involved in the actions disclosed in those reports, MMS has continued a pattern of rubber-stamping drilling permits -- in many cases, with "categorical exclusions" exempting the oil companies from submitting the Environmental Impact Studies required under federal law. The lease on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, and the accompanying categorical exclusion, in fact, was renewed on Salazar's watch. And since the spill five weeks ago, even after Salazar called for a moratorium on any new drilling permits, more than a dozen have been issued -- most with categorical exclusions.

"This administration continues to be on auto-pilot," said Sirota. "Where is Ken Salazar? Why isn't anybody asking where he is? How does he still have a job? I think every person in America dreams of having the job security that Ken Salazar apparently seems to have -- dreams of screwing up in historic proportions and still getting to keep their job."

Sirota understands why the "Drill, baby, drill" crowd isn't attacking Salazar for so loosely regulating drilling -- he's more upset that environmentalists haven't been more vocal in calling for Salazar to take responsibility.

"The environmental movement doesn't want to put a Democratic administration under real scrutiny," Sirota said. "And the Republicans are actually closer to the oil industry than even the Obama administration. So you've got this crazy political dynamic where nobody is asking tough questions because everyone has a vested interest in not asking those questions."

Political analyst Norman Provizer doesn't disagree with that assessment, but argues that Salazar isn't solely responsible for the corrupt culture at MMS and a history of relaxed oversight.

"If we want to make a list of people to blame, it is a very long list," Provizer said. "And the people chanting 'Drill, baby, drill" should be on the list for not considering the potential consequences of offshore drilling. It's kind of like the problem we had with nuclear power: it only takes one accident.

"The reality is we're dealing with problems that have been brewing for a long period of time," Provizer said. "A giant bureaucracy is like a battleship. It does not turn and correct itself on a dime."

But, in Sirota's view, only political consequences will lead to real change at Interior.

"If there are no consequences to the people in charge, you can bet, probably, that nothing will change," he said. "It's easier not to regulate and hope for the best than to regulate and stir up a hornet's nest of corporate opposition. But, that's going to end up stinging us every now and again in a big way."

POSTSCRIPT: Salazar could be a no-show for Saturday commencement speech

Salazar is scheduled to give the commencement address this Saturday at the Denver School of Science and Technology, which finished in the top three of the Education Department's Commencement Challenge. But, in light of the ongoing crisis in the Gulf, Salazar is still adjusting his schedule and may have to cancel his appearance at DSST, according to his spokeswoman, Kendra Barkoff.

The Associated Press contributed to this report