Interior Department Auditors Blocked from Doing their Jobs

Dana at Delaware Watch has already commented on this story in the New York Times:

Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were cheating the government.
...
The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dana covers the topic pretty well, so I'll just add one thought: Absent any evidence that Interior Department officials were actually taking bribes, we are left to conclude that these government employees think it's somehow in the public interest that oil companies are getting away with underpaying for the federal government's assets.