John Scarlett Quotes


As a bureaucracy becomes more established, it develops its own career structure. It is less dependent, and should be less dependent, on individual personalities. Absolutely no one is indispensable.


Related Quotes

At the time, Civil Service jobs were all appointed and the government employees could be fired at will regardless of whether the did their jobs well or not. The President and the Cabinet members spent huge amounts of time dealing with people looking for appointments (“place”)
and hearing complaints from civil servants who had been fired unjustly. Two years later, Congress passed the legislation. See 1.


“Assessing” did not mean evaluating. It described a process where each civil servamt was “assessed” an amount of money—based on his salary—that was to be paid to the Political Party that appointed him. The specific corrupt process of “assessing” he described well in {629355}. Roosevelt had worked at the local, state and Federal levels of government. All had tolerated a great deal of this form of corruption. At the time this article was written, the Federal reforms had begun to take effect. Some states and local governments followed, but the average level of corruption being most at the local level, next at the state level, and least at the Federal level, as TR observed then was essentially the same into the 21st century. Government corruption was generally less, but relatively it was worst at the local level and least at the Federal level. At the end of the 20th century for example, every Kentucky County Commissioner except 1 was convicted and jailed for taking bribes and kickbacks from highway and road construction contractors. Corruption at the Federal Level was less.


John Scarlett
John Scarlett
  • Born: August 18, 1948
  • Nationality: British
  • Profession: Intelligence Officer

Sir John McLeod Scarlett KCMG OBE is a British senior intelligence officer. He was Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this appointment, he had chaired the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).