Overdue Audit Remains Months Away

A Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) audit of $225 million in federal funds spent over a three-year period by the Medical School and the School of Public Health is already four to eight months overdue, and HEW officials say the conclusion of the audit may still be months away.

"It is a long, slow process," Richard Ogden, assistant regional auditor of HEW's Boston office said earlier this week. The audit started a year after a School of Public Health professor sued the university and charged that federal funds had been misused from 1969 to 1975, and encompasses fiscal years 1975, 1976 and 1977.

The start of the audit was the culmination of a bizarre series of events resulting in Harvard's reimbursement of $132,000 in federal funds to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funds had been misspent in the school's Department of Nutrition.

The HEW audit examines more funds spent by the University than any other external investigation in Harvard's history.

"I do not know what is delaying the investigation, but I would like it to move along and get done with," Mitchell Adams, dean for financial affairs at the Medical School said yesterday. "We cooperate to the full extent that we can," he added, estimating that the audit of the Medical School might take another year to complete.

Hale Champion, financial vice-president in the years under audit, and now undersecretary for HEW, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Questions over the use of federal funds in the Medical School and the School of Public Health began in 1975, when Dr. Phin Cohen, a researcher and assistant professor of Nutrition at the School of Public Health since 1969, was not reappointed to his position. Cohen's salary was based on two NIH grants that he obtained in 1971, but which Harvard allegedly used to pay some expenses not related to the researcher's projects.

Cohen became increasingly uneasy about the methods the school was using to spend his grant money, and was not satisfied by the explanations offered by Dr. Fred Stare, who was then chairman of the Department of Nutrition. Without Stare's knowledge, Cohen went to University officials asking them to conduct an internal audit of the Medical School and School of Public Health grants.

Soon after Stare heard about Cohen's request for an audit, the department chairman withdrew Cohen's name from nomination for re-appointment. Stare said the recommendation was withdrawn on academic grounds.

Prior to Stare's withdrawal of the recommendation, Cohen was suggested for a 5-year position as an assistant or associate professor by an Ad Hoc Committee on Faculty Appointments.

Cohen then went to the NIH in December, 1975. His statements launched an investigation that led to Harvard's refund of $132,000 in grant money the following year.

NIH then requested that HEW conduct a full-scale investigation of grants to the Medical School and the School of Public Health. No action was taken until a year later, when Dr. Cohen's experiences were brought to the attention of a Congressional subcommittee charged with overseeing HEW.

See No Evil

At approximately the same time, April, 1977, Dr. Cohen filed a lawsuit against Harvard, the dean of the School of Public Health, and Dr. Stare. "I think the suit precipated the subsequent HEW audit," Cohen said last night. "It was a long time in coming," he added.

Harvard's motion to dismiss the case was denied, and the suit is now in the "discovery" stage, in which evidence is collected.

Officials of Harvard Internal Audit office, who are working with HEW on the audit, were not available for comment yesterday.