Zoo Operates Under Gaps In Oversight

Spelman said the animal-care committee "should have an external member, it should meet regularly, it should be a known entity, and it wasn't. We need to have it. It is important."

* Smithsonian Inspector General Thomas D. Blair, the independent internal watchdog for the institution, has looked into the deaths of at least two zebras and two red pandas at the zoo in the past four years, but some zoo employees said the investigations fizzled with negligible results. A Post review of thousands of pages of zoo records and interviews with current and former zoo employees found that human error has marked the deaths of 23 animals since 1998 and that some veterinary records were changed after the fact.

Blair looked into Spelman's role in cutting the diet of an endangered zebra that died of hypothermia and starvation in February 2000, but the investigation waned after she was made zoo director four months later. Blair, who declined to comment last week, said earlier this year that the allegation was left with the zoo's animal-care committee. But the committee's co-chairman, veterinary pathologist Donald K. Nichols, said that after Spelman became director, committee members became conflicted about investigating their boss.

Nichols, who has served notice that he is leaving the zoo, recently submitted a 48-page letter and records to the National Academy of Sciences, which is investigating zoo deaths. He detailed 21 cases that he says represent "long-standing and on-going incompetence, malfeasance and/or malpractice of veterinary medicine."

"It soon became obvious to me that the zoo's administration was not going to reprimand Spelman for the culpability she had in causing the zebra's death, and the investigation by [Deputy Inspector General Richard C.] Otto dragged on for many months," Nichols wrote to the science academy.

Nichols said: "Otto also reminded me that Spelman was 'hand-picked' by Secretary [Lawrence M.] Small to be the Zoo Director. He then warned me that if I did anything that made Spelman look bad, there undoubtedly would be consequences generated from the Smithsonian's administration that would adversely affect me and my career."

Asked to comment, Otto, who is now retired, said Nichols's concerns were warranted. "Generally, the Smithsonian just doesn't get that, as a public trust, it is obligated, unconditionally, to complete transparency and meaningful accountability," Otto said.

Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said officials would never retaliate against anyone for speaking publicly about problems with Spelman. She said Otto's comment was incorrect, adding, "It might be that since Otto is no longer at the Smithsonian that he is not up-to-date about what's going on."

The Smithsonian is currently fighting with the D.C. Department of Health over a $650 fine against the zoo for hiring an unlicensed pest-control company to kill rats that had overrun animal enclosures. Two endangered red pandas died in January after the fumigators buried rat poison in their pen. A Health Department attorney said the case was important "to ensure the protection of public health."

An attorney for the Smithsonian told the city in a letter that D.C. regulations do not apply to the zoo because, as a part of the Smithsonian, the zoo has "immunity."

A popular attraction at the zoo since her arrival in 1956, Nancy suffered during the last two years of her life from little appetite, weight loss, lethargy and ventral edema, in which fluid seeps from the bloodstream and collects in the skin of the belly, according to a review of hundreds of pages of veterinary records and zookeeper reports. All are symptoms of TB, a disease treatable in elephants with human antibiotics, according to published veterinary literature.

Nancy also was having difficulty walking, a common ailment among captive elephants forced to tread on hard concrete instead of the softer soil of their native habitat.