This is from an editorial in the New York Times:

The Food and Drug Administration went into crisis mode this year as, short-staffed and underfunded, it scrambled to track tainted vegetables and medical products….[yet] a decision was made to hire outside public relations specialists - at a cost of $300,000 - to "create and foster a lasting positive image" for the agency.

But the outrage does not end there. The government requires competitive bidding for such contracts, but the F.D.A. official taxed with the image problem already had a friend at a Washington public relations firm picked out for the plum.

Full story in the Washington Post here.