A rule that limits Republican senators to six years as committee leaders means that Senator Charles “Chuck” Grassley (right) will soon be leaving the Senate Finance Committee, where he has made himself Watchdog-in-Chief of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

But the Iowa Republican is not going quietly. Today, in a characteristic joust, he publicized a pointed letter he fired off last Friday to NIH director Francis Collins, and to Harold Varmus, the former NIH director who has headed the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since mid-July.

Grassley’s concerns are twofold: the extent of travel by NCI employees in which others pay the bill; and whether an NCI ethics officer was inappropriately disciplined for raising questions about that travel.

In the letter, Grassley asks NCI for data on every sponsored trip approved by NCI officials in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Such trips can be paid by non-NIH entities including corporations, universities and societies, but meticulous assessments and reporting requirements obtain and are policed by the Office of Government Ethics.

“It has been reported to me,” Grassley writes to Collins and Varmus, “that in 2008 and 2009, numerous NCI employees took between 10 and 20 sponsored travel trips. Many of the trips cost in excess of $10,000, and some trips cost over $17,000. In addition, the destinations were almost exclusively international, to countries like Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, China and Brazil, just to name a few. In fact, the only domestic locations seem to have been California and West Palm Beach, Florida.”

Nor does Grassley’s catalogue of details stop there. He lists 16 NCI employees and the number of trips they took in recent years. They include senior employees like Susan Gottesman (17 trips in 2009); Lee Helman (25 trips in 2008 and 2009 combined); and Chand Khanna (31 trips in both years combined.)

Grassley also writes of his concern that the then-director of NCI’s Office of Ethics was punished by being transferred earlier this year after she raised questions about the relevance, appropriateness and destinations of trips taken by NCI employees. Grassley quotes part of a scathing letter to her from her superior, who is identified as “NCI’s Acting Executive Officer.” This person insists that she limit her questions about sponsored trips to whether conflicts exist, and leave the issues of where the conferences are, the relevance of the event to NCI’s mission, and the duration of the traveler’s absence, to the traveler’s supervisor.

Apparently, she didn’t bend. Grassley writes:

“The information I have received to date indicates that in May and July 2010, the Director of the NCI Office of Ethics was disciplined and transferred out of NCI. It also appears that the ethics official may have been disciplined for pretextual reasons, but in reality was disciplined for attempting to perform just the sort of thorough analysis required by law, regulation and NIH policy. If so, this is an extremely troubling development and may call into question the integrity of NCI’s programs and operations.”

Grassley’s office, in reply to a reporter’s question late Tuesday, corrected itself on one point, saying that the former ethics office director was transferred within, and not out of, NCI.

John Burklow, an NIH spokesman reached on Tuesday evening, said that the agency could not comment on personnel matters. But he noted that sponsored travel is authorized by Congress and governed by federal regulations and that each proposed trip receives four levels of review at the NCI. Scientists do not receive honoraria for attending the meetings, he added. “There is no personal monetary benefit.”

Burklow says that, on an initial analysis as it began to respond to Grassley’s questions, NCI found that the “vast majority” of such trips were paid for by universities and societies, and not by companies.

“The purpose of sponsored travel is to allow or enable [our intramural] scientists to share their work and also have discussions, learn from other scientists,” Burklow says. “It’s a benefit to the scientists but obviously to the taxpayers [too], because outside entitites are paying for the travel. This is really an important way that science advances.”

As for the international destinations that Grassley noted, Burklow says that NIH scientists “go where the meetings are….Meetings are held around the world.”

Burklow added that the agency is working “very quickly to provide a thorough response” to Grassley’s letter. It has its work cut out for it: the senator has asked NCI for an accounting not only of all sponsored trips by its intramural researchers in 2008, 2009 and 2010 – including the total value of all those trips — but for the same information on all government-paid trips by NCI employees in that time period.