The guidelines sometimes permit informants like drug dealers or gang members to commit crimes to further an investigation.

Only new pediatric patients wait consistently longer for an appointment than the guidelines permit, because the pediatrician is available only two days a week, she said.

The Inspector General's survey found the authority's guidelines, which are based on average loads, permitted serious overcrowding on individual buses.

However, today's ethical guidelines would not permit this study to be carried out or replicated.

The guidelines permit legitimate information gathering, while they prohibit investigating particular persons or groups for their "constitutionally protected political activities," the report said.

In addition, the guidelines permit the commission to force a government to break up any national monopoly as punishment for granting illegal state aid to the company.

But the guidelines permit a judge to reduce a sentence in certain circumstances, among them if the defendant has significantly cooperated with prosecutors in an investigation.

But Presidents must be extremely cautious about actually using nuclear weapons, even where the guidelines permit it.

Even where there is risk of monopoly, the Justice Department's guidelines permit mergers that generate substantial operating efficiencies.