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for example, Institute directors, program staff and offices (here ICOs) can take a grant that peer review scored highly and pass over it if they think there's too much work on the topic already. Or they can take a grant that scored badly and fund it if they think the work is important.

You can see that if IC directors and program staff are real scientists, not political hacks, this can be used for legitimate, positive purposes. And if not, if political cronies are installed, this system can be exploited. 3/

One stop for arbitrary, non-scientific decision-making for grant awards is to require institute officials to write specific justifications when awards are made outside of peer review ordering. /4