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The Daily Signal
Most of
Government’s Own Watchdogs Say They’re Stonewalled
Melissa Quinn
August 07, 2014
A joint complaint from 47 of 73 inspectors general went to the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which meets in this hearing
room. (Photo: Oversight and Reform Committee)
More than half of the federal government’s inspectors general have
joined to lodge a formal complaint that the Obama administration places
“serious limitations” on their ability to uncover waste, fraud, and
abuse.
A total of 47 of the 73 government watchdogs sent the unprecedented
letter to leaders of two congressional committees, Fox News reported.
In their complaint, the inspectors general say:
Agency actions that limit, condition, or delay
access thus have profoundly negative consequences for our work: they
make us less effective, encourage other agencies to take similar
actions in the future, and erode the morale of the dedicated
professionals that make up our staffs.
The watchdogs include IGs from the National Security Agency, Department
of Homeland Security, and Department of Justice. They wrote Tuesday to
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
They call on the oversight leaders to reaffirm the commitment of
Congress to helping IGs combat waste, fraud, and abuse, and to exert
“all available powers to enforce” access to agencies that refuse to
comply.
Government bureaus, the IGs write, typically prevented them from
obtaining relevant information by calling it “privileged.” These
restrictions, they add, risk “leaving the agencies insulated from
scrutiny and unacceptably vulnerable to mismanagement and misconduct —
the very problems that our offices were established to review and that
the American people expect us to be able to address.”
Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation,
told The Daily Signal that the IGs’ letter is both unprecedented and
telling:
This unprecedented complaint by a majority of the
federal government’s inspectors general that the Obama administration
is obstructing their ability to investigate corruption shows just how
far the administration is willing to go to hide its wrongdoing.
The IGs describe three specific instances in which government agencies
would not give them access to records and other information needed to
do their oversight work properly:
The Peace Corps refused to provide records of
reported sexual assaults that were needed for an investigation into how
the agency handled such cases.
In a statement to Fox News, a Peace Corps spokeswoman reaffirmed the
agency’s commitment to “working with the inspector general to ensure
rigorous oversight while protecting the confidentiality and privacy of
volunteers who are sexually assaulted.”
The Department of Justice would not produce three
separate reviews until officials learned that the documents would be of
assistance to the agency’s leadership.
DOJ spokesman Brian Fallon told Fox that the inspector general received
all information requested, but that “because the documents at issue
included grand jury material, credit reports, and other information
whose dissemination is restricted by law, it was necessary to identify
exceptions to the law to accommodate the inspector general’s request.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Chemical
Safety and Hazard Investigation Board refused to provide requested
documents during an investigation.
House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said of the 47 IGs’
letter:
If there is anyone who should have transparency
[from the government], it should be the watchdogs inside the government
working for the president.
Because many IG reports and activities are not public until their
completion, Issa said, “some of the best examples of obstruction
probably are the ones the IGs don’t want to say in a public format.”
Inspectors general played a crucial role in investigating allegations
that the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party and other
conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. They also identified
internal weaknesses at the Export-Import Bank.
Inspectors general for both the IRS and the Export-Import Bank agencies
signed the letter.
Von Spakovsky, co-author of a book about Attorney General Eric
Holder’s Justice Department, said the allegations by the agency’s
inspector general are notable. He told The Daily Signal:
The complaint by the Justice Department’s IG is
particularly concerning and very revealing. Eric Holder has no
hesitation in abusing his power to prevent the public from finding out
about the rank politicization of justice and the attorney general’s
corrupt exploitation of his authority as the chief law enforcement
officer of the United States.
In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress in 1978 passed the
Inspector General Act establishing the initial 12 IG offices. The law
stipulates that each official watchdog has “complete, unfiltered, and
timely access to all information and materials available to the agency
that relate to that inspector general’s oversight activities, without
unreasonable administrative burdens,” the letter to the congressional
committees states.
Issa, saying “there has never been a letter even with a dozen IGs
complaining,” called the letter unprecedented. He added:
This is the majority of all inspectors general
saying not just in the examples they gave, but government wide, they
see a pattern that is making them unable to do their job.
The Oversight Committee chairman said he intends to hold hearings to
delve into issues raised by the IGs’ letter when lawmakers return to
Washington in September.
Read this and other articles with links and photos at The Daily Signal
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