Cheney Torture Toady, And CIA Director, General Michael Hayden Puts A Horse's Head In The Bed Of The CIA Inspector General

From today's New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

The review is particularly focused on complaints that Mr. Helgerson’s office has not acted as a fair and impartial judge of agency operations but instead has begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.

Any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would be unusual, if not unprecedented, and would threaten to undermine the independence of the office, some current and former officials say.

Frederick P. Hitz, who served as C.I.A. inspector general from 1990 to 1998, said he had no first-hand information about current conflicts inside the agency. But Mr. Hitz said any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would “not be proper.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Mr. Hitz, who now teaches at the University of Virginia. “Under the statute, the inspector general has the right to investigate the director. How can you do that and have the director turn around and investigate the IG?” ...

Ok, lets start off with the admission that I can actually envision a situation where CIA Director Michael Hayden's argument could have some validity. I would think covert foreign intel operations are a very difficult thing to apply standard Inspector General protocols to. But I don't see any validity whatsoever in the situation described here. In the first place, the detention and interrogation (torture) programs are not transitory spy v. spy James Bond deals. They are static programs and locations, really no different than military prisons and interrogations, or FBI work and Federal Prisons, in general character. Tailor made for an independent Inspector General. Secondly, who in the world doesn't believe that seriously malevolent and criminal activity hasn't been the rule, not the exception, in the detention and interrogation programs. The United States Supreme Court has even said so on several aspects; not to mention every monitoring body in the world.

The crux of the issue here though is, even if there was a legitimate argument (again, that just doesn't hold water here), this is an outrageously wrong, improper, unethical, immoral and illegal way to go about addressing it. There are no provisions that permit a subject agency to investigate it's own Inspector General; moreover, the very concept is completely antithetical to the nature and purpose of an IG. The Times article says it is unprecedented; that is probably an understatement. This action by Hayden, undoubtedly undertaken under the direct authority of Vice-President Dick Cheney, is malicious and beyond the pale. With no attempt to use the designated avenues of recourse provided for agencies against their IGs, it is nothing short of putting a severed horse's head in Inspector General Helgerson's bed to let him know the score. A pure attempt to chill, obstruct and threaten the IG's work at the behest and direction of the subjects being investigated.

General Michael Hayden self servingly says not to worry, this is perfectly proper and above board, “His only goal is to help this office, like any office at the agency, do its vital work even better,” For the foregoing reasons, that is a laughable pile of horse manure. One other thought; since when did the jurisdiction of the CIA get expanded to investigation of domestic governmental agencies and officers? Is that part of another secret Bush/Cheney executive order we don't know about? It seems like a new concept, and a pretty malevolent one at that. There is simply no limit to the outrageous, unprecedented and unethical extremes the Bush/Cheney Administration will go to to obstruct and avoid accountability and responsibility for their immoral and illegal conduct. It is time for this to stop.

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More questions about First Kuwaiti

First Corruption Kuwaiti is in trouble again, this time for a kickback scheme in which it is alleged that the company arranged to pay a $200,000 kickback for two additional, unrelated projects in Iraq.

...a now-sealed court document obtained by The Associated Press, allegedly involved First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting and a manager for Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. or KBR, a firm hired to handle logistics for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The document summarizes grand jury testimony from the former KBR manager, Anthony J. Martin, who pleaded guilty in July to taking kickbacks in 2003.

Although the government has tried to keep First Kuwaiti's name out of public records related to Martin's case, details from his grand jury testimony were found by a defense lawyer, J. Scott Arthur of Orland Park, Ill., who included a summary in a six-page document filed last Friday in an unrelated federal court case in Rock Island, Ill. The AP downloaded a copy of the document from the court's Web site shortly before a judge ordered the document sealed and removed from the public record.

According to the court document, Martin testified to a federal grand jury that he engaged in the kickback scheme with Lebanese businessman Wadih Al Absi, who controls First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. The company is building the $592 million Baghdad embassy, the largest in the world with working space for about 1,000 people.

These questions come amid the House Oversight Committee investigating the Inspector General for State over allegations the IG stifled investigations into acts of malfeasance by First Kuwaiti. The company is closely tied to Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was a subsidiary of Halliburton, the war-profiteering company formerly headed by Dick Cheney. Amid investigations coming to light, Halliburton has divested itself of KBR.

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Waxman Investigating the IG for State

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged today in a 13-page letter that Howard J. Krongard, the Inspector General for the State Department has exhibited a persistent tendency to censor reports that might embarrass the administration, and has repeatedly thwarted investigations of the State Department. The letter was signed by Chairman Henry Waxman and released today by the committee.

The Oversight Committee based the charges on the testimony of seven current and former members of the IG’s staff, including two former senior officials who spoke on the record with no stipulation of anonymity. The letter clarifies that the charges are not limited to a single unit, but that the pattern is pervasive, affecting all three divisions of the IG’s office – audits, investigations and inspections.

…The letter charged that Krongard "interfered with ongoing investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment." It said that "your strong affinity with State Department leadership and your partisan political ties have led you to halt investigations, censor reports and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies."

…Waxman accused Krongard of refusing to send investigators to Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate $3 billion worth of State Department contracts; preventing his investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department probe into waste and fraud in the construction of the U.S. embassy in Iraq; using "highly irregular" procedures to personally exonerate the embassy's prime contractor of labor abuses; interfering in the probe of a close friend of former White House adviser Karl Rove; censoring reports on embassies to prevent full disclosure to Congress; and refusing to publish critical audits of State's financial statements.

Inspectors General are supposed to be independent and objective investigators of waste, fraud and abuse, rather than ideology-driven agenda whores. Of course, the Bush maladministration has stood this notion on it’s head and applied a test of partisanship to everything. Prior to the appointment of Krongard, the IG for State had traditionally been a Foreign Service officer. Krongard was previously employed by an international law firm and had been general counsel for Deloitte & Touche

Emails of exchanges between staff members discussing Krongard’s decision to stonewall the Justice Department on the embassy investigation.

"Wow, as we all [k]now that is not the normal and proper procedure," an investigator wrote to Assistant IG John A. DeDona. DeDona forwarded the e-mail to the Deputy IG, William E. Todd, saying, "I have always viewed myself as a loyal soldier but hopefully you sense my frustration in my voicemail yesterday."

Todd wrote back: "I know you are very frustrated. John, you need to convey to the troops the truth, the IG told us both Tuesday to stand down on this and not assist, that needs to be the message."

DeDona responded: "Unfortunately, under the current regime, the view within INV [the office of investigations] is to keep working the BS cases within the beltway, and let us not rock the boat with more significant investigations."

The committee subpoenaed the work product for the embassy report which Krongard personally drafted, that exonerated the contractor building the new embassy in Iraq, First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co. The company was accused of horribly abusive labor practices, including holding employees against their will, but Krongard let First Kuwaiti off the hook with a mere six pages of vague, handwritten notes, showing that he interviewed only six employees – who were selected by First Kuwaiti. "Contrary to established investigative procedures, you allowed the subject of the investigation, First Kuwaiti, to select the employees you interviewed," Waxman charged. He added that the interview notes “did not show how thoroughly each employee was interviewed.”

Waxman charges that Krongard has, by his actions, created a “dysfunctional office environment” and that he routinely berated and belittled personnel, treated career government professionals contemptuously, and fostered an environment where people actually feared coming to work. The letter asserts that the high turnover in the department – which has resulted in only seven of 27 investigator positions currently filled – is due to the feckless leadership of Krongard.

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Claire McCaskill Has No Use For President Bush's "Heckofajob" Inspector Generals

On June 14, I reported on the case of Michael Griffin, NASA's ethically challenged general counsel, who destroyed video evidence he knew was needed by the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Science and Technology Committee. His behavior was so outrageous that even Republicans on the Committee are demanding the AG take action.

While I was focused on Griffin, my senator Claire McCaskill was looking hard at the more important underlying scandal involving the mad cap antics of NASA Inspector General Robert Cobb, who has been accused of abusing his authority and improperly consulting with NASA's head for guidance on how the agency wanted its audits conducted. On at least two occasions, Cobb is alleged to have interfered with the execution of search warrants of NASA offices, apparently fearing what might be found would make the agency look bad.

Cobb's conduct was odd because an Inspector General is the Federal Government equivalent of an auditor. Auditors are those utterly indispensable people who look over an agency's shoulder making sure the agency is following the law and established procedure, and that its books balance. They force administrators to defend their actions. Most of them take pride in finding things that need improvement. They are most definitely not in the business of making sure officials look good.

McCaskill was Missouri's Auditor prior to her election to the Senate. She took her job very seriously. She knows that no professional auditor would ever meet with an agency head to ask how he wanted an audit conducted, nor would any professional auditor interfere with the execution of warrants out of fear of making an agency look bad. Generally, you expect an auditor (IG) to be the person telling the agency head what to produce and seeking warrants when the agency doesn't.

Auditors work for the people, and not the administration. That is why in most states they are elected. Missourians understand the importance of auditor independence. As in the case of McCaskill they often elect someone from the party out of power to fill the role. It's not required, it just happens.

It seems that NASA IG Cobb, a loyal Bushie of the "heckofajob Brownie" variety, had no audit or investigatory experience prior to being appointed by the President. Apparently he had no idea what he was supposed to do as IG. After all, his was a political appointment, and it is well known that being a loyal Bushie is good enough to keep the White House happy.

According to McCaskill

Other IGs have been tied to potential misconduct as well. The Office of Special Council concluded that Department of Commerce IG Johnnie Frazier had wrongfully retaliated against employees who had questioned his excessive travel, and the Acting IG for the Environmental Protection Agency is currently being investigated for his plan to cut 60 staff members. Around the same time, he took a $15,000 bonus from the agency. In an instance of apparent misconduct by agency officials, former Homeland Security IG Kent Irvin has claimed he was not re-appointed to his position because some in the agency had labeled him a “traitor and a turncoat.”

All of these cases suggest an effort to politicize the role of the IG. That prompted former auditor McCaskill to introduce a bill, her first. Entitled "A bill to amend the Inspector General Act of 1978 to enhance the independence of the Inspectors General, to create a Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, and for other purposes" and numbered S. 1723, the bill is intended to address the administration's apparent desire to politicize the role of Inspector General by giving IGs more independence from the agencies they inspect and requiring they be credentialed professionals.

In a statement provided by her office, McCaskill says the legislation will require that:

All IGs be appointed for seven years and are removable only for cause. Congress must be notified about the removal of an IG before it occurs and given a specific reason for the action.

No IG can accept a bonus.

Instead of submitting their annual budget requests to the agencies they oversee, IGs would submit those requests to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and to Congress. OMB is the budget arm of the entire executive branch that determines the Administration’s budget request to Congress.

All IGs have their own legal counsel, allowing them to avoid a conflict of interest created by using agency counsels.

The Council on Integrity and Efficiency for Inspectors General will receive, review, and refer for investigation allegations of wrongdoing against Inspectors General or certain other staff members. In the event of a vacancy, the Council for Integrity and Efficiency will recommend three possible replacements to the appointing authority.

Credentials required of all IGs would be strengthened to assure that those in these oversight positions have oversight and management experience.

All IG websites be directly accessible from the home pages of agency websites and reports are posted within 24 hours of their release. An informal survey of government agencies found that many IG websites are not updated regularly and many agencies fail to include direct links to the IG page on their website.

This bill would help guarantee the expertise of persons appoint to the position of IG by having the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency recommend to the appointing authority three persons to fill vacant IG positions.

McCaskill's bill is similar to H.R. 928 introduced in the house by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN). The bill is endorsed by The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), whose executive director Danielle Brian recently sent McCaskill a letter stating that

In recent years, POGO has been deeply troubled by a series of scandals involving IGs. Those scandals have raised questions about the integrity of the IG system and given rise to the need for Congress to address weaknesses in that system. Thank you for introducing excellent legislation designed to do exactly that.

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“I’m not an environmental scientist, but I play one in the Bush administration…”

Good lord. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Bush administration hack that it seems was only put in their position solely to destroy their department from the inside.

An Inspector General’s report released yesterday found serious conflicts of interest and manipulation of science by a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Fish and Wildlife. The IG found evidence that she repeatedly pressured senior scientists and changed reports to make them industry-friendly.

In an especially blatant instance of conflicting interests;

…according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a "nesting range" of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a "running battle" with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there. (emphasis added).

The insidiousness of these political hacks will not be palliated when the end of an error comes to a close and the Bushies leave Washington forever. These partisan flaks are pushing out the people who are dedicated not to politics but to their jobs. The ones who have served faithfully no matter who was in charge are leaving in disgust, and you just know they are not being replaced by dedicated public servants. They are being replaced with partisan flaks that will be weak links in the civil service system for years to come. It will be decades before we are rid of these worthless patronage whores.

Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work,

and then get elected and prove it. –P.J. O’Rourke

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Time for a Reprise of the Truman Committee

In 1940, as World War II gripped the globe and United States involvement in the conflict became more and more likely, the United States appropriated $10 Billion in defense contracts in preparation for that eventuality.

Early in 1941, reports of malfeasance and abuses by the contractors reached Missouri Senator Harry S Truman, and the news did not sit well with WW I Infantry Captain “Give ‘em Hell Harry.” In typical Truman fashion, he set out to seek the truth, not by summoning “experts” but by embarking on a 10,000 mile tour of military installations. On this fact-finding tour, he discovered that the companies that received the contracts were clustered in the east, with a mere handful divvying up most of the largesse. He also discovered that they were receiving a fixed-profit, regardless of performance.

He returned to the Senate convinced that the defense efforts of the United States were being undermined by waste and corruption, and he proposed the notion of a special Senate committee that would investigate the National Defense Program.

President Roosevelt was convinced to let Truman head up the committee, being sympathetic to the President and his administration. The President was assured that the committee would not be too much trouble, as it would only be allotted $15,000 to investigate billions in defense contracts.

The Truman Committee was created by unanimous Senate decree on 01 March 1941. Over the next three years, with Senator Truman at the helm, the committee held hundreds of hearings, traveled thousands of miles to conduct field inspections, and saved millions of dollars in cost over-runs. Senator Truman was not shy about threatening executives with prison time as he whacked greedy corporate snouts out of the public trough. It was through his chairmanship of the Truman Committee that Harry S Truman shed his image as a bagman for the Pendergast political/criminal machine that ran Kansas City and Missouri politics for decades, and set his course for the White House. (For those who are unfamiliar with Big Tom Pendergast…He out-Tammanied Tammany Hall.)

Now we face the need for another Truman Committee to investigate contractor abuses once more.

On Wednesday, 17 January, the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness heard testimony from Thomas F. Gimble, the acting Inspector General (IG) for the Pentagon, and Katherine V. Schinasi, the Managing Director of Acquisitions and Resource management for the Government Accountability Office (GAO). (Links to opening statements are in .pdf format.) Full transcripts are not yet available, but the opening statements of these two career civil servants are disturbing enough.

Mr. Gimble, the IG for the Pentagon testified that the problems he uncovered were widespread and pervasive, and they ranged from rushing purchases to use funds that were about to expire without doing the appropriate market research and cost analysis; to DoD personnel without security clearances authorizing contracts for classified work. Office space was leased for the Counterintelligence Field Activity by using a service contract instead of following required procedures through GSA. Using service contracts constitutes an “end run” around regulation and if not curtailed, will effectively eliminate oversight.

Both statements linked are full of outrages that should have every last one of us on the phone to our Senators, demanding the appointment of a present-day Truman Committee to rein in the abuses by contractors and the government employees who facilitate their malfeasance.

If it were up to me, that committee would be co-chaired by Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Tom Harkin of Iowa; and Claire McCaskill, fresh from a successful tour as Missouri’s State Auditor, would have a seat on that committee too. Only appropriate, since she now occupies Harry Truman’s senate seat.

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