oigbluesm.gifWow, that’s pretty depressing isn’t it. Three of the most important authority systems in the United States broke, busted, smashed to bits.

You may have read, here or in the MSM about the undermining of the IG for Department of the Interior (and see), the attempt by the Cabinet Official in Charge of the General Services Administration to take away the IG’s budget and give it to outside auditors chosen by her instead by the IG, the compartmentalization of the work of the DOJ IG, the intimidation techniques applied to the Special IG for Iraq Reconstruction and now the almost explosive news of CIA’s Director’s attempt to go after the CIA IG.

Some of you know that I used to work within an IG’s office and still maintain those professional relationships and friendships. I also belong to an organization of people who do IG type work involving companies that need appointed monitors in connection with deferred prosecution agreements or in order to qualify for certain contracts that are subject to abuse.

For, example when 9-11 happened each of the four prime contractors doing the demolition and clearing work at ground zero had to have an IPSIG (Independent Private Sector Inspector General) to monitor and audit its work. Those IPSIG’s reported to the New York City Department of Investigations. You may recall a little story I passed on to you some time back about how Dick Cheney’s son-in-law thwarted an attempt to provide extra resources to the DHS IG.

One of the systemic problems of the Federal IG system is that the Inspector General for each agency reports to the Cabinet Secretary for that agency. The Secretary of the host agency also controls the IG’s budget. In this way, the Secretary can subtly, or not so subtly, pressure the IG’s investigative priorities by starving his budget, by curtailing the size of his office, or in the almost unbelievable situation at CIA, by having the target agency open an investigation of it’s own investigator.

Further, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the situation where the possible or likely target of the investigation is the cabinet secretary himself. Among other conflicts, is the notion of the cabinet secretary being briefed on the subordinate IG’s activities. Sorta makes it tough to conduct an undercover investigation, eh what?

In some instances in years gone past, the answer to how to deal with possible corruption by a cabinet level official rested in the Independent Counsel statute, which has now expired. The other night, I was at a little cocktail event and I was talking to a former colleague who had gone on to be an Independent Counsel under the sunsetted law. We had a conversation about the fact that the use of the IC statute had left a void that has not been filled by other means.

But re-institution of the IC statute is not the best answer. While I support the re-institution of a better more narrowly drawn IC law, it was used during the 1980’s and 1990’s as band aid to plaster over the inherent conflict of interest in the Federal IG System. It didn’t resolve the conflict, it just treated the symptom, not the cause.

You simply cannot have a person with incentive to coverup wrongdoing within their own department, in a position to control that department’s watchdog. This is just common sense.

Therefore it is obvious that a systemic change is needed to both resolve the inherent conflict and to make it possible for IG’s to staff up and gear up for unexpected emergencies.

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