The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions, others who were intoxicated by the possibility of some giant conspiracy.

If anything, this story is about an intelligence and oversight scandal.

I wrote yesterday that nothing seemed to be changing in the foreclosure crisis. Regulators were still trying to enforce the law with inadequate information (perhaps deliberately), and the banks were still abusing their customers. But late yesterday we got word of federal audits from HUD showing violations by the top five banks of the False Claims Act.

Last week, the US Department of State released an Inspector General’s report on the US Embassy in Malta, headed up by Ambassador Douglas Kmiec. Kmiec is an outspoken Republican (head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan) and a conservative Roman Catholic, who bucked both the GOP and many in his church to support Obama in his presidential race against John McCain.

The other day I received an email from a friend with a link to an article in the September 1, 2010 issue of Government Executive discussing an audit the US Army Inspector General had conducted on 18 different contracting vehicles (seven contracts and 11 task orders) used to support activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The actual audit report is a PDF at the first link of the GE article.)

While Ben Bernanke dreams of being the uber-regulator and chief monitor of systemic risk, a new agreement between the FDIC and other banking regulators like the Fed allows the FDIC to have independent direct access to big banks instead of making the FDIC to rely on his tame stable of regulators at the Fed.

Chalk one up for real oversight.