Senate Tells Justice Department Not to Investigate Torture

I picked this up off of TPM Muckraker, and it seems to have slipped my notice yesterday...

There are literally dozens of these types of stories--you never want for material when you're blogging about the state of American political discourse and policy here in the last year of the Bush Administration. No sector of our government has suffered more than the small, elite sector of "inspector generals" or IGs. These people were supposed to be fair, tough, independent and unassailable. And yes, every time you turn around, the Congress or the Executive is finding a new and creative way to stymie or block these people from doing their jobs:

From the National Law Journal:

Congress is close to enacting the most significant boost in three decades in the independence of the cadre of government watchdogs -- federal inspectors general -- but the lawmakers have retreated from a key change involving the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Senate on April 23 approved, by unanimous consent, S. 2324, the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008. But the bill passed only after the lawmakers agreed to an amendment by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., which, among other items, deleted a provision giving the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) jurisdiction to investigate misconduct allegations against department attorneys, including its most senior officials.

Unlike all other OIGs who can investigate misconduct within their entire agency, Justice's OIG must refer allegations against department attorneys to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The latter office, unlike the OIG, is not statutorily independent and reports directly to the attorney general and the deputy attorney general....

President Bush had threatened to veto the House bill for a variety of reasons. The Kyl amendment to the Senate bill was seen by many as a vehicle for the White House's objections.

OPR, which reports to the attorney general, is currently conducting a variety of very sensitive investigations for the administration. The office is probing the Department's approval of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. And recently it announced that it is investigating the Department's legal memos authorizing the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture by CIA and military interrogators.

It is conducting those probes because Inspector General Glenn Fine cannot. The bill which passed the House would have changed that, as Fine himself pointed out in a letter (pdf) to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) back in February, when he told them that he could not investigate the Department's authorization of torture because "under current law, the OIG does not have jurisdiction to review the actions of DOJ attorneys acting in their capacity to provide legal advice." Fine added: "Legislation that would remove this limitation has passed the House and is pending in the Senate, but at this point the OIG does not have jurisdiction to undertake the review you request."

Now, I don't know about you, but at some point, the Republicans are going to be screaming to put that provision of investigating "senior officials" back into effect once they lose control of the Executive Branch. This kind of thing is extremely damaging to the credibility of Attorney General Michael Mukasey--is he presiding over the most corrupt Justice Department ever, as a kind of traitorous caretaker, ordered to run out the clock?

One would think he'd at least try, right? Pretend to be acting as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America? Instead, he's running cover like a thug, barely able to keep up with the latest outrage, and willfully ignorant to this day of what it must have been like for our enemies to be waterboarded.

Hayden Goes Hysterical

In an unprecedented move, CIA director Michael Hayden has ordered an internal inquiry into the work of the Inspector General over the agency. The IG, John L. Helgerson, has been dedicated to the investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs, and this stern oversight has rankled many operatives.

Helgerson’s willingness to look into the dark crannies has prompted Hayden to order an investigation of the IG’s office, focusing on complaints that the Inspector General’s office has not acted in a fair and impartial manner when judging agency operations. Hayden accuses the IG of embarking on a “crusade” against those who have gone along with the morally bankrupt Bush administrations detention and interrogation programs.

This move by Hayden has taken many aback, as it threatens to undermine the independence of the IG’s office. Former IG for the CIA, Frederick Hitz, who served in that capacity from 1990 to 1998, was astounded by Hayden’s order. In his opinion, 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 I.G.?”

Current and former officials said that Hayden’s inquest had involved formal interviews with members of the IG’s staff, and his little inquisition is being headed up by a loyal minion to Hayden, Robert L. Deitz, who served as General Counsel to the NSA when Hayden ran that agency.

Inspectors General are not immune from accountability – but Hayden’s approach is astounding in it’s brazen nature. In a normal, sane administration, the proscribed grievance process would be followed. That would involve filing a complaint with the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees all the inspectors general. The second option is for the director of the aggrieved agency to plead his or her case directly to the President, and if the case is made, the President can remove the Inspector General from his post.

How quaint. These proscribed mechanisms afford accountability, and would have avoided the current awkwardness; while protecting the independence of the IG’s office.

The existing mechanisms just didn’t have the right element of authoritarian and histrionic theatrics about them to suit Hayden’s fancy, apparently.

And therein lies the rub…maybe the IG has been overreaching. I don’t know – But now it isn’t likely that we will find out. Another important issue has been reduced to political Kabuki, when what is needed is sober assessment.

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.

“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