Flash back: Dec 21, 2015
'''Why Investigations of “Intelligence Failures” Go Nowhere
Watchdogs Push Back Against Executive Agency Stonewalling'''
…
The problem originated with the FBI, according to Michael Horowitz, Department of Justice Inspector General. Back in 2010, the Bureau started refusing to provide the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with documents deemed relevant to an internal investigation, such as grand jury records, Title III electronic surveillance (warrantless wiretaps), and Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) information.
The FBI justified its stonewalling with a self-serving interpretation of the 1978 Inspector General Act. Congress originally passed the IG Act to bring oversight to a seemingly out-of-control executive branch after the revelations of Watergate, the FBI’s dirty tricks, domestic spying, and CIA assassination programs run amok.
But the FBI came up with a creative reading of this statute, one that effectively kneecapped the traditional independence of any IG conducting an investigation.
Former President Bill Clinton famously stretched the game of semantics to its breaking point when he told grand jurors investigating his possible perjury in the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is,’ is.”
Not to be outdone, FBI lawyers took issue with the commonly understood meaning of the word “all.”
The Inspector General Act of 1978 states that inspectors general will:
…have access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other material available to the applicable establishment which relate to programs and operations with respect to which that Inspector General has responsibility under this act…[emphasis added].
But in 2010, FBI lawyers determined that the privacy statutes written into laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) overruled unfettered access by IGs. Instead, according to Horowitz, IGs were forced to “elevate the matter” to the Agency’s leadership, or to the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General — significantly slowing the inquiry, and more significantly, upending the independence necessary for IGs to be effective.
Other areas affected by nondisclosure provisions and statutes, according to the FBI, are FISA information, attorney-client information, patient medical information, Bank Secrecy Act information, Federal Juvenile Court records, information subject to nondisclosure agreements and memoranda of understanding, as well as “source” information.
Once the FBI succeeded in carving out exceptions to an IG’s ability to requisition information, other agencies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Peace Corps, followed suit.
To highlight the scope of the potential problem brought about by this new interpretation of the IG Act, Department of Justice IG Horowitz testified to Congress that, “preliminary research has found that there are over 1000 laws that contain disclosure restrictions in them.”
….
Note:
In 2014, the IG community fought back raising concerns to Congress that agency heads were impeding their investigations. Congress added language into the 2015 DoJ Appropriations Act and amended the Inspector General Act in Dec 2016 to put an end to stonewalling.
HRC figured out a much easier way to get around the State Dept IG. She kept the position unfilled her entire time in office.
Ref:
https://whowhatwhy.org/2015/12/21/watchdogs-push-back-against-executive-agency-stonewalling/