Treasury Dept. IG J. Russell George. NOW I get it!
I certainly feel ignorant and foolish about this. Silly me: I always thought that inspector generals, those charged with flagging and investigating incompetence, corruption and wrongdoing in our government, were independent and objective, and beyond political influence from above. Why did I think that? I thought that because without such independence, what we may be getting in these supposedly honest and thorough IG reports is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but rather what the particular IG thinks he or she can get away with and still keep the job. Was I the only one who didn’t know this?
Thus the popular shrugging talking point by Obama Administration defenders on the partisan payroll (Jay Carney, White House staff, enabling members of Congress, Axelplouffe, etc.) and off of it (the news media) that the IRS inspector general J. Russell George “investigated” and found no political influence in the decision to target and impede conservative organizations is even more dishonest that I originally thought. That oft-repeated statement was always misleading spin, because George, by his own admission, only performed an audit, which is supposed to be the prelude to a full investigation. Now, however, a former IG has explained that inspector generals who displease the Obama high command risk losing their jobs. (Presumably this has always been a peril of the IG job, so I am not suggesting that this unacceptable state of affairs is unique to this administration.)
In his testimony before Congress, George said that he never was able to determine who, if anyone, directed the ideologically-based scrutiny, because no one would tell him. Former IG Gerald Walpin writes,
“Anyone who knows anything about the rights and responsibilities of an inspector general has to be shaking his head in disbelief at George’s explanation. First, every employee of the government has the responsibility to cooperate with and provide information to an IG concerning his work.Second, George was particularly careful to limit his answer to the “audit phase.” Every IG has two procedures to obtain information. One is audit procedure, to which IG George referred. That’s generally limited to accounting analysis, to determine whether there may be reason to open an investigation. Once there is reason — and there clearly was reason here, given the obviously illegal conduct — the IG opens an investigation, in which investigators, not auditors, pose the questions, the department employees are placed under oath, and, as a federal court has approved, informed that ‘failure to answer completely and truthfully may result in disciplinary action, including dismissal.’ The question is why George’s office didn’t do this immediately.“
Then Walpin answers his own question:
“I do not blame IG George personally, as he is a career civil servant who depends on a steady salary and, thereafter, a pension. But I learned, through being fired by the Obama administration, that performing one’s responsibilities as one should, and potentially adversely affecting the administration’s image, is not the way to keep one’s job. (Fortunately, I was not dependent on my federal IG salary.) That reality was made apparent to me — and, through what happened to me, to all IGs — when I supported my staff of longtime dedicated civil servants, who had recommended taking action against one Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player who had misused, for personal purposes, about $750,000 of an AmeriCorps grant intended for underprivileged young people. What I did not then know was that he was a friend and supporter of President Obama — a fact that caused the proverbial you-know-what to hit the fan. Without detailing all that happened, the bottom line was that I started to receive pressure to drop the case against Mr. Johnson. When I declined to repudiate my staff’s work, the guillotine fell: I was summarily telephoned that if I did not resign in one hour, I would be fired. And I was, along with my special assistant, John Park.”
I see. So when, for example, the accusations that the Justice Department intentionally ignored an effort by the New Black Panthers to intimidate voters in 2008, were pronounced bogus by the news media in the wake of the IG’s report largely exonerating Holder’s Civil Rights Division of racial bias, that really proved nothing. If the same Administration that pressured the CIA to accept a misleading version of its findings about the Benghazi attack as the one that would be fraudulently peddled to the networks and the public is able to pressure inspector generals into not doing their job objectively and completely, then the system is not trustworthy and has no integrity. If the IGs are subject to political manipulation and intimidation, then using an IG report as definite proof of anything is wishful thinking, if not just plain lying. This appears to be the system we have.
Unlike Walpin, I do fault J. Russell George, by the way. He’s government lawyer. His client is the American public. I don’t care whether he needs his salary or not: his duty as a professional, a lawyer, an inspector general, and a government employee is not only to resist corruption of the process and deception of the public, but to oppose it, expose it, and if necessary, lose his job by refusing to participate in it.
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Source: The National Review, Slate
Graphic: The National Review
Ethics Alarms 
As I understand it, in Walpin’s case, the president broke the 2008 Inspector General Reform Act, Section 3 – a law which he cosponsored – which requires the president to notify both Houses of Congress 30 days before firing or transferring an IG. Small wonder the IG community is wary of crossing him – they have reason to be.
And thus, we see why I firmly avoid government work in spite of its many lures. These IG’s will inevitably uncover something that somebody above them wants to stay covered, and then get to choose: Sacrifice their ethics to let sleeping dogs lie, or pick a hill to die on that is almost certainly going to be universally ignored and allow things to go right back to business as usual as soon as they are fired.
Didn’t know that about the Kevin Johnson episode. That’s nasty. So the Keating Five get roasted or at least shamed, justifiably, but KJ skates away without any media attention whatsoever? Because he’s “a good guy?” A good point guard? Wow.
And this is particularly nasty given the fact that the Jay Carneys and the Paul Begalas and Donna Braziles cite the IG reports as irrefutable proof positive of whatever it is they’re trying to sell.
These things always make me wonder how much waste there really is in government programs. How many tax dollars are really spent before $1 reaches the target recipient? I wouldn’t be surprised if SNAP and WIC were 80% waste.
Wow – this is shameful. Shaking my head. IG reports in the military are largely golden. I have no knowledge of military IG’s being fired for truth telling that embarrassed a high ranking officer or command. To the contrary – these reports often give grounds for firing/reducing in rank/fining (GEN Ward) or alternatively imposing lesser penalties or dropping charges altogether (ADM Stavridis). General pays and the IG keeps his/her job. At least that is what I have seen in the Army over 30 years’ time.
When this scandal came to light, I didn’t find it odd that Obama said he did not know the details. However, I thought it was very strange that Obama assured that something like this would never happen again while he was President. Maybe I have my scandals mixed up but isn’t it disingenuous of him to assure that something like this would never happen again epecially if he didn’t know what was taking place to begin with? And isn’t the government a little too big for the President to give assurances like this? That’s not a rhetorical question. That’s a real question I have. Can someone answer?
Buehler? Buehler? Anyone? Anyone?
Come on Sharon, the government’s NEVER too big. To solve all our problems, it has to expand continuously.
Walpin is either a truth-teller who was fired for telling the truth, or he was fired for good cause but has chosen to depict himself as a victim.
I think the evidence leans towards the latter possibility. Two CNCS board members have claimed that Walpin’s dismissal “was set in motion by a unanimous request… from the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service” – not by Obama – and as far as I know no board member denies this, even though the board includes longtime Republican activists like Eric Tanenblatt. Walpin’s wrongful termination suit was dismissed by a court, and then his appeal was dismissed, and two of the three judges that dismissed his appeal were Republican appointees. Republicans in congress invested this and came up with a lot of innuendo but not a single piece of evidence showing that Walpin’s firing was politically motivated.
In short, you’re accepting the completely unproven word of a fired employee, who has had every chance to prove his allegations, and who has failed to prove them time and again. That’s fine; you’re free to believe whatever you want. But it would have been fairer and better blogging if you had informed your readers of Walpin’s repeated inability to provide evidence to back up his accusation of a politically motivated firing.
You are glossing over the legitimate questions he raises about the Treasury AG, as well as his correct distinction between the auditing phase and the investigation. I recognize the possibility that he is a classic “disgruntled employee,” but it doesn’t matter: if an AG can be so pressured and fired by those who stand to lose by his report, the system has no integrity. I didn’t think they could. And I have yet to hear a better explanation for the IRS AG’s lack of diligence.
Why are you determined to trust these people, despite so much smoke it’s impossible to see the fire? Now the State Dept. AG who revealed the cover-up there is saying she is being pressured—that’s up next. Are they all disgruntled employees?
Jack, I don’t trust the Obama administration, at all. Nor have I said anything which indicates that I do – just because I don’t sign up for the mindless anti-Obama crusades doesn’t mean that I like or trust them.
I’ve criticized Obama harshly multiple times, and he and his people clearly AREN’T trustworthy, especially on so-called national security issues. (What particularly pisses me off is how Obama has bent the law to harshly punish leakers who make him look bad, even while “top secret” information is routinely leaked by Obama’s own people to make Obama looks good. What this has in common with the NSA scandal is Obama’s desire to have no oversight.) Where they are trustworthy, it is only because their own self-interest makes them so.
But that doesn’t mean that every conspiracy theory, concocted with a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” mentality by people determined to see smoke, should be treated as true despite the lack of evidence. The NSA scandal is a real scandal, and one way we know that is that there’s actual evidence that it happened and the decisions were made at a high level.
On the IRS scandal, I haven’t made up my mind. The evidence so far is smoke, not fire, and anyone who thinks that distinction doesn’t matter is a partisan hack.
The difference between us is that I don’t trust either Obama or the anti-Obama right. You distrust Obama, and you’re not a birther (thank goodness), but – despite your claim to distrust both sides – you uncritically spread anti-Obama stories (as you do in this post, repeating Walpin’s unproven accusations) rather than treating unproven stories about Obama with skepticism and due diligence.
Ampersand, wish I could be nearly as articulate.
I don’t know this ex-IG, and I don’t see how I”m supposed to make the determination that he’s lying for personal gain.
I do know that the media no longer investigates Obama diligently, as it has other administrations. I do know that an unprecedented number of decision-makers in the news media are coincidentally related to high-placed White House figures. I know that an administration that was supposed to be transparent has been anything but. I know that it has stonewalled and covered up on Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS, the military sex crimes, the NSA program, and certainly much else that we don’t know about. I know that other IG’s, including one from the State Department right now, is claiming intimidation. I know that the administration likes to hide its screw-ups and inconvenient truths, that Obama is a narcissistic, hands-off, abdicating manager who doesn’t fire anyone or hold incompetent subordinates accountable.
I know that journalists who have broken ranks, like Bob Woodward, have been targets of White House efforts to change their reporting. I know that AP reporters and a Fox reporter have been the target of unprecedented Justice Department incursions of their work and privacy, in the case of the Fox reporter, by misstating facts to a judge.I know that a critical CBS reporter much hated by the White House says that her computer was turning on in the middle of the night. I know that there are other scandals in other agencies that aren’t even coming to public attention because of the scandal glut. I know I predicted much of this, because of the week leadership at the top, the amateurism in the middle (and at the top) and the hyper-partisan nature of the Administration generally.
I have seen the cynical conduct of an IRS scandal that suppressed advocacy in a political election being addressed by “firing” a guy who was leaving anyway. I have seen, in the span of just a few weeks, an IRS official take the 5th (while lying anyway), the NSA say that it wasn’t gathering what it was gathering (he’s still on the job); the AG shrug off not obeying statutory requirements, and the Justice Department being allowed to investigate itself.
These aren’t “conspiracy theories,” and you know it. These are the fingerprints of an administration that has forfeited the right to the benefit of the doubt. So yes, when a fired IG writes that he was inappropriately pressured by the people I just described, I’m not especially skeptical, absent some additional reason to doubt him.
This is not the “anti-Obama right” and saying that here lowers you in my estimation. It is not partisan to find the above disturbing and unacceptable. It IS partisan to ignore it, justify it, and defend it.
That anyone could look at what we know about the IRS, and consider the outrageous deceit and smoke being thrown out intentionally by the Administration to confuse the dummies (or do you also care to explain why the fact that the Commissioner was appointed by Bush “proves” that the targeting of conservatives wasn’t political? Or that, as the ex-Speaker of the House stated, the IRS is “an independent agency”?) is an indictment of their objectivity, fairness, willingness to accept that they placed their trust in the wrong people, and courage. It’s unpleasant to say, “Rats! Those people I always disagree with happened to be right this time!” But the ethical thing is to say it anyway, if integrity matters at all.
Before dismissing the Walpin claims out of hand I would be interested to know more about the Americorp investigation and the factual basis for his recommendations. I would also caution you that the court’s decision was based on an interpretation of law:
the judges ruled that Obama’s explanation that he no longer had “fullest confidence” in Walpin “satisfies the minimal statutory mandate that the president communicate to the Congress his ‘reasons’ for removal.”
…That’s a pretty low bar to jump over. If you want to get rid of a pesky IG just tell Congress that they no longer have your full confidence. I would also add that the ethics complaint filed against Walpin was summarily dismissed. Maybe the guy isn’t on the level, but I don’t think you have provided compelling reasons why the disgruntled employee thesis is more compelling than the obstinate civil servant.
Inspectors General.
Yeah, my Dad had a thing about “courts martial.” Thanks for the correction.
Jack, it now turns out that the I.G. report was not a report on all political groups the IRS scrutinized; rather, Republicans in Congress asked for a report specifically on Tea Party groups being scrutinized by the IRS. The IG’s report, naturally, only included Tea Party groups, even though there were also BOLO orders for any group with the words “progressive” or “occupy” in their names.
If I ordered a count of all the times football players (and ONLY football players) have been audited; and then I took the resulting list of football players and announced “see? There are no baseball players on this list – clearly, football players are being targeted,” that would obviously be deceptive. But that’s exactly what the GOP did in this case.
The excuse I’m hearing for this is that the groups were treated in technically different ways, even though they were BOLOs for both. But even if that’s true (and it’s not clear it is), it doesn’t excuse the dishonesty of ordering a report on IRS targeting of tea party groups and then pretending to be shocked that the report only lists tea party groups.
It also doesn’t excuse the I.G. flat-out lying to Congress by saying that there were no BOLOs on progressive groups.
That’s a demonstrably false claim. BOLOS were in existence for “progressive” and “occupy,” both terms that target left-wing groups.
So a Bush-appointed IG gave testimony that was mistaken in a way that just so happened to benefit the GOP, or lied in a way that benefited the GOP. This so-called scandal never would have interested the mainstream press if the AG hadn’t given the false impression that only conservative groups were targeted. Why would the AG do that if he were following Obama’s orders?
Barry, this appears to be spin: http://www.scribd.com/doc/150374099/TIGTA-Final-Response-to-Rep-Levin.
From the WSJ:
On Wednesday Russell George, the Treasury inspector general whose original audit broke open the scandal, answered Rep. Sander Levin’s charge that the audit had ignored the targeting of progressives. In a letter released Thursday, Mr. George couldn’t have been clearer: The evidence showed conservative groups were singled out for abuse by the IRS, not liberal groups. While some liberal groups might have wound up on a BOLO list, the IRS did not target them. “We did not find evidence that the criteria you identified, labeled ‘Progressives,’ were used by the IRS to select potential political cases during the 2010 to 2012 timeframe we audited.” One hundred percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12” in their names were given extra scrutiny. “While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria . . . including employee interviews, e-mails, and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention.”
According to a House Ways and Means Committee source, only seven of the 298 cases flagged by the IRS for extra scrutiny appeared to represent progressive causes. Not one of the seven was subject to harassment or abuse. Of the seven, only two were even sent follow-up questionnaires after their applications for tax exempt status were received. Neither of those two was asked inappropriate or invasive questions. And all seven saw their applications approved.
Conservative groups were treated differently, sent to a secondary review group after being flagged for scrutiny. They were subject to undue burdens and harassment—lengthy and invasive questions about donors and even prayer habits. There, in the secondary offices, some of them languished for years. “Some of them are still languishing,” said the source.
Danny Werfel, the acting head of the IRS, who manages at the same time to seem utterly well-meaning and highly evasive, further muddied the waters this week with a report on how the IRS is dealing with the aftermath of the inspector general’s audit. The report seemed to exonerate—”we have not found evidence of intentional wrongdoing at this time”—while admitting, further in: “We are digging deeper . . . to determine if there are instances of wrongdoing.” Which is it?
The report claims that part of the problem is that those who were targeted and abused didn’t “leverage” the Office of Taxpayer Advocate. But when Sen. John Cornyn contacted the local advocate’s office on behalf of the targeted Texas group True the Vote, his letter went unanswered for 11 months, and the eventual reply didn’t answer his questions. Forget how they’d treat an average citizen—that’s how they treat someone who has power.
The Werfel report makes no mention of the agency’s disclosure of confidential tax information—the leaking of the confidential tax and donor information of the National Organization for Marriage to the liberal Human Rights Campaign, and the leaking of the applications of conservative groups to a liberal news outfit.
More than 10 pages of the 53-page report are devoted to explaining how important the IRS is, and how excellent its workforce, in spite of lower budgets. There will be “negative repercussions” in future years, it darkly warns, “if our funding is inadequate.” That would have been a good place to mention the bonuses the IRS has been giving itself—almost a quarter-billion dollars the past few years. But no word of that. There is a muted mention of IRS boondoggles—the conferences, the suites, the “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island” parody videos: There were “management lapses” that led to “wasteful spending.” “Many of these failures reflected a lack of judgment that, unfortunately, was not uncommon across the Federal Government in the years leading up to 2010.” Ah, that explains it.
The report is written in a way that is beyond bureaucratic. It is aggressively impenetrable and requires constant translation. “Information . . . shared with Congress was insufficient.” That means that when Congress asked IRS leadership if there was targeting going on, they lied and said no.
The report’s weaknesses were played out in person Thursday’s Ways and Means questioning of Mr. Werfel. Chairman Dave Camp said the report fails to address central issues. “Where is the internal oversight?”
Under questioning, Mr. Werfel admitted he had not interviewed his predecessors, who led the IRS in the scandal years, nor exemptions unit chief Lois Lerner.
Did Ms. Lerner attempt to cover up the targeting? “I don’t know the answer. . . . There’s no evidence on the record.”
Who was the person responsible for the Cincinnati office’s targeting of tea party groups? “We are looking into the facts and circumstances that arose.”
Who in Washington told IRS workers to hold up the applications? “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
How do you know the circumstances within the tax-exempt unit aren’t more widespread within the IRS? “I’ve asked them to look for evidence of problems.”
He did, however, agree that it appears tea-party groups were sent on for extra scrutiny. “We did not find evidence . . . we found no indication . . . that progressives was a term” used to alert screeners. So there’s that.