[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RECOMMENDATIONS AND REFORMS FROM THE INSPECTORS GENERAL
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
November 15, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-50
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://oversight.house.gov
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Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina, Chairman
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland,
Darrell E. Issa, California Ranking Minority Member
Jim Jordan, Ohio Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
Mark Sanford, South Carolina Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Justin Amash, Michigan Columbia
Paul A. Gosar, Arizona Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Blake Farenthold, Texas Jim Cooper, Tennessee
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Thomas Massie, Kentucky Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Mark Meadows, North Carolina Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Ron DeSantis, Florida Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Dennis A. Ross, Florida Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands
Mark Walker, North Carolina Val Butler Demings, Florida
Rod Blum, Iowa Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Jody B. Hice, Georgia Jamie Raskin, Maryland
Steve Russell, Oklahoma Peter Welch, Vermont
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Matt Cartwright, Pennsylvania
Will Hurd, Texas Mark DeSaulnier, California
Gary J. Palmer, Alabama Jimmy Gomez, Maryland
James Comer, Kentucky
Paul Mitchell, Michigan
Greg Gianforte, Montana
Sheria Clarke, Staff Director
William McKenna General Counsel
Julie Dunne, Government Operations Subcommittee Staff Director
Drew Baney, Professional Staff Member
Sharon Casey, Deputy Chief Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on November 15, 2017................................ 1
WITNESSES
The Hon. Michael E. Horowitz, Chair, Council of the Inspectors
General on Integrity and Efficiency, Inspector General, U.S.
Department of Justice
Oral Statement............................................... 5
Written Statement............................................ 7
The Hon. Kathy A. Buller, Executive Chair, Legislation Committee,
Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency,
Inspector General, Peace Corps
Oral Statement............................................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 16
The Hon. John Roth, Inspector General, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security
Oral Statement............................................... 23
Written Statement............................................ 25
APPENDIX
Response from Mr. Horowitz, Inspector General, U.S. Department of
Justice, to Questions for the Record........................... 62
RECOMMENDATIONS AND REFORMS FROM THE INSPECTORS GENERAL
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Wednesday, November 15, 2017
House of Representatives,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:15 a.m., in Room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Trey Gowdy [chairman
of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Gowdy, Duncan, Jordan, Amash,
Gosar, DesJarlais, Massie, Meadows, Walker, Blum, Hice,
Russell, Grothman, Hurd, Palmer, Comer, Mitchell, Cummings,
Maloney, Norton, Clay, Lynch, Cooper, Connolly, Kelly,
Lawrence, Watson Coleman, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Raskin,
Welch, DeSaulnier, and Gomez.
Chairman Gowdy. The committee will come to order. Without
objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any
time. I will recognize myself for an opening statement, then my
friend from Maryland, and then we'll recognize the witnesses.
When defending against waste, fraud, and abuse, Inspectors
General play a critical role within our Federal agencies. While
congressional oversight is essential, the 73 inspectors general
best understand their agency issues and can clearly identify
areas in need of reform. In fiscal year 2015, IGs saved
taxpayers roughly $37 billion on the total budget of $2.7
billion, which is a tremendous return on every dollar given to
the IGs.
In December 2016, the Inspectors General Empowerment Act
was signed into law with bipartisan support. That was an effort
lead by the ranking member, Mr. Cummings, and the gentleman
from North Carolina, Mr. Mark Meadows. Designed to support and
strengthen IG independence, the IG Empowerment Act ensures
Federal investigators have full and prompt access to all agency
documents needed for the investigatory process.
In addition, the Act streamlines investigative procedures,
improves transparency by instituting new reporting requirements
and increases efficiency to IG operations.
While the Act implemented much-needed reforms, the IG
community still has legislative priorities which could
strengthen oversight of Federal programs and resolve challenges
facing the inspector general community. The IG community is
also currently facing the challenge of filling IG vacancies. Of
the 73 IGs across the Federal Government, 14 positions remain
vacant because either no nominee has been appointed, or the
appointed nominee still awaits Senate confirmation. For
example, the Department of the Interior has not appointed a
permanent IG since 2009. Still, no nomination has been made to
fill the position. In case of the National Security Agency,
which has been without a permanent leader since May 31st of
2016, it's been 147 days since this administration announced a
nominee on June 19, 2017. The administration has worked toward
filling the vacancies by announcing an intent to nominate or
officially nominate individuals to fill vacancies, but these
nominees still required a confirmation process.
When a vacancy occurs in an IG office, the agency head
appoints an acting AG. These appointed, often perform excellent
work, but they are inherently less independent and less
effective than one who is Senate confirmed. While the Senate
and administration are the key players in insuring timely
nominations and confirmations, the House will work with them to
help speed appointments, however and wherever we can. The work
of our inspectors general is too important for temporary
leadership in the investigatory process.
In order to ensure successful investigations, Federal
investigators must have access to information. Too often, IGs
perform excellent oversight work, but they can't do it fully if
an individual retires or resigns and removes them from the IG's
jurisdiction. This leads to incomplete audits, incomplete
investigations, or, in some instances, closed investigations.
One solution is to grant IGs testimonial subpoena
authority. This would allow an IG to subpoena witnesses as
necessary when performing the functions of the IG Act. Leaving
office would no longer allow a Federal employee to avoid
testifying about potential misconduct, or, frankly, any fact
pattern.
We look forward to working with our colleagues in the
minority and the Senate to create a solution to grant IGs
testimonial subpoena authority. I thank our witnesses again for
your service to our country and for your appearance today.
With that, I would recognize the gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you for calling this hearing. Inspectors general serve a
critical role by providing an independent check on the
executive branch. They investigate waste, fraud, abuse and they
provide recommendations to improve agency performance. I want
to thank each of the IGs who is testifying here today. And I
want to thank all of the IGs who do a phenomenal job in the
various agencies.
The work that you and your staff members do is more
important now than ever. The Oversight Committee is the primary
investigative body in the House, and we rely tremendously on
IGs in conducting our own oversight work.
Let me address one key example: In 2015, this committee
launched a bipartisan investigation, following revelations by
John Roth, who is present with us today, the IG at the
Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Roth identified grave
concerns about security deficiencies in our Nation's airports.
As part of our investigation, our committee heard from numerous
whistleblowers who bravely reported security problems at
airports, management challenges faced by the Transportation
Security Administration. Some of those individuals allege that
TSA retaliated against them for making those disclosures.
In March, Carolyn Lerner, who was serving as a special
counsel, testified before our committee that TSA was refusing
to provide information about whistleblower cases. She also
testified that TSA was impairing the ability of the special
counsel to fully investigate those cases.
On March 6, 2017, our former chairman, Jason Chaffetz, sent
a letter to TSA requesting the information that TSA was
withholding. The acting general counsel at DHS responded that
the agency, ``Objects to the demand,'' end of quote, that it
provides these documents to the committee.
So on March 17, 2017, the committee issued a subpoena for
these documents, but DHS--listen to this, DHS still refused to
turn over the documents. On March 31st, 2017, the acting
general counsel sent a letter to the committee writing that the
agency is, and I quote, ``not in a position to produce those
documents at this time.'' That was in March.
To address this refusal, Chairman Chaffetz and I joined
together in sending a bipartisan letter to the acting
administrator of TSA warning that, ``Failure to comply with a
congressional subpoena may result in serious consequences for
you,'' end of quote. We also requested transcribed interviews
with three TSA employees, the deputy administrator, and acting
assistant administrator and the chief counsel. None of these
witnesses voluntarily complied with our request, which we made
in May.
In the meantime, Mr. Roth has continued in his oversight
work, and he has issued two classified reports in recent weeks
with critical warnings that many security problems remain
unresolved. Listen up, listen up, I've often said that if we
find out about our problems with Members of Congress, and then
we fail to act on them, when we have been given the authority
by the American people, then we become a part of the problem.
So I appreciate that the chairman, Chairman Gowdy, agreed
to join me in sending a letter to TSA to request the documents
related to the IGs' findings. But that request has nothing to
do with the documents that we are being--that are being
withheld about the whistleblowers. We must also take action to
compel TSA to comply with the committee's subpoena, which TSA
has been defying for 8 months.
Yesterday, I sent a letter to Chairman Gowdy laying all of
this out and requesting the committee enforce its subpoena for
these documents. I also requested deposition subpoenas for the
three TSA officials who have refused, refused, refused to
participate in transcribed interviews. These are issues my
staff have been raising for several weeks, if not months.
Here's the bottom line: I do not believe that we can afford
to wait. The security of air travel is not a partisan issue.
Every person who flies on an airplane, works in an airport, or
drives to the airport to pick up a family member wants to know
that they will be safe. God forbid if something terrible were
to happen, I want to know that we did everything, everything
single thing in our power to conduct vigorous oversight to
protect the American people. That is what we are sworn to do.
And in addition to that, if we do not protect these
whistleblowers, if we let the agency defy the subpoena, and we
allow the agency to flout our interview requests, that will
have a negative impact on whistleblowers across the board. And
all of us know in this committee that a lot of our work and a
lot of the waste, fraud, and abuse that we've been able to
discover have been because people have sat at that table, many
times with tears in their eyes, trembling, they simply wanted
their government to work properly, but they came forward
bravely to offer evidence so that we could do our jobs. So, it
will act as a deterrent to anyone who is thinking about coming
forward to report dangerous security failures or anything else,
and that, in turn, will damage our oversight efforts in the
operations of our government.
And with that, I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gowdy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Chairman, for all these reasons pursuant
to House rule 11, clause 2(k)(6), I hereby move to subpoena TSA
officials Huban Gowadia, Francine Kerner, and Steven Cohen to
appear before this committee. And it is public knowledge, Mr.
Chairman, that these folks allegedly were a part of the
retaliation. That is my motion.
Chairman Gowdy. Well, I want to thank my friend from
Maryland for a couple of things. Number one, for the passion
with which he spoke on this issue. I've heard you do it before
and I know you mean every syllable of what you said. We should
not have to resort to compulsory process to gain access to
documents or witnesses, but I want every agency that's paying
attention to know that we will. And you have my commitment--we
are in one accord, you have my commitment Mr. Cummings that
when you and I see each other in Baltimore, we're either going
to have a date or a voluntary interview, or we're going to have
a date for an involuntary interview, but we're going to have a
date with an interview, to either gain access to the
information or have a much better understanding of the legal
basis by which this committee is being denied the information.
You have my commitment on that.
Mr. Cummings. With that, Mr. Chairman, let me be clear so
that everybody in the room knows when he says ``in Baltimore,''
he's not coming for a walk in the park, although, I'd like for
him to come to my city to do that, we have a--that's our next
hearing, members of the committee.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I take your word. I want to thank
you for working with me and trying to resolve this issue. Mr.
Chairman, I--it is embedded in the DNA of my brain, watching
people tremble at that table, trying to share their views and
knowing that they are--that they could be harmed. And so with
that, I withdraw my motion and I look forward to what we have
on the 28th. Thank you.
Chairman Gowdy. Well, they have a powerful persuasive
advocate in you. And we are in one accord on this and I
appreciate you working with me on it.
With that, all of us would welcome our witnesses, I will
introduce you en bloc, and then recognize you individually for
your 5-minute opening.
From my left to right we are pleased to have The Honorable
Michael Horowitz, Chair of the Council on Inspector General on
Integrity and Efficiency, and Inspector General at the U.S.
Department of Justice; The Honorable Kathy Buller, Executive
Chair of Legislative Committee on the Council of the Inspectors
General on Integrity and Efficiency, and Inspector General at
the Peace Corps; and The Honorable John Roth, Inspector General
at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Welcome to all of
you.
And with that, IG Horowitz, you are recognized.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL E. HOROWITZ
Mr. Horowitz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Cummings, Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me
to testify today. The IG community appreciates this committee's
steadfast bipartisan support, including your efforts last year
to get the IG Empowerment Act adopted.
Because of our statutory independence, IGs are uniquely
positioned to identify waste, fraud, and abuse. As the chairman
indicated in fiscal year 2016, the IG community identified
potential cost savings of over $45 billion, compared to our
community's budgets combined of about $2.7 billion, that
represents about a $17 return on investment.
In addition, IG investigations resulted in almost 5,000
successful criminal prosecutions, over 1,500 civil actions,
over 6,000 suspensions and debarments, and over 4,000 personnel
actions. And I am pleased to report that for the first time,
all public IG reports can be found in one place at a website
that the Council of IGs launched on October 1st called
oversight.gov.
We also launched on that date our first ever Twitter
account at oversight.gov. We hope that everyone who is
interested and cares about our work in the IG community visits
oversight.gov and follows us on Twitter.
The passage of the IG Empowerment Act greatly enhanced our
ability to conduct independent oversight. The Act made it clear
that IGs must be given unimpeded and timely access to all
agency records. And since the passage of the Act, I am not
aware of any IG office facing a legal impediment to IG access.
However, there remain concerns by several IGs about the
timeliness of our access to information. Foot dragging by
agencies delays our work, impacting our ability to identify
important issues that could save the taxpayers significant
amounts of money, and it's wholly unacceptable. CIGIE will
continue to work on these issues and we appreciate the
continued support of this committee in those efforts.
The IG Empowerment Act also granted IGs an important tool
in our fight in improper and duplicative payments, an exemption
from the Computer Matching Act. I can report to you that the IG
community this year has been moving forward to use this new
tool in appropriate and effective ways, and I expect it will
demonstrate real results because of your giving us that
authority.
As IG Buller will outline, we believe that some additional
authorities would further enhance our ability to be identify
wasteful and improper spending. One example is testimonial
subpoena authority, as the chairman mentioned. One--my office
continues to face issues with regard to getting access to
information and testimony from former DOJ employees in our
investigations, audits and reviews, including in recent
whistleblower retaliation matters and sexual harassment claims.
Having subpoena--testimonial subpoena authority would allow us
to obtain that critical evidence.
Another area of potential concern to the IG community,
which IG Roth will discuss, is the impact that flat or
declining budgets would have on our ability to conduct the kind
of oversight that the public expects from us. Given our track
record of returning to the Federal Treasury far more money than
we are budgeted, and our important role in public safety in
national security matters, we believe careful consideration
should be given before impacting our budgets.
Finally, I'd like to briefly mention an issue that affects
my office in particular. Unlike IGs throughout the Federal
Government, the DOJ OIG does not have authority to investigate
allegations of misconduct by all DOJ employees. While we have
jurisdiction to review misconduct by agents and nonlawyers in
the Department, the IG Act does not give us that same authority
of the Department prosecutors when they act in the capacity as
lawyers. In those instances, the IG Act grants exclusive
investigative authority to the DOJ's Office of Professional
Responsibility. There's no principled reason why FBI misconduct
is investigated by a statutorily independent IG, while
prosecutorial misconduct is overseen by a DOJ component head
appointed to the Department's leadership. I want to thank
Congressman Hice for cosponsoring a bill with Congressman
Richmond and Congressman Conyers that would fix that issue and
address that anomaly.
This concludes my prepared statement, I would be pleased to
answer any questions the committee may have.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Horowitz follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Horowitz.
IG Buller.
STATEMENT OF HON. KATHY A. BULLER
Ms. Buller. Chairman Gowdy, Ranking Member Cummings,
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting
me to appear before you today and discuss the work of the
inspectors general to promote integrity and efficiency.
As both the inspector general for the Peace Corps and the
chairs of legislation committee for the Council of Inspectors
General on Integrity and Efficiency, my testimony today
underscores our appreciation for the bipartisan support we've
received from this committee and from Congress.
For almost 40 years, IGs have helped hold Federal agencies
accountable, protected whistleblowers, exposed corruption and
mismanagement, and helped Congress make informed decisions
about the agencies within their purview.
This work is made easier thanks to the Inspectors General
Empowerment Act, which reaffirms a fundamental authority under
the Inspector General Act of 1978 that ``all'' means ``all,''
that IGs may access all materials and documents necessary for
our oversight work.
Thanks to the bipartisan efforts of this committee and its
staff, the passage of the Inspectors General Empowerment Act
restores what Congress intended. IGs must have timely access to
all of the materials and documents necessary to oversee their
agencies.
At the Peace Corps, I am pleased to report that the IG
Empowerment Act has restored critical access that allows us to
oversee the Peace Corps' response to sexual assaults. This
helps to ensure volunteers who experience sexual assault
receive the care and services they deserve. I've seen an
appreciable positive change towards a culture of openness and
cooperation. I hope this emboldens whistleblowers who are
reluctant to step forward in the past.
The IG Empowerment Act also provides the tools to ensure
independence and improve our oversight authority. In
particular, exemptions from the Computer Matching Act and the
Paperwork Reduction Act insure IG independence and help us more
efficiently prevent and detect fraud and conduct timely surveys
without being subject to approval from the agencies we oversee.
The IG council has taken steps, including creating guides
and working groups to help IGs use these new tools thoughtfully
and responsibly. I'm encouraged by IG initiatives to use
computer matching, such as the one initiated by the IGs at the
Department of Labor and VA to detect fraud in Federal benefit
programs. Our growing capabilities will improve the data
informed oversight sought by Congress.
The legislation committee assists Congress as it considers
legislation to improve IGs' ability to carry out oversight of
taxpayers. I want to briefly mention three priority items that
the IG community has identified to further improve our ability
to oversee Federal operations. First, IGs would like to work
with Congress to protect information that can be used to
exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Our reviews, including
congressionally mandated reviews, identify weaknesses in
Federal IT systems. Public disclosure of this information could
be a roadmap for malicious entities. While classified and law
enforcement information is protected from public disclosure,
there is no single protection that covers all IT security
vulnerability information.
Second, as other IGs have testified before, the resignation
of Federal employees during the course of an audit,
investigation, or review, has substantially hampered our work.
Most IGs lack the ability to compel the testimony of witnesses
who have information that cannot be obtained by any other
means. This authority was unanimously supported by this
committee and the House during the last Congress, so it was not
included in the bill that became law. We are encouraged by this
committee's continued consideration and bipartisan support of
testimonial subpoena authority for IGs.
Finally, legislative reforms have the potential to turn the
Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act from an underutilized tool
into an effective mechanism to recover fraud expenditures.
CIGIE has proposed several straightforward changes to help
agencies use the Act in cases of small dollar fraud or qui tam-
related cases where DOJ declines prosecution. If used to its
full potential, the recoveries could be significant.
The inspector general community is grateful for the
steadfast bipartisan support we have received from Congress.
Collaboration with this committee and its dedicated staff, both
for the Inspector General Empowerment Act and other initiatives
has been incredibly constructive. From our training initiative,
``Meet the IGs,'' to the regular technical assistance we
provide, our proactive efforts to keep each other informed have
yielded productive results for the taxpayer.
We look forward to continuing to be an important resource
to this committee and other congressional stakeholders as you
pursue your oversight and legislative work.
I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Buller follows:]
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Chairman Gowdy. Thank you, IG Buller.
IG Roth.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN ROTH
Mr. Roth. Chairman Gowdy, Ranking Member Cummings, and
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today
to testify.
I believe I speak for the entire OIG community in
expressing my gratitude to the committee for its leadership and
championing the IG Empowerment Act and the cause of vigorous
and independent oversight.
OIG's reporting relationship to Congress is a key feature
of the Inspector General Act. Inspectors general can only
recommend to our agency, but we cannot direct our agency.
Therefore, congressional oversight plays a critical role in
ensuring department operations. That which gets paid attention
to, simply put, gets fixed.
Probing fact-based oversight, whether done internally by an
inspector general, or externally by a congressional committee,
can help bring about positive change. The critical and
skeptical review of programs and operations, conducted in full
view of the public, acts as the disinfectant of sunlight to
insure improved transparency, accountability and efficiency in
government.
We appreciate that Congress, and this committee in
particular, recognizes the value of inspectors general, and
willingly steps up for OIGs by passing legislation that
empowers us. Simply put, without the support of Congress and
the significant independence and access provisions contained
within the IG Act, we would be unable to our job.
Let me give you an example: After conducting our most
recent test, covert tests at airport security checkpoints, we
identified vulnerabilities with the TSA screener performance,
screener equipment, and associated procedures. Ultimately, we
made eight recommendations in our classified report that, when
implemented, should improve TSA's performance in this area.
Within weeks of our report being issued, this committee had
already followed up with the Department, reaching out to the
Acting Secretary, to determine what actions TSA is currently
taking to address issues we raised in our report.
This committee has held numerous hearings on other aspects
of TSA's programs and operations and have assisted in bringing
senior level focus to some of those challenges. Additionally,
this committee is well aware of the work we've previously done
regarding Secret Service workforce issues and the oversight of
this committee was integral in getting the Department to focus
on those issues and change the culture there.
Without such vigorous oversight and congressional interest
in evaluating programs, there's less motivation to enact
difficult institutional change. Unfortunately, many OIGs,
including my office, faced cuts in the President's fiscal 2018
budget request. Some of these cuts are incremental, but some
offices are cut quite drastically. These budget cuts can
present an ongoing challenge for many in the inspector general
community. The vast majority of our expenses are used to pay
our auditors, inspectors or investigators. So budget cuts have
a dramatic impact on operations, particularly with the small IG
offices. Without the resources to do the job, no matter how
strong the provisions in the IG Act with regard to independence
and access to information, and no matter how strong the support
from this committee and others, money can always be used as a
weapon to diminish our ability to conduct the active and
independent oversight that Congress and the public deserve.
These proposed cuts make little sense, given the
contributions inspectors general make. The Brookings Institute
recently issued a report which analyzed the financial impact on
government when OIGs budgets are cut, and found that cuts to
OIG budgets actually costs the government money, and
contributes to the Federal deficit. In fact, Brookings
concluded, and I quote, that ``OIGs often function as revenue
positive institution, entities that bring in more revenue than
they cost.''
And as Mr. Horowitz noted in his testimony, he said his own
data showed a 17-to-1 ratio of money spent by OIGs to money
saved by our recommendations. So cutting the inspectors general
doesn't make any sense economically.
And that 17-to-1 figure actually understates our
performance, because it does not measure improvements that
result in increased national security and public safety. Much
of our best work, audit inspections report that shed light on
dangerous or ineffective programs, for example, don't carry
with it a cost savings, but the value of the American taxpayers
is incalculable.
Finally, let me permit me to publicly acknowledge the
auditors, inspectors and investigative agents that worked not
only for me at DHS IG, but throughout the IG community. They
come to work every day with a mission to make our government
work better, to be more effective and efficient, and to ensure
integrity. Being an independent entity within the organization
whose job it is to ask the hard questions is a tough job, but
without the dedication of the men and women who do the work, we
would not be able to point to the successes that we have talked
about this morning.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I'm happy to
answer any questions you or members of the committee may have.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Roth follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Gowdy. Thank you, IG Roth.
Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will be sworn
before they actually begin to testify, so I would ask you to
please rise and raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are
about to give should be the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
Let the record reflect all witnesses answered in the
affirmative. You may be seated.
The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Meadows, is
recognized.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
your leadership on this particular issue. Obviously, as we look
at making sure that accountability and oversight is conducted.
There is no group of individuals that are truly more welcome
than our inspectors general. I can say that having worked with
all three of you, this is not your first rodeo, we welcome you
back.
But Mr. Roth, as you were just mentioning, it is the men
and women who serve within your particular agencies that
deserve a round of applause from the American people, and quite
frankly, from Members of Congress. What I have come to
understand far too often is that Members of Congress normally
only show up when there is a problem, not when things are going
well. So you have my commitment to all three of you as you
invite me and other members of this committee to come in to do
what I would say is a thank you tour, thank you for a job well
done.
So Mr. Horowitz, let me come to you, because obviously with
all the attention that has been directed at the Department of
Justice and ongoing investigations, are you finding, because of
the IG Empowerment Act, your job is a bit easier to do with
regards to cooperation within DOJ?
Mr. Horowitz. I have heard from my entire staff, auditors,
investigators, review teams, that their job has been made much
easier by that. We are no longer getting the legal impediments,
roadblocks thrown in our way. We occasionally have timeliness
issues that come up that require elevating and they get fixed.
But it's night and day from what you and other members of this
committee heard repeatedly over the past 5 years about our
ability to get our jobs done. That has improved markedly.
Mr. Meadows. And, so, do I have all three of your
commitment that if you start to see those impediments, even
under a new administration, that you will report back to this
committee expeditiously to let us know, so that we can
hopefully alleviate any of those hurdles?
Mr. Horowitz. Absolutely.
Mr. Meadows. Mr. Chairman, if you could acknowledge that
all the witnesses answered in the affirmative on that
particular issue.
Mr. Horowitz, let me come back to you, because obviously,
there are some ongoing investigations as they relate to some of
the issues at DOJ. In the past, we have run into not with DOJ,
but we have run into other issues where the inspector general
has said, Well, they didn't want Congress doing oversight and
investigations simultaneously. Based on some of the ongoing
investigations that you are involved with, do you see if
Congress embarks on a strenuous oversight investigation, would
that hamper your ability to do your job?
Mr. Horowitz. No, we--I believe, we believe, and we've
talked about this, that we would be able to move forward with
our review, particularly, for example, our election--ongoing
election review, that where looking forward to completing, in
the not-too-distant future, and it would not impact us. And I
would just point to this--our experience with the Fast and
Furious review that we did. When I became IG in 2012, this
committee had an ongoing and quite active review, and both
moved forward in parallel fashions, and it did not impede us in
any way.
Mr. Meadows. So any requests for documents that this
committee or members of the Judiciary Committee, since they
have primary jurisdiction over DOJ, any requests for documents
that they would make, either here in the House or in the
Senate, would not be seen as being an impediment to your
ongoing investigation at this particular point?
Mr. Horowitz. That's right. Any documents that the
Department has created itself, obviously we would want to have
discussions before any records we had produced created in the
course of this would be produced, but any preexisting and other
records in the Department's custody we would have no objection
to the Department providing response to congressional requests.
Mr. Meadows. Well As you're aware, there had been some
requests for documents that have actually been conveyed. So
outside of private grand jury information that you've received,
can you see any reason why any of the other documents that have
been shared with you would not be shared with either the House
or the Senate?
Mr. Horowitz. I'm not aware of any such issues. Grand jury
would be the obvious one.
Mr. Meadows. Sure.
Mr. Roth, let me come to you in my final 16 seconds. You
have been hard-hitting on some of your analyses in a number of
ways, and I've enjoyed reading your reports, and have read them
many times over and over again. Do you believe, at this
particular point, that you have the tools necessary to make
sure that from a DHS standpoint, that we can get to the bottom
of so many things that have plagued the agency? And do you have
the necessary tools to be able to do that?
Mr. Roth. We do. I was in a somewhat different position
than Mr. Horowitz that the culture at DHS was to provide
documents. We've never had access issues. We have some
timeliness issues, but that is a matter of ensuring that those
issues get escalated to the right level and then they get
solved. But given the IG Act and the IG Empowerment Act, we are
in a pretty good place.
Mr. Meadows. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I yield back.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized.
The gentleman from North Carolina yields back.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Very quickly, I want to clarify a comment I made earlier,
Mr. Chairman. The subpoena that I requested earlier relates to
three TSA officials who were either allegedly involved in
retaliation, or involved in the decision to withhold documents
regarding retaliation. I didn't want to paint a broad picture,
but at least two of them were involved in retaliation. I just
wanted to clear that up.
Chairman Gowdy. Yes, sir. We're in one accord.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Horowitz, in your testimony, you stated that there are
currently 14 vacant IG positions, and that 12 of those are
presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed positions. The
President has not nominated a candidate for five of these
positions, including the Departments of the Interior, Energy,
Defense, Housing and Urban development and the Federal Election
Commission. Is that right?
Mr. Horowitz. That's correct. Although the FEC position is
an agency appointment, so that wouldn't be a Presidential one.
Mr. Cummings. The Department of the Interior has been
without a permanent IG for over 3,000 days. Mr. Horowitz, in
your testimony, you stated and I quote, ``A sustainable absence
of permanent leadership is not healthy for any office,
particularly one entrusted with the important and challenging
mission of the IG.'' Do you believe extended vacancies could
affect the ability of the IG offices to make long-term
commitments to projects?
Mr. Horowitz. Absolutely. And, you know, acting IGs do
great work. My position was vacant for about 15 months, but the
IGs--acting IGs understand that they have got to be careful on
any long-term issues while there's a vacancy. And not
surprisingly, the access issues I faced, as you know, occurred
during that period where there was no confirmed IG.
Mr. Cummings. Are there any constraints on acting IGs being
able to make decisions in the same way that a permanent IG
would do?
Mr. Horowitz. There aren't. And we at CIGIE strongly
supported acting IGs to make sure they know we've got their
back, if that comes up. But it's--it means--there's a
significant difference between having been confirmed for a
position and going through and knowing your staying versus
filling a seat with the unknown of how long is that going to be
and who's going to come next.
Mr. Cummings. On April 12th, 2017, then-Oversight Committee
chairman Jason Chaffetz and the ranking member, myself, wrote
to President Trump asking him to nominate qualified,
independent, individuals to fill these open spots. You said in
your testimony that CIGIE works with the White House to
recommend candidates with exemplary qualifications. Are you
satisfied that the White House is considering the
recommendations from CIGIE?
Mr. Horowitz. We've had a very good working relationship
with them. In reviewing candidates, they've made sure we
reviewed and interviewed and passed along our views of every
candidate. So far, all seven candidates that have been
nominated have come through. Our office obviously can't speak
to how the other vacancies will play out, but so far, it has
been an open and productive dialogue.
Mr. Cummings. On my way over here this morning to the
committee, a reporter asked me a very interesting question, he
asked, what do I worry about, or am I concerned about the folks
being appointed to the IG positions. And I told him, No, I'm
not worried at all, because the people that I--every IG that
I've ever met have been very honorable people, and they are
going to do what is right no matter what, and uphold the
Constitution. And so, I don't have any--any concerns about
that.
Some vacancies, of course, are pending before the Senate.
Robert Storch, who worked for you, Mr. Horowitz, was nominated
almost 5 months ago, but his nomination still has not been
approved by the Senate. Is that right?
Mr. Horowitz. Yeah. And I'll make a pitch for Rob. He is
still my deputy, National Security Agency nominee and my
whistleblower ombudsman. So to your point earlier, this is
someone who would bring to the intelligence community real
experience in whistleblowing issues, which, as we know, is
critically important there. He's gone through three committees,
three committees have approved that nomination because of the
position, and he is awaiting confirmation on the floor.
Mr. Cummings. Last question, tell us how significant the
whistleblower ombudsman is, and what--and exactly what do they
do?
Mr. Horowitz. I share your passion, Congressman, about
whistleblowers and the importance of supporting them. We've
dealt with them, and if anybody has any question about how
important whistleblowers are, go to oversight.gov, type in
whistleblowers in the search term, you'll get all the reports
that reference whistleblowers that have resulted in important
reports that we've issued. There are hundreds of them. And
that's because they know the key information that we need. And
having whistleblower ombudsmen is a way to further encourage
people to come forward, have a comfort level that they are
going to talk with somebody who understands, and cares about,
and knows about the challenges they are going to face, and can
give them information about the process, so it's not
mysterious, it's not an unknown.
And all of us in the IG community take seriously any
retaliation against whistleblowers. So our ombudsman are
involved in training within the community. We've created in
CIGIE our first-ever ombudsman group that's helping agencies
with training, my own agency, DOJ; we have worked with the
Department as well. So this is a very important issue for us.
And we support, by the way, legislation that this committee has
put forward, and you have been so instrumental on, it would
make those positions permanent.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from Maryland yields back.
The gentleman from North Carolina is recognized.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all on the
panel for being here today as always.
Mr. Horowitz, according to your website, your office is
conducting an ongoing review of the Drug Enforcement
Administration's effort to prevent opioids from being
distributed to unauthorized users. Can you give me an update of
the status of the review and when will that review be complete?
Mr. Horowitz. Well, we initiated that just a couple of
months ago, and, so, we're in the frankly relatively early
stages; we're in the middle of getting documents, reviewing
documents and conducting interviews. I can probably give you a
better idea early in the year on what our timeline looks like,
but our reviews roughly take about year or so.
Mr. Walker. Okay. Any initial or early delays that you are
concerned about at this point?
Mr. Horowitz. No. The relationship with DEA has changed
dramatically from what it was, and this committee understands,
perhaps, better than anybody.
Mr. Walker. We are thrilled to continue hear about, to
continue to expound on that even more in the days ahead.
Mr. Roth, or General Roth, the DHS OIG released a
management alert for FEMA on September 29, 2017, relating to
the housing programs FEMA is implementing in Texas following
Hurricane Harvey. The OIG made a point to release this
management alert quickly so FEMA would still have time to heed
the OIG's recommendation. Is that correct?
Mr. Roth. That's correct.
Mr. Walker. Has FEMA responded to that management alert or
provided feedback in any way?
Mr. Roth. They have responded, and we are working with
them. What we want to try to do is have a relationship where we
can give--bring attention to these issues and work with them to
try to get a solution.
What we were worried about particularly in that situation
was the fact that they contracted with a local State entity to
provide housing assistance, but the contract that they used
didn't have the kind of measures that a typical Federal
contract would have, you know, what is the responsibility of
FEMA? What is the responsibility to the State? How do you
measure performance? What happens if performance isn't
conducted, those kinds of things. So we were working with them
to try to convince them, or to have them understand why it is
that these things are important.
Mr. Walker. You are familiar with the step pilot program
that FEMA first used after Hurricane Sandy, I would imagine.
FEMA continues to use variations of this pilot program. They
used it again after the flooding in Baton Rouge last year, now
they are using it again after the hurricanes this year, but the
problem, I guess, is they still haven't implemented your
recommendations. Can you speculate, or tell me why it is
important? First of all, speculating why they have it, and tell
me why it is important that FEMA does include those
recommendations?
Mr. Roth. Yeah. This is one of the constant criticisms that
we've had over time with FEMA, is the fact that every disaster
seems to bring challenges that they had faced before, and yet
had not put in procedures in place. FEMA is a very highly
decentralized organization that's really developed around the
regional structure. So the procedure that was used, for
example, in Miami would be different than the procedure that
was used in Houston, as opposed to having sort of standardized
national criteria and policies and procedures. And the step
program really is the poster child for that.
We first notified them that this was a high-risk pilot
program back in 2012. They didn't do anything. We did another
audit report in early 2017. Again, there were issues. And then,
finally, we have this management alert that says, you need to
develop policies and procedures so you're not making this up
every single time.
Mr. Walker. So we're now, I guess, past 5 years from your
initial recommendations to FEMA. Is that correct?
Mr. Roth. That's correct.
Mr. Walker. Thank you.
With that, I yield back to our chairman.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from North Carolina yields
back. The gentlelady from New York is recognized.
Mrs. Maloney. Excuse me, I will be right back.
Chairman Gowdy. Yes, Ma'am. The gentlelady from the
District of Columbia.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate not
only this hearing, Mr. Chairman, but all of our witnesses.
Mr. Roth, I have questions for you because of my concern
about Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. On a scale of 1 to
10, let us look at Puerto Rico first, because the distress
continues there. What would you give the response to the
hurricane in Puerto Rico on a scale of 1 to 10?
Mr. Roth. We are looking at that very issue, as is the GAO,
to try to assess exactly how the situation has been. We haven't
come to any conclusions that I'm prepared to talk about at this
point. But we have people right now on the ground asking that
very question.
Ms. Norton. Well, because of my confidence in inspectors
general, I am sure you were unaffected by the fact that the
President has already given the Federal response a grade of 10
out of 10, very concerned for the future of responses, not only
in places like Puerto Rico surrounded by water, but throughout
the United States, that there could be a $300 million contract
given to a company that had two employees.
Mr. Roth, I have to ask you, is there anything that could
flag that instantly so that we don't have what we have now?
What we have now is a contract that's finally been withdrawn.
It wasn't withdrawn because of any action of this committee or
the Congress of the United States, it was a public outcry to
what continues in Puerto Rico. So it was--it was, indeed,
withdrawn.
Is there--I mean, once--once somebody gets a contract, I
won't even--because I think, in a real sense, I'd like to put
aside the possible--or the conjecture about political contracts
and the rest of it. Isn't there anything in the government or
your office to flag somebody getting a contract who has two
employees, or do we have to wait until the public demands that
that contract be withdrawn?
Mr. Roth. Certainly when FEMA is involved, we can tell you
what the process is. Now my understanding with the Puerto
Rico----
Ms. Norton. Well, sure, FEMA was involved.
Mr. Roth. Well, that's still unclear. In fact, we're
looking at that specific issue, the circumstances surrounding
the letting of that contract, and whether the Federal
Government was involved in that. But I will tell you what we
are doing in all three disaster areas. We are part of the joint
field office. So we have auditors and criminal investigators
who are part of the team there. And one of things that they
do----
Ms. Norton. Are they doing that--are the auditors there
now?
Mr. Roth. Yes.
Ms. Norton. Because I note that I have a New York Times
article here that Governor Rossello has asked for a Federal
investigation of the contract--I'm now quoting from The New
York Times--and for the power authority--the power and
authority to appoint a trustee to review contract bidding. Is
that the direction in which we're going now with respect to
Puerto Rico?
Mr. Roth. So what we're doing in Puerto Rico is, again, we
have an audit staff that's down there. In fact, my deputy is
down there as we speak.
Ms. Norton. Well, that's very reassuring. I have one more
question that I must ask you before my time runs out. There was
an 8-day delay in appointing a three-star general to go down
there. I don't know when there's been a disaster as bad as
Puerto Rico. Now, we understand that that Attorney General--
that general lieutenant, General Jeffrey Buchanan, is leaving
Puerto Rico, along with all of his military equipment. And they
don't have power in Puerto Rico yet. How is that justified, Mr.
Roth, to be pulling the military who was necessary to get
anything going in the first place? And are you looking into the
withdrawal of the military after the delay in getting military
there and the continuing crisis in Puerto Rico with no
electricity, and people still screaming and yelling that they
are not being treated fairly?
Mr. Roth. We are looking at FEMA's response and DHS'
response----
Ms. Norton. Are you looking at the withdrawal of the
military?
Mr. Roth. To the extent that DHS was involved in that
decision, we will--we will certainly consider it as part of our
overall review. I would also note that GAO has announced that
they are doing a fairly fulsome review of those very same
issues.
Ms. Norton. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that I believe there ought
to be a subpoena because the White House is withholding
information relating to the administration's response to
hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands where, there is
still immense distress. If we can't get it any other way, I
hope we will consider a subpoena.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentlelady from the District of
Columbia yields back. The gentleman from Alabama is recognized.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Roth, we sent a letter--we requested--to your office
requesting that you produce complete case files for your office
report, FEMA's initial response to the 2016 catastrophic
flooding in Louisiana. And we ask that you provide those
materials no later than 5:00 p.m. On July 31. Those materials
were not produced. We extended that, yet I gave you a little
bit longer. And you still--your office still hasn't provided
those. Can you tell me why you haven't provided those
documents?
Mr. Roth. Sure. The reason we haven't provided them is that
the audit is not complete. We issued a report with regard to
the flooding in northern Louisiana. And it was pointed out that
there was some factual discrepancies within that report. We
took those very seriously. We took down that report because we
had concerns about the accuracy of it.
I instituted an entirely new audit team that was completely
separate, had a different chain of command from the audit team
that had done the original report. They are still working
through those issues right now, so the audit is not complete.
And as a result, we're not able to produce those documents.
Mr. Palmer. When do you anticipate completing the audit and
producing the documents? Can----
Mr. Roth. I will have to give you an update on that. I
don't have that information in front of me. It should be a
matter of months, because we want to do this thoroughly. We
understand the concerns that were raised with regard to that
report.
Mr. Palmer. How much material are you having to go through?
I mean----
Mr. Roth. I'm sorry?
Mr. Palmer. You're talking about a matter of months, I
mean, are we taking 10,000 pages, a million--why can't we be a
little bit more timely with it, a little bit more specific
about how long it will take to produce those documents?
Mr. Roth. As I said, we're just going to have to take a
look. I mean, it's simply I have to take a look and see where
we are with regard to the process. We take it very seriously
when people raise issues with regard to the accuracy of our
reports, that's our bread and butter. We want to make sure it
is completely accurate before we release a report, or decline
to release a report if we can't salvage it.
Mr. Palmer. I'm not satisfied with a matter of months. I
want to know why you can't produce an audit. Do you not have
enough people doing the audit? What's the hold-up? I mean----
Mr. Roth. As I said----
Mr. Palmer. You've had more than 4 months, so we would--I
don't think it's acceptable to say that, you know, it's open-
ended response that it will be a matter of months. When can we
expect to get a report?
Mr. Roth. Well, I can't give you a definitive answer here.
I'll go back to my folks and see if we can accelerate the time
schedule.
Mr. Palmer. Okay. How long with it take for a definitive
answer?
Mr. Roth. As to a timetable? I imagine we can do that by
next week.
Mr. Palmer. Okay. Can we get that answer by Friday of next
week--well, no a minute, that's Thanksgiving.
Mr. Chairman, what would be acceptable time? The Monday
after Thanksgiving?
Chairman Gowdy. If that is within the realm of possible for
the IG, and acceptable to my friend from Alabama, we will say
the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Mr. Palmer. Is that good?
Mr. Roth. We'll report back then.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, sir. Mr. Horowitz, the Council of
the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency has plans
for the expansion of the oversight government.gov--oversight of
oversight.gov and other related efforts. How have the IGs and
agencies responded to that initial effort?
Mr. Horowitz. Well, certainly, the IG community has been
very supportive and we've gotten that up and running. And
oversight.gov was put forward and put together with no
additional funding. We would like to and have talked with
Members of Congress and OMB about creating an open
recommendations website. I think that is something members
across the board have asked us about, OMB's interested in, they
would be very valuable. Many of those open recommendations
carry billions of dollars in cost savings. We'd like to get a
whistleblower-friendly reporting web page up. Some of that
would require some additional funding. We've estimated in the
$1 million to $2 million range to develop the pages and staff
them, and we are looking forward to talk to Members of Congress
and OMB about that.
Mr. Palmer. Well, quickly have you looked at creating a
recommendations database similar to what the GAO uses?
Mr. Horowitz. Right.
Mr. Palmer. I worked on a number of issues where the GAO
and General Dodaro, and it's been extremely helpful. Are you
guys doing the same thing?
Mr. Horowitz. Absolutely. In fact, that is the impetus for
a lot of this. In fact, that was the first impetus for
oversight.gov was looking at GAO's web page, because you can to
GAO's web page and you can go to oversight.gov and see all of
their work across the entire Federal Government. You couldn't
do that until October 1 with the IGs.
So the first step was oversight.gov; we talked with Mr.
Dodaro and others at GAO about how we can do that. And I don't
know if this is possible, because I'm not the right tech person
to figure this out, but the ideal scenario would be, we can
develop an open recommendations page that talks with their open
recommendations page so that Members of Congress, OMB, the
public, can see across both of our organizations, the open
recommendations and how long they've been open.
Mr. Palmer. Excellent.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from Alabama yields back. The
gentlelady from New York is recognized.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking
Member and all the panelists.
I'd like to ask Mr. Roth, your office recently issued a
classified report on the Federal Air Marshals Service, or FAMS.
The unclassified summary of your classified report includes the
title of the report which is, and I quote, ``FAMS, contribution
to aviation transportation security is questionable.'' Now, I
recognize that you can't speak about classified material. But
to the extent that you can talk about the unclassified part of
this report, can you explain why the contribution of the
Federal Air Marshal Service to aviation transportation is, in
your opinion, questionable?
Mr. Roth. I can't obviously talk about the specifics of the
report.
Mrs. Maloney. Yeah.
Mr. Roth. But what I can talk about is TSA's attitude
assessing risk, in that they will assess risk in certain areas
of transportation, whether it is ground transportation, or air
transportation, or specific aspects within the transportation.
The difficulty is they don't budget the same way that they
assess risk. So things that are low risk, for example, still
notwithstanding the change in, for example, the risk
environment, or the intelligence that they receive with regard
to terrorist activity, their budget does not change in
accordance with that, so money gets wasted basically fighting
the last war.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, building on what you said, the CRS
reported that we spent over $800 million on the Federal Air
Marshal Services in years 2015, 2016, and 2017. And that's an
incredible amount of money to be spending on a service that is,
quote, ``questionable.''
And the Government Accountability Office stated to the
unclassified version of a report, and I quote, ``For FAMS, TSA
officials explain that it's very difficult to measure the
effectiveness of Federal air marshals and the program, and that
there's absolutely no way to collect data,'' end quote.
Do you agree with that? How in the world can you not
measure when you're spending $800 million on it, is the result?
Mr. Roth. I don't agree with that, and TSA will tell you
they have specific classified documents that talk about the
risk of specific events occurring. So they measure it, and can
measure it. Our difficulty is that their management of the risk
doesn't match their spending.
Mrs. Maloney. So what do we do about it?
Mr. Roth. Well, I'm a big fan of congressional oversight.
One of the things that we're doing is that report is now
classified at the secret level. We are going to redact the
secret portions to make it a little more accessible. It will be
at the SSI level, so more Members of Congress, for example, can
see it and see whether or not this is an issue that is useful
for oversight.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, since you can't discuss it because it's
classified, could you meet with the members in a bipartisan way
that are interested, and discuss the classified sections with
us?
Mr. Roth. Absolutely. We welcome the opportunity.
Mrs. Maloney. Okay. Maybe we can do that.
I'd also like to follow up on one of the posts from TSA.
Their website said they had 20 layers of U.S. aviation
security. But, again, you have reported that the checkpoint
screening layer is deficient. Can you, to the extent that you
can discuss the unclassified areas, could you share information
on the screening deficiencies?
Mr. Roth. Well, the only thing I can really say is that,
again, we do these tests about every 2 years. The last time we
did these tests was in 2015. I characterized those tests back
then as disappointing and disturbing. I would characterize the
results this time the similar way.
We found deficiencies in the equipment, we found
deficiencies in the personnel, and we found deficiencies in the
process by which they interacted with the equipment.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, I can say for a system that is critical
to protecting American lives, this is unacceptable, and we need
to be briefed on the classified section of it.
And the warnings that are being raised about the extent of
the problem, I find absolutely alarming, quite frankly, and we
should begin by enforcing the existing subpoena that the TSA
has ignored, completely ignored. And we should require
depositions with TSA employees that have refused, absolutely
refused to answer questions voluntarily that this committee has
put forward.
So I personally look forward to your briefing, and thank
you very much.
Mr. Roth. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. The gentlelady from New York yields back.
The gentleman from Kentucky is recognized.
Mr. Comer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Roth, I have a few questions relating to the ongoing
disaster-related investigations. First of all, this committee
staff recently met with your staff in Texas regarding the
response and recovery to Hurricane Harvey. In Texas, the Office
of Inspector General has been investigating disaster-related
fraud claims.
The impersonation of FEMA officials, bribery, extortion,
and even human smuggling, are these typical crimes you see
following a natural disaster?
Mr. Roth. Yes, we do. One of the things that we try to do
in the very early stages of a natural disaster, is that these
folks have been victimized once by the natural disaster; we
want to make sure that we try to prevent a second victimization
by sort of the criminal elements who would come in, either with
various sort of scams or identity theft, those kinds of things.
So we do see a lot of that typically in every natural
disaster, So that's why we want to jump on it as early as we
can.
Mr. Comer. What kinds of crimes and misconduct are you
investigating in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? Are there
any particular trends you have assessed at this point?
Mr. Roth. It's going to be roughly the same kind of things
that your staff saw in Houston. So, again, impersonation of
FEMA officials, for example, identity theft, various kinds of
scams. Charity scams, for example, are always a big one that we
always have to take a hard look at. So it's really the panoply
of criminal conduct that we almost see every--every disaster.
Mr. Comer. How are you allocating the OIG resources to
ensure that disaster relief funds are not misdirected to bad
actors who try to take advantage of Federal programs to assist
disaster survivors?
Mr. Roth. Yeah. We have a full court press on this. I mean,
typically, we spend roughly between $25- and $30 million a year
on disaster relief. That's going to go up, obviously, as a
result of these disasters.
We're doing a full court press, particularly early on in
the disaster, to make sure that we have a public presence, that
people know we're there. We're doing really on-the-spot
auditing work to sort of take a look at some of the contracts
that have been let to do sort of the basic name checks and
criminal checks of the individuals who are getting contracts,
to make sure that these aren't folks that are, for example,
prohibited from Federal work or, you know, related in some way
to a public official.
You know, those are the kinds of things that we do early
on. And then, obviously, once the public assistance money comes
in, we'll be doing early warning audits to take a look at
whether or not the entity that's involved has the capacity to
use this money in an effective way.
So we have a whole series of things that we'll do over the
course of time. I mean, we're still finishing up Sandy work,
for example. So it will take some time.
Mr. Comer. Right. I understand the complexities and the
difficulty that an agency like FEMA would have coming into a
situation where you've had a natural disaster, but in the past,
FEMA has had a lot of bad press, and a lot of bad stories.
Congress has continued to question FEMA, and hopefully trying
to determine if FEMA has learned from past mistakes.
Do you feel like FEMA is on the right track as far as being
efficient and trying to be responsive to the people in need, or
what's your assessment right now of the direction we're headed
with FEMA?
Mr. Roth. Yeah. When you look at all of our audits reports,
and there are hundreds of them, the picture that gets painted
is that this is still not a mature agency. They don't have the
kinds of internal controls that sort of a mature sort of
organization should have in the spending of money.
Their culture is one of disaster relief. They're very
victim centric, and I applaud the fact that they want to go in
and they want to do whatever it takes. But what I worry about
is that they don't have processes in place that will help
during stressful times, like a natural disaster.
Mr. Comer. And that's what makes it difficult for members
like myself who are concerned about the debt. I believe in a
limited government. It's government's responsibility to help
people that can't help themselves like in a disaster situation.
But my--speaking for myself--confidence level in FEMA isn't
where it needs to be, and that's unfortunate, because I know we
have a lot of people in need, and I believe that this agency
can and should be the point of contact between the government
and the people.
But I'm hopeful that FEMA will try to improve and restore
confidence in at least members like myself that have read some
of these audits and have serious concerns about the direction
that agency is headed with it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Gowdy. The gentleman from Kentucky yields back.
The gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking member.
I want to thank our witnesses. Thank you for the job that
you do every day. Not only is it very important work, but it is
becoming rarer as, at least on this committee, we have, I
think, abdicated our responsibility to conduct meaningful
oversight. So your work becomes even more important.
Mr. Roth, it would be great to hear, maybe offline, your
most recent review of TSA and what's going on. They've done
incredible work.
Ms. Buller, I had a chance to visit with the Peace Corps
volunteers in Tanzania. We've got some young, young American
kids over there that are out there hundreds of miles from any
major town, and basically trying to instruct the folks there,
the tribal members on avoiding HIV infection, things like that.
But, you know, I know we instantly recognized the heroism
and the courage of our military personnel, but I don't think we
give enough respect and acknowledgment to some of these kids in
the Peace Corps. Carrie Radelet, who is running the program
over there, at least was recently, and they're doing incredible
work over there, really deserve a lot of support. So I really
appreciate the work you're doing.
Mr. Horowitz, I want to talk to you about--you did a
wonderful, in-depth, thorough investigation of the use of
confidential informants by the ATF, the FBI, and DEA. And we
found--you found--that there was almost no oversight being done
in terms of how we select confidential informants.
In my district, we had a couple of instances where
confidential informants were actually committing murders while
they were on the payroll of the FBI. And we've got a lot of
evidence out there that bad things are happening.
So ATF has about 1,800 active informants. DEA has about
1,800 informants. There's a--I think there's a blind spot here.
The DEA has paid approximately $237 million out of--out to
about 9,000 of their informants. They paid $25 million to eight
people over the last 5 years.
There is very little evidence that we can see about how
these people were chosen, where the tax money is going to pay
these informants, what value they are to law enforcement
efforts. It's a black hole.
So, you know, you've done some great reports. I know
there's an addendum here, this year addendum to last year's
review. Has anything improved here in terms of their
accountability, in terms of who they choose as an informant,
whether they report the crimes?
So there's a lot of crimes being committed by confidential
informants with the protection of government under the pay--on
the payroll of the government, and we don't get any reports at
all. Congress gets nothing. We don't want to know anything.
That's just out there. They do their thing. It's
unconscionable, but that's the situation that exists.
Has anything gotten better?
Mr. Horowitz. First of all, I agree with you on your
assessment. And as you know, and we've talked about, our office
worked on the Bulger matter that you referred to, which was the
FBI informant, both on his prosecution and the agent's
prosecution.
Mr. Lynch. Right.
Mr. Horowitz. These are very serious issues. These are
people who are usually involved in illegal activity before they
become informants--not always, but often--who are then being
authorized to conduct additional illegal actions with the stamp
of approval of the Federal Government, and the Justice
Department in this instance.
We found widespread problems, as you noted. Part of the
report, the addendum is the classified piece of it, so I can't
go into some of those details but----
Mr. Lynch. Let me just stop you right there. We have to do
this. We have to do our work. You know, Mr. Horowitz, all three
of you, I would recommend we do a separate hearing with each
one of you, public hearing, about what we can talk about, and
then we do three confidential--you know, three basically
restricted forums, where it's in camera, and that we get the
rest of the information for you, because this is just
unconscionable that this would be allowed to continue. It's
putting the national security and the privacy protections of
the general public at great risk.
Mr. Horowitz. I agree, and I'd be more than happy to come
and speak with you and other members about the nonpublic
information but also, obviously, keep you and the committee
informed about what we're seeing as we do follow-up work.
Obviously, we will continue to watch how this is going,
because we agree, these are very significant issues that we've
identified.
Mr. Lynch. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield
back.
Mr. Gowdy. The gentleman from Massachusetts yields back.
The gentleman from Georgia is recognized.
Mr. Blum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Horowitz, I want to come to you. I would like to change
gears a little bit, go back to the Puerto Rico discussion. Last
month, the DOJ recommended that the oversight board that
Congress established for Puerto Rico, that it take steps to
ensure that the Federal disaster relief funds are protected
from creditors.
Has--has your office, have you all reviewed those
recommendations?
Mr. Horowitz. We have not yet, and I'd be happy to follow
up and check into that and get back to you.
Mr. Blum. Is there any reason that you haven't?
Mr. Horowitz. Frankly, with the variety of work and--on our
plate, we are, you know, obviously interested in looking at it
and talking with you further about it.
Mr. Blum. Please do, and I would like your input on that.
Yesterday we had, in Natural Resources, a hearing that involved
the government of Puerto Rico, and I was able to question. I
have some very serious concerns with this whole thing.
October 23, he established, by executive order, the CRRO,
the Central Recovery and Reconstruction Office for Puerto Rico.
And according to that executive order and his own testimony,
the purpose of the CRRO would be as a central collector of all
the various streams of financial support that the island is
receiving.
All right. That sounds pretty good, but when you start
coming down to the enormous amounts of money that are coming
in--I mean, just yesterday, he requested between $90- and $100
billion yet to come. And so my question is, if we here in
Congress have authorized the oversight board to oversee the
economic recovery of Puerto Rico, where does this leave the
CRRO and what kind of conflict is involved in it?
Mr. Horowitz. Yeah. And I'm certainly happy to look into
that. We did an audit report last year on the Department's
money going into Puerto Rico and found a wide variety of
concerns and problems about that, so this is a very important
issue. There's a lot of Federal Government money going, not
just with the disaster relief efforts, but day in and day out.
Mr. Blum. Right, day in and day out.
And let me ask a couple more questions with this. And, Mr.
Roth, I'm going to come to you on this too, because I want to
get my head wrapped around as much of this as I can.
Do you know whether or not the CRRO will be accountable to
the oversight board?
Mr. Horowitz. I don't know the answer to that as I sit
here, but I'm certainly happy to look into it.
Mr. Roth. Yeah. I don't know either. I'm sorry.
Mr. Blum. How can we be looking at all this money flowing
in there with a new, established office, the CRRO, and we don't
have any idea where all this--I mean, streams of--gobs of money
going in this. And there seems to me that there's no
accountability in this, and they're asking for more and more
all along.
Will the Office of the Inspector General be investigating
the CRRO?
Mr. Horowitz. Well, I'm going to follow up and look at the
issues. I will just say, in terms of the disaster recovery
moneys, I just want to mention that CIGIE, the Council of IG,
has a disaster assistance working group to make sure we're all
coordinated as IGs.
Actually, IG Roth leads that effort. We--he's had meetings
already about it. We've coordinated and we're talking to GAO.
They have participated in these discussions. We want to have a
comprehensive review on the disaster recovery effort.
And I'll just add, you're going to see in the next several
weeks, on Oversight.Gov, a new link and a web page so the
public can watch where that money has been going in our
oversight efforts on the disaster recovery efforts.
Mr. Blum. That would be very helpful. We're just talking
tens and tens of billions of dollars involved, and more
probably on the way. And there appears to me to be absolutely
no accountability. I'd like to know if there's going to be any
auditing. I want to know if the oversight board is going to
have any real oversight or involvement in this. They may be a
conduit for the money to go into and be disbursed, but who's
overseeing that----
Mr. Horowitz. Well, and that's the issue that I think we
have to follow up and see where the money is coming from and
where it's going to so that we understand who's conducting
oversight.
Just to be clear, with all of the oversight work we all do,
the first line of defense has got to be the agency and the
entity. We have limited staff. I have 450 people--470 people
now in my OIG to oversee 110,000 people.
I have $100 million budget, $95 million budget to oversee a
$28 billion budget. So--and John's numbers, actually, IG Roth's
numbers are probably even more skewed the other way. So, you
know, we've got limited resources. We've got to make sure our
agencies are doing the work they need to do as well.
Mr. Blum. We do. And we've got to make sure there's
oversight of all of this. I was stunned with his request of 90-
to $100 billion. And I did a little research. That's more than
what NASA is requesting for the Mars One project that goes from
the 2011 to the mid-2030s, where we're actually going to be
putting a permanent human colony on Mars, for crying out loud.
And Puerto Rico is wanting more money. It's like, this is
an unbelievable amount of money, and we have got to make sure
that the accountability is there. And I thank you for your
assistance in that.
I yield back.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from Georgia yields back.
The gentlelady from Illinois is recognized.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the hiring freeze. On
January 23, 2017, President Trump imposed a government-wide
hiring freeze for civilian employees. In April, the Office of
Management and Budget replaced the President's hiring freeze
with a directive to all Federal agencies, quote: ``Begin taking
immediate actions to achieve near-term workforce reductions and
cost savings.''
The Democratic committee staff surveyed inspectors general
at two dozen Federal agencies to determine the potential effect
of these actions on their ability to conduct oversight of
Federal programs and operations.
Mr. Horowitz, the response we received from your office in
March stated, and I quote, ``As we continue to assess the
impact of the hiring freeze and prospect of a reduced budget,
DOJ, OIG is concerned about the potential impact that a period
of sharply limited resources could have on our ability to
continue to perform the kind and range of audits, evaluations,
and investigations that are expected of us.''
I understand that your office was able to hire some staff
this year. How could a hiring freeze impact an IG office in its
ability to conduct oversight?
Mr. Horowitz. Obviously, a hiring freeze would have an
impact, or could have an impact on IGs because of the
limitations on adding staff. We are--as IG Roth mentioned
earlier, all of our work is driven by our staff and our ability
to do their work.
I'll just add this caveat: We were largely exempted from
the hiring freeze as IGs because of our law enforcement and
other important responsibilities. What does worry myself and
other IGs is flat budgets for us is, in effect, a hiring cut,
because costs increase, rent increases, healthcare increases,
other benefits increase, meaning we have to reduce staff if
we're held flat.
And that does have an impact on us. We're not like the FBI,
DEA, other parts of the Justice Department that can look to
nonpersonnel costs to save money. We're all about two things as
a general matter: People and rent. And we're not going to close
our buildings because we still have people working in them. So
it's all going to have to come out of personnel.
Ms. Kelly. So freezes and flat budgets both impact the
mission of your organizations?
Mr. Horowitz. Right. So I would just--that is actually far
more important to me in my office than perhaps the hiring
freeze was because of the exemption we were given.
Ms. Kelly. Okay. Mr. Roth, the survey response that our
staff received from your office stated, and I quote, ``That
said, to adhere to the intent of the hiring freeze, there is
still many support positions that are on hold during the freeze
that we believe, based on past experience, will over time
reduce the Department's overall capacity and capability.
However, the long-term impact remains to be determined.''
Has your office taken any actions to implement the OMB
directive?
Mr. Roth. Yes. So what we have done--and, again, the freeze
was lifted in April, as you note, and, you know, since then we
are hiring up to our budget levels. So there was a pause while
we tried to understand what it was that was going on, but we
have now been able to continue to hire basically to our full-
time equivalent level.
Again, to reiterate what I said in my testimony as well as
what Mr. Horowitz testified to, what we worry about is future
budgets. The President's budget for me for fiscal 2018 has a 10
percent cut in our budget, and that would be 10 percent below
this year's level at the same time that the rest of DHS is
increasing. So as their risks increase, our opportunity to take
a look at those risks and try to mitigate those risks decline.
So that's what we worry about more than a freeze.
Ms. Kelly. Okay. Many IG offices responded to our survey
noting serious concern about the impact of the administration's
hiring freeze and proposed staffing reductions. The Department
of State IG reported that it faces, and I quote, ``staffing
challenges in our oversight of operation, inherent resolve in
Operation Freedom Centennial, the U.S. efforts to defeat the
Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant and the Taliban
respectively.''
The EPA IG warned that staffing reductions could, and I
quote, ``hinder significantly our ability to exchange
protective intelligence information with the FBI, Secret
Service, and Marshal Service, which would delay the
apprehension of criminals.''
Given how impactful IG offices can be in preventing waste,
fraud, and abuse, it makes very little sense to impose a
freeze, staffing reductions, or budget cuts on IGs. The
Government Accountability Office found that a previous hiring
freeze, and I quote, ``caused decreased oversight of Federal
programs by making it more difficult for the inspector general
offices to do their jobs, something we want you to have the
capability to do.
And I yield back.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentlelady from Illinois yields back.
The gentleman from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mr. Russell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thanks to all three of you for the work that you do.
Our government would be far less efficient without the
fantastic work that you do.
Ms. Buller, I would like to start with you, but actually
ask all three of you, because you had expressed concern, along
with Mr. Horowitz, about desire for an independent testimonial
subpoena authority. And I think this is important that--you
know, that we explore that a little more.
Would you speak to that, and actually all three of you, of
why this subpoena authority you feel is necessary?
Ms. Buller. Often during the time that we're conducting an
audit or an investigation, people who have knowledge of events
that happened during the course of the event--of the activities
that resulted in the auditor investigation leave for whatever
reason, either they retire conveniently, sometimes, or they
just leave.
And we cannot, once they leave the government, make them
talk to us. When they're employees of the government, we do
have the ability to access them. Once they're gone, we don't.
And in the Peace Corps, it's exacerbated because we have a
5-year term limit. So there is people coming and going all the
time, and most of the time, they don't even stay for the 5
years. So once they're gone, and we're in the middle of an
audit, we can't talk to them about it or--if they don't want to
talk to us. That's the importance of a testimonial subpoena.
Mr. Russell. And I appreciate the insight on the 5-year
term limit, which makes it even more difficult.
Mr. Horowitz, and then Mr. Roth.
Mr. Horowitz. I'll speak to whistleblower matters.
Congress, for good reason, gave IGs authority to look at
whistleblower retaliation at contractors and grant recipients
when management there tried to shut down employees from
reporting waste, fraud, and abuse to us.
Well, the challenge is, unlike employees in the Federal
Government, which when they're employed, they have to speak to
us, the same isn't true for current or former employees of
contractors or grant recipients.
And so, we have that authority now to investigate, but I've
had cases where the people who were the alleged retaliators,
either left their jobs, in which case they clearly were
unreachable to us because they weren't going to voluntarily
speak to us, or even if they were still at the job, it would
require management of that organization to tell the employee to
speak to us because there's no other way to do that.
And so, it's very important the whistleblower space, as
well as frankly the misconduct space. We see, not infrequently,
Department employees conveniently retiring on the eve of being
questioned about the misconduct we're----
Mr. Russell. That seems to be a bad habit.
Mr. Roth.
Mr. Roth. Yeah. And I would add, for example, in the FEMA
context, you know, most of the money goes to States as grantees
and then the State and locals as municipalities and then to
private contractors. So just to trace the money and do a basic
fraud investigation, never mind the whistleblower retaliation,
requires the cooperation of all those folks.
Now, the grants give us access to documents, but they don't
give us access to people. So being able to go in and interview
folks and get people on the record in those kinds of fraud
contexts is enormously important.
Mr. Russell. Well, that's great insight. And so we've had
some authority kind of like this in the past. It's now
disappeared. What's the fix? It's obviously going to require
legislative, but what are your ideas on this?
Mr. Horowitz. Well, it would require a legislative fix. And
to be clear, the Defense Department IG has this authority----
Mr. Russell. Right.
Mr. Horowitz. --and has used it very judiciously and
appropriately. And as they've noted, just having the authority
causes people to want to speak voluntarily, frankly, probably
much like this committee----
Mr. Russell. Right.
Mr. Horowitz. --right. You don't probably have to issue
many subpoenas to get people to come in and speak with you, but
it helps to know that that subpoena power is there.
We would need legislation. We worked very closely with the
supporters of this in this committee and on the Senate side to
put in place controls around it because it was reasonable--
there were reasonable concerns to make sure that we would use
it in connection with people who actually benefited from
government programs.
We weren't running around trying to subpoena people who I'm
not sure I would have the time to do that, but we wouldn't use
it for that purpose. So we're prepared to sit down and address
any concerns about the use of it, make sure there's effective
oversight. We had talked about a three-IG panel to make sure
that existed, and that was what was originally in the draft
legislation we worked with the committee on. We're prepared to
work and make sure this is used reasonably and appropriately.
Frankly, just having the authority, I think, will cause us to
not need to use it.
Mr. Russell. Well, and your point on Department of Defense
is spot on. Them having the authority really precludes a lot of
subpoenas.
And, Mr. Chairman, I think this is something that we ought
to explore, that we ought to try to do, because without teeth
behind the bark it's not really going to matter much. And for
the record, I would like to assist this committee in that
effort. I think that it is something worth doing.
And I've run out of time, and I yield back.
Chairman Gowdy. We'll do one better. We'll let you take the
lead. Why don't you be our lead on finding a way to----
Mr. Russell. Well, I'm happy and honored to work with the
IGs on this issue. I do think it is--we see it in other aspects
of government where it's very effective, it's not abused. And I
think for our IGs to do even more incredible work, we need to
give them the proper tools. Thank you.
Chairman Gowdy. I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma.
I'll now recognize myself. I'll start by thanking all three
witnesses.
IG Horowitz, I'm going to probably direct my questions to
you, in part because of what you do now, and, in part, because
of what you used to do in a very distinguished career as an
assistant United States attorney.
Give us the other side over the argument on compulsory
process, because when something--it sounds like a great idea,
and this does, the ability to compel evidence really. The fact
that we don't have it leads me to believe that there is at
least some argument on the other side. What would it be?
Mr. Horowitz. So the Justice Department itself has opposed
giving IGs----
Chairman Gowdy. That would be an argument.
Mr. Horowitz. And their concern is, then, that if we
subpoena somebody and compel them to speak to us, that could
negatively impact their ability to pursue criminal cases in
matters they may have ongoing that we don't know about. We put
in place a procedure in the Act to address that. The Department
would get notice before we gave any--issued any subpoenas.
Much like is currently in existence, as you know, from
being an AUSA yourself, that before anybody gives immunity to
anybody in the Justice Department, there's a central process
for doing that to make sure an AUSA in New York doesn't harm a
case going on by an AUSA in South Carolina, for example.
That's what we've proposed here. And, frankly, I, as a
former prosecutor, don't understand that argument. If I was if
AUSA handling that case that was criminal, and they didn't know
about our work, I'd want to know about our work, because that
could give them additional leverage in their criminal case.
So as a former prosecutor, frankly, I don't understand the
argument once you've put in place the protections. And Mr. Roth
also is a former prosecutor, and we very much respect the
concern, and we'll work with them to put that in place. But
there's a way to address that, I think.
Chairman Gowdy. Well, I hope so. I think there has to be.
The ability to simply leave your place of employment and avoid
scrutiny or having to provide information makes it really tough
to conduct fulsome investigations.
Keep that same old hat on for a second.
Mr. Horowitz. Okay.
Chairman Gowdy. There's an issue with respect to OPR.
Mr. Horowitz. Uh-huh.
Chairman Gowdy. Explain for those who may not have worked
for the Department of Justice, don't explain--don't understand
what OPR is, what is the issue there and what are both sides of
the argument?
Mr. Horowitz. Okay. So the office--OPR, the Office of
Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department, was
created long before the IG Act was passed to look at misconduct
by prosecutors. The head of that Office is appointed by the
Department's leadership, the Deputy AG and the Attorney
General, and they handle all allegations, prosecutorial
misconduct against prosecutors for conduct in connection with
their jobs as lawyers. So, for example, in the courtroom and
those kinds of issues.
That's a carve-out that exists now in the IG Act, so that
when my office was created back in 1988, it was carved out of
our jurisdiction. We're the only IG with this carve-out. And it
means that while we look at misconduct by FBI agents, DEA
agents, ATF agents, other personnel, non-lawyers in the
Department, as well as lawyers when they engage in misconduct
outside of work, we can't look at prosecutorial--allegations of
prosecutorial misconduct.
We don't see a principled reason why we should be able to
look at FBI agents' misconduct, but not misconduct by Federal
prosecutors. If there's--if it's important enough to have
independent oversight by a statutorily independent IG over FBI
agents, surely it's the same for prosecutors who wield at least
as much power as FBI agents by their ability to act improperly
in a courtroom.
The flip of that has been, the Department's argument has
been--and again, they've always opposed giving that authority
to us--is that the Office of Professional Responsibility has
managed that function effectively since its creation, they know
how to do those cases, and there's no reason to change the
process.
It's my view that for purposes of independent oversight and
transparency, there have been many issues coming forward in the
last many years about questions of oversight of prosecutors.
Several judges have raised concerns. And I think it is--people
would be hard-pressed to explain to an FBI agent why they need
independent oversight by an inspector general. But the
prosecutors they're working with day in and day out, they go in
another--through another door.
Chairman Gowdy. Particularly, in many instances, the Bureau
agent, herself or himself, may also be an attorney. So their
agent conduct is scrutinized or investigated one way.
And if I heard you correctly, Representative Hice, Cedric
Richmond from Louisiana, have worked with you on proposing a
legislative remedy in this area as well as the one Stevie made
reference to?
Mr. Horowitz. That's correct.
Chairman Gowdy. All right.
Mr. Horowitz. And we have--we've worked, as well, with
bipartisan members on the Senate side to do the same.
Chairman Gowdy. Last issue, because I'm out of time. I
don't like to do it. But quickly, I'm not asking you about the
merits of it, you couldn't talk about it, don't--I wouldn't ask
you about it. But your reputation for integrity is well-
deserved, and has been around for a long time.
You are looking into certain matters and decisions made by
the Department of Justice in the 2016 election cycle, calendar
year.
Mr. Horowitz. Right.
Chairman Gowdy. Do you have an update from a time
standpoint? And, secondarily, are you able to access all the
witnesses and documents that you think are necessary for you to
conduct a fulsome investigation?
Mr. Horowitz. And I can certainly talk to the process
questions and the timing questions, and I appreciate your
respecting the ability to complete that in an independent way.
In terms of process, we have gotten all the records we've
asked for. We've gotten them, as a general matter, in a timely
fashion. We've interviewed dozens of people. We're not at the
hundred level yet, but we're in the dozens range.
We've reviewed about 1.2 million records in the course of
the investigation, so a pretty substantial effort by the team,
which has done great work. We are aiming to release the report
in late winter, early spring, so hopefully in that March, April
time period.
Obviously, I can't commit to that because, as we've seen,
events can arise, issues can arise that require us to do
additional interviews or get additional records. And given
there's a classified piece to this, as you know, it requires a
significant process to make sure that individuals who are no
longer at the Department or are lawyers for individuals who are
no longer at the Department can actually be a part of those
interviews by getting renewed clearances.
So that's impacted somewhat the timeframe, but we're moving
along quite expeditiously, and that's my hope.
Chairman Gowdy. Thank you.
I thought I was last, but the gentleman from Wisconsin has
joined us and--I apologize. The gentlelady from Michigan. I
didn't see you. I'm old and I can't see that far.
Mrs. Lawrence. No, you have a lot of years left, sir.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Roth, 2 years ago, you testified before this committee
after your team completed testing at TSA checkpoints that your
team had run tests using different concealment methods at eight
different airports. The report--you reported, and I quote,
``The test results were disappointing and troubling.'' Is that
right?
Mr. Roth. That's correct.
Mrs. Lawrence. Okay. With that being said, 2 years ago, you
testified that, quote, ``The Department's response to our most
recent findings have been swift.'' You said that then-Secretary
of DHS directed that an immediate plan of action be created to
correct deficiencies uncovered during that testing.
Was that plan implemented? And if not, why not?
Mr. Roth. It was implemented. The difficulty, of course, is
that it's a massive problem in three areas: One, training
personnel. They have over 40,000 transportation security
officers that would need to get trained; they have technology
issues that are going to require a long-term fix of research
and development and deployment; and then they had process
issues as far as their standard operating procedures missed
certain methods of concealment that needed to get tightened up.
They started a training program, a fairly rigorous training
program, particularly for new employees. They are on their way
to try to fix the technology. And then, lastly, they have, I
think, done a pretty good job of tightening up their procedures
with regard to that. The difficulty is the training and the
technology piece are long-term fixes.
Mrs. Lawrence. So with that being said, as we know that
it's troubling to you, is absolutely troubling for the American
citizens who are subjected to this obvious inefficiency. So we
talked about long term. What is long term, and what is the
expectation? I say to you that we can expect this removal of
troubling findings that we are aware of.
Mr. Roth. We made eight recommendations in this last audit
report. The Department agreed with each of those eight
recommendations. This is an enormously difficult problem, but
it's one that's--it's going to require constant attention to
get right.
One of the things that we found, for example, when we did
our covert testing this time is that we asked whether or not
the TSOs, who we discovered deficiencies with, had gone through
the training. And, you know, frankly, notwithstanding the fact
that they have been training people at a record pace as a
percentage of the workforce, only a small percentage of that
workforce has been trained.
You know, we found other issues that we hadn't discovered
in our last----
Mrs. Lawrence. What's the timeline? What is----
Mr. Roth. I don't have the timeline. The process that we
use is that we make our recommendations. The Department takes
it, and in 90 days, they give us a plan. So we have not
received that plan yet. So I can't----
Mrs. Lawrence. I would like for this committee to be
updated because the American people need to know what the
expectation is, that we are in compliance.
Mr. Roth. Yes.
Mrs. Lawrence. I have a very important issue. As you know,
I represent Michigan, Detroit. At the end of September, ICE
arrested nearly 500 people in 10 different cities and regions
across country. It's evident that many of these immigrants may
not be dangerous. In fact, sometimes their only supposed crime
is crossing the border before they work and pay taxes.
Do you know currently what is ICE criteria for deciding
which communities to target and deport? How does ICE ensure
it's not wasting taxpayers' dollars in time by targeting non-
dangerous immigrants? And did you examine whether ICE is using
resources in efficiency, and this new criteria of it appears to
be rounding people up? I really need an answer for that, Mr.
Roth.
Mr. Roth. We have not done any specific audit work with
regard to ICE priorities. What we have done is spend a
considerable amount of resources on misconduct cases where
we'll get reports of misconduct.
For example, we're doing a series of investigations at the
southwest border regarding individuals who have credible fear
claims who are being turned away without having those credible
fear claims adjudicated.
Those are the kinds of things that we're looking at, but we
haven't looked at and commented on specifically ICE's
priorities or the Secretary's priorities and how it is that
they are using those resources.
Mrs. Lawrence. Well, it needs to be looked at. And I can
tell you in a community that's not on the southwest border that
we have major issues in large immigrant communities of
disparate treatment that when we question, and I as a Member of
Congress, there seems to be no following of an agenda or
priority set by anyone.
So are we just--renegade across the country. We should all
know what the criteria and why we are operating the way we are.
And this is something that is extremely important for our
communities, for people who are living in our cities.
I yield back my time.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentlelady from Michigan yields back.
The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized.
Mr. Grothman. Sure. I'll give a couple questions.
The Inspector General Empowerment Act provided an exemption
to inspectors general from the Computer Matching Act. Has this
improved your oversight?
Ms. Buller. It has the potential to greatly improve our
oversight. It will allow IGs to use computer matching more
efficiently. One of the problems we had with the Computer
Matching Act to begin with was that our agencies had--were
involved in the approval process of us being able to match.
Since we don't have to do that anymore, it will allow IGs
to more effectively take information from one agency and one IG
to another IG and match it, and ferret out more improper
payments and fraud.
Mr. Grothman. Good. Could you give me some specific
examples?
Mr. Roth. I can tell you about what happened when we didn't
have it before and the delays that were incurred. We took a
look at the individuals who have what's called a SIDA badge,
which is a secure identification access card to parts of the
airport where airplanes are. Obviously, you're supposed to have
a specific security clearance for that or certain background
check for it.
So we took a list of those folks, which is 900,000 people,
and we bounced it against the list that the intelligence
community has, what they call their TIDE database, which is the
Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, basically it's their
list of all known or suspected terrorists.
Hopefully, those two subsets of information, there would be
no individuals who were in both subsets. What we found, in
fact, were that the 73 individuals who were on this terror list
also had access to secure parts of the airport, obviously of
considerable concern to TSA and aviation security.
It took us 18 months just to get the approval for the
computer matching. So that is the kind of delay that is now
gone as a result of the Computer Matching Act. And I know, from
our point of view, we're going to be using it on these
hurricane relief efforts significantly.
If I can take the list of people who are FEMA recipients
for housing and bounce that against the HUD database of people
who are receiving those very same benefits, see who falls out,
and then we know that people are getting duplicate payments.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you.
Mr. Horowitz. And let me just add, one of the things that
myself and Vice Chair Allison Lerner have done in meeting with
OMB is encourage them to consider a pilot program with several
cabinet-level agencies to look at whether there's improper
benefits going to employees of those agencies, or other
recipients of those agencies that are duplicative of benefits,
whether it's disability or Section 8 housing or food stamps or
any of the other large Federal programs out there, to try and
use our authority in a way that would find these duplicative
payments.
GAO has reported that number is well in excess of $100
billion a year. So it's an important tool that you've given us,
and we're using it in several instances.
Mr. Grothman. Thanks. Hopefully all the agencies will take
advantage of your findings. We'll see.
I'll give you one more question, Mr. Roth, since you
brought it up. When you talk about people coming into this
country because they're fearful, which countries are people
coming here from that they're fearful?
Mr. Roth. I don't have data anecdotally. The agents tell me
on the southwest border that it's largely Central American
countries, but I don't have the specifics or numbers. I'm sure
that you can get that from USCIS, for example.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. They're not adjacent to the country.
Are we supposed to take in somebody here--or how would they be
getting in here from a South/Central American country?
Mr. Roth. I mean, typically the immigration patterns are
through Mexico.
Mr. Grothman. Are they endangered in Mexico or just
endangered in----
Mr. Roth. Again, we don't look at those. All we look at is
whether or not the Department is following the policy that has
already in place rather than the wisdom of the policy itself.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. Thanks much, and I'll yield the
remainder of my time.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from Wisconsin yields back.
The gentleman from Maryland, Professor Raskin is
recognized.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I'm
delighted to be with you guys. Forgive me, I had another
hearing, so I had to step out.
But I'm excited to ask a few questions to Mr. Horowitz. And
I want to ask you about a June 29 letter that the Democrats on
this Committee in Judiciary sent to you raising concerns that
Attorney General Sessions may have departed from his decision
to recuse himself when he participated personally and directly
in President Trump's decision to dismiss FBI Director Comey.
You received that letter, right?
Mr. Horowitz. Yes.
Mr. Raskin. The reason we wrote you is because the Attorney
General said he was recusing from all matters relating to the
2016 campaign, both the Trump campaign and the Clinton
campaign, but then worked directly with President Trump and the
Deputy Attorney General to fire Mr. Comey, the FBI Director.
And it was said they were firing Comey because of the way
he handled the Clinton investigation. In reality, of course,
the President admitted both to a group of visiting Russians in
his office and on national TV that he fired Director Comey
because of his distaste for the Russian investigation, and that
Comey was becoming a problem for him.
My question is whether your office is investigating the
issues we raised in our letter, whether the Attorney General
violated his decision to recuse when he undertook these
actions?
Mr. Horowitz. So we did receive the letter. And one of the
things that, whenever we get a request like that, in any space
is, is there an ongoing department investigation? And as you
know, there was a special counsel appointed. The request from--
the letter request relates to matters that could touch on that
investigation.
And one of the things that we try and do as IGs is,
obviously, defer, continue to consider and assess the--a
request like that when there's an ongoing Department
investigation. So we have not made a final decision on that.
Mr. Raskin. Gotcha. Did you say, I'm sorry, you have not
made a----
Mr. Horowitz. We have not made a decision on that.
Mr. Raskin. I gotcha. Okay. Because I understand that as a
general policy, but if the subject is--if the subject of the
investigation is the recusal of the Attorney General or another
high official, him or herself, one would think that the IG
policy would have to adjust for that, right?
Mr. Horowitz. And obviously every situation, it depends on
the specific facts. I think one of the things we generally try
and do is hold in abeyance any activity while there is an
ongoing FBI or special counsel--in this case, special counsel
investigation----
Mr. Raskin. Gotcha.
Mr. Horowitz. --under the FBI. That's what we're doing
here. And----
Mr. Raskin. But it's still--the ball is still in spin, it
sounds like?
Mr. Horowitz. The ball is still in my court.
Mr. Raskin. It's in your court, okay.
Monday, DOJ sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee saying
that the Attorney General had been directly involved in
decisions regarding the appointment of a special counsel to
investigate, and I quote, ``the sale of Uranium One alleged
unlawful dealings related to the Clinton Foundation and other
matters.''
The letter says the AG directed senior Federal prosecutors
to evaluate whether a special counsel should be appointed, and
told them to report their findings directly to the Attorney
General and Deputy Attorney General.
So this letter indicates that the AG is not recusing
himself from these matters and is still directly involved, and
seems to contradict what he claimed he had been doing before,
which was to recuse himself from them.
Now, I know--I understand your position, that your--as long
as it appears like something is going on, you're not going to
get involved. But I just want to know whether you agree with me
to the importance of this matter.
At the Attorney General's confirmation hearing on January
10, he testified, and I quote, ``I believe the proper thing for
me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving
those kinds of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton
and that were raised during the campaign or be otherwise
connected to it.''
Remember, one of the pervasive chants of the campaign and
was, ``Lock her up,'' and they were raising all these questions
about the Clinton Foundation.
Senator Grassley asked him a follow-up question, and I
quote, he said, ``To be very clear, you intend to recuse
yourself from both the Clinton email investigation and any
matters involving the Clinton Foundation, if there are any?''
And the Attorney General responded, and I quote, ``Yes.''
So he testified under oath, he would have nothing to do
with any investigations that involved Secretary Clinton that
were raised as a political football during the campaign or that
were otherwise connected to it, and he explicitly referred to
the Clinton Foundation. But the letter that we saw on Monday
from DOJ suggests the opposite, that he's working directly on
these matters when he shouldn't be.
And I understand it's complicated because you're dealing
with investigations that might relate to people within the
Department of Justice. But will you please agree to look into
this and report back to us as soon as you have an update and a
resolution as to what you think the proper role of the IG is?
Mr. Horowitz. Yeah. As I said, I will certainly be in that
position with the prior letter and be happy to receive any
additional information about Monday's letter or--Monday's
letter to the Congress, or any other matter. We, I'll just say
as a general matter, take conflict-of-interest matters and
recusal matters. Those are important.
Obviously, much of it turns on the conflict-of-interest
laws and the regulations, which, as you know, are somewhat
arcane and complex. But we're certainly happy to take under
advisement any matter that a Member of Congress or the
committee wishes us to take--to consider and assess.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
And I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gowdy. The gentleman from Maryland yields back.
I want to thank our witnesses. On behalf of Mr. Cummings
and all the other members and myself, thank all of you for
appearing before us today.
The hearing record will remain open for 2 weeks for any
member to submit a written opening statement or questions for
the record.
There is no further business. Without objection, the
committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:09 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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