[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 5 (Monday, January 31, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S130-S132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE PENTAGON'S ACTING INSPECTOR GENERAL

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment with my 
colleagues to discuss a recent article that was in the National 
Journal. It was about the Pentagon's Acting Inspector General, Mr. 
Donald Mancuso. The article was written by Mr. George Wilson. Mr. 
Wilson was a senior defense reporter at the Washington Post for many 
years. He left the Washington Post in 1991 to write books. He is now a 
columnist with the National Journal.
  Mr. Wilson is a top-notch reporter. He is respected for being very 
thorough and very fair. But, above all, he is respected for an uncanny 
ability to find the nub of a complex issue and expose it to public 
scrutiny in an interesting

[[Page S131]]

and also informative way. He had a recent article in the National 
Journal that is no exception. It has exposed a very raw nerve. The 
article is entitled: ``Tailhook May Soil Choice for Pentagon's Mr. 
Clean.'' It appeared in the January 22, 2000, issue of the National 
Journal on pages 260 and 261.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have that article printed 
in the Record at the end of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. GRASSLEY. The article I refer to raises important questions, even 
new questions, about Mr. Mancuso's integrity and judgment. At some 
point down the road, this body may be called upon to confirm or not 
confirm Mr. Mancuso's nomination because it has been suggested that 
President Clinton is expected to nominate him to be the next Department 
of Defense Inspector General.
  If that happens, then each Member of this body would need to weigh 
all the facts bearing on Mr. Mancuso's fitness to serve as the 
Pentagon's watchdog, which is also the Pentagon's top cop.
  In October, my staff on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative 
Oversight and the Courts issued, for me, a report on the Defense 
Criminal Investigative Service. I am going to refer to that, as it is 
always referred to, as the DCIS--Defense Criminal Investigative 
Service.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to read this report. It substantiated 
allegations of misconduct on the part of senior DCIS management, 
including Mr. Mancuso, and at least one of his investigators, Mr. 
Mathew Walinsky. Mr. Mancuso at that time was Director of DCIS, and he 
was so from 1988 until 1997.
  Since that report was issued in October, my staff has been inundated 
with new complaints about alleged misconduct by Mr. Mancuso and 
mismanagement at DCIS while Mr. Mancuso was the Director of DCIS. My 
staff is now in the process of evaluating these allegations to 
determine if they have merit. Once that review has been conducted, I 
may issue a second report.
  Getting back to Mr. Wilson's article in the National Journal, by 
comparison, instead of my report opening up a new can of worms, Mr. 
Wilson's article has opened an old can of worms--in this case, Navy 
worms. It explores Mr. Mancuso's role in the investigation of 
misconduct at the infamous Tailhook convention in September 1991. By 
reopening this very unfortunate episode in naval history, Mr. Wilson 
has shed new light on Mr. Mancuso's fitness to move into the inspector 
general's slot.
  Mr. Wilson reports that the U.S. Court of Military Appeals condemned 
Mr. Mancuso and the DCIS for, in their words, ``heavy-handed 
investigative tactics that trampled constitutional rights.'' According 
to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Mancuso's tactics included ``threats, intimidation, 
falsification of interviews, and overreliance on lie detectors.''
  In an opinion issued on January 11, 1994, on the Tailhook case, the 
U.S. Court of Military Appeals denounced Mr. Mancuso's tactics. The 
court compared the Tailhook case review process, which was set up by 
Mr. Mancuso, to sort of an assembly line justice, where investigative 
and judicial functions were merged and blurred. ``Merged'' and 
``blurred'' are words the court used. ``Assembly line'' are words the 
court used. The court called Mr. Mancuso's assembly line justice 
``troublesome.''
  Going on to quote the court:

       At best, it reflects a most curiously careless and 
     amateurish approach to a very high profile case by 
     experienced military lawyers and investigators. At worst, it 
     raises the possibility of a shadiness in respecting the 
     rights of military members caught up in a criminal 
     investigation that cannot be condoned.

  That is what the U.S. Court of Military Appeals had to say. That is 
the highest military court in our land. It is often called the United 
States Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces. So this highest court has 
condemned Mr. Mancuso for ``shadiness.'' The court said his practices 
were ``careless and amateurish'' and even ``troublesome.'' The court 
said he and his investigators failed to respect the constitutional 
rights of members of the armed services.
  I hope the Chair will agree that these are very serious charges about 
a person whom the President may nominate for our confirmation as 
inspector general of the Department of Defense. The court's criticism--
again referring to the Court of Military Appeals--may help to explain 
why the Tailhook investigation was a total failure. The entire 
investigation probably cost the taxpayers close to $10 million and 
involved several thousand interviews. Unfortunately, not one single 
naval aviator who faced an assault charge was ever convicted by a 
court-martial.
  As the Director of DCIS, Mr. Mancuso led the Tailhook investigation. 
He is accountable for failing to conduct it as a professional. A 
legitimate question for my colleagues and for the President: Should 
that same man, a man who used shady investigative tactics, a man who 
failed to respect naval judicial process in Tailhook, be confirmed as 
the Pentagon's watchdog? It is legitimate to ask if Mr. Mancuso is the 
best person to fill that position.
  I leave those thoughts with my colleagues over the next several weeks 
as this nomination may come up for consideration.
  I yield the floor.

                             Exhibit No. 1

             [From the National Journal, January 22, 2000]

           Tailhook May Soil Choice for Pentagon's Mr. Clean

                         (By George C. Wilson)

       The man President Clinton is expected to nominate as 
     inspector general of the Defense Department--the Pentagon's 
     top cop--is coming under increased scrutiny in the Senate for 
     questionable official conduct. Questions surround his role in 
     the Tailhook sexual assault investigation of the early 1990s 
     and his handling of his own investigators, one of whom 
     pleaded guilty to stealing a 13-year-old boy's identity to 
     obtain a false passport.
       Donald Mancuso, the Pentagon's acting inspector general and 
     probable nominee for the permanent job, formerly led the 
     Defense Criminal Investigative Service. DCIS, which conducts 
     most of the fraud and misconduct investigations at the 
     Defense Department, had taken over the Tailhook investigation 
     in 1992 after the Navy was accused of botching it.
       During the Tailhook investigation, naval aviators accused 
     Mancuso's agents of heavy-handed tactics that trampled their 
     constitutional rights. These tactics, they maintained, 
     included threats, intimidation, falsification of interviews, 
     and overreliance on lie detectors. In the end, no aviator was 
     convicted at court-martial for misconduct at the Tailhook 
     convention, which was held in September 1991 at the Las Vegas 
     Hilton.
       The U.S. Court of Military Appeals, in its review of the 
     Tailhook cases, criticized military lawyers and the IG's 
     investigators--who were supervised by Mancuso--for procedures 
     that were ``troublesome.'' The court faulted investigators 
     for an approach that was ``curiously careless and 
     amateurish,'' and that didn't sufficiently respect the rights 
     of suspects.
       Several lawyers who defended Tailhook aviators told 
     National Journal that they stand ready to cite examples of 
     misconduct by DCIS agents if the Mancuso nomination moves 
     forward. Their testimony could widen and escalate a battle 
     over Mancuso that Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, began at the 
     end of the past congressional session. White House attorneys 
     had focused on Grassley's earlier objections, but they 
     apparently had not looked into Mancuso's Tailhook role when 
     they told National Journal recently that they saw no reason 
     to recommend he not be nominated.
       Grassley up to now had focused his objections on Mancuso's 
     supposedly poor judgment while director of the Defense 
     Criminal Investigative Service from 1988-97. Grassley accused 
     Mancuso of coddling a deputy after the deputy confessed to 
     stealing a dead boy's identity in an effort to get a false 
     passport for still-mysterious reasons.
       Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has mounted a stout 
     defense of Mancuso and has told Grassley that none of the 
     Senator's objections should bar him from advancement. 
     However, the Tailhook connection, which Grassley's 
     investigators have just begun to probe, may turn the Mancuso 
     nomination into a ``bolter''--pilot talk for an airplane that 
     misses the arresting wires stretched across an aircraft-
     carrier deck and so fails to land. Grassley will do his best 
     to exploit the Tailhook connection in hearings and on the 
     Senate floor. Former Navy Secretary John W. Warner, R-Va., 
     chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which would 
     hold confirmation hearings on a Mancuso nomination, is likely 
     to plead with the President not to nominate anybody who would 
     pull Congress back into the Tailhook swamp.
       The U.S. Court of Military Appeals denounced the tactics of 
     Mancuso's agents in an opinion issued on Jan. 11, 1994, on a 
     Tailhook case against Navy Lt. David Samples. The defendant 
     had been charged with participating in the ``gantlet'' in 
     which drunken pilots groped, and in some cases assaulted, 
     dozens of women who ventured down the third-floor hallway at 
     the Hilton. Samples charged that he endured his own intensive 
     gantlet of interrogations as one naval

[[Page S132]]

     officer after another advised him to tell what he knew and, 
     in his view, guaranteed him complete immunity if he did. 
     After undergoing the Navy interviews, he was immediately 
     interrogated by DCIS in assembly line fashion.
       In court testimony, Special Agent Matthew A. Walinsky of 
     DCIS attributed the assembly line idea to DCIS Director 
     Mancuso: ``We felt that, or the director [of the] DCIS felt 
     that, it was one of the ways that we could have a resolution 
     in the case and be fair to everybody that was involved in 
     [the] case, so that they would have a walk-away'' from any 
     further entanglement in the Tailhook mess.
       The U.S. Court of Military Appeals assailed the 
     arrangement: ``The assembly line technique in this case that 
     merged and blurred investigative and justice procedures is 
     troublesome. At best, it reflects a most curiously careless 
     and amateurish approach to a very high profile case by 
     experienced military lawyers and investigators. At worst, it 
     raises the possibility of a shadiness in respecting the 
     rights of military members caught up in a criminal 
     investigation that cannot be condoned.''
       Mancuso, when asked by National Journal to respond to the 
     court's denunciation, said: ``The quote [from the decision] 
     was taken out of context and exhibits a lack of understanding 
     of the technique being discussed. . . . DCIS played a minor 
     role in the `assembly line technique' as described in the 
     opinion. The DCIS investigation of the Tailhook matter was 
     handled thoroughly and professionally.''
       But Charles W. Gittins of Middletown, Va., a defense 
     attorney in the Tailhook case, charged in an interview with 
     National Journal that Mancuso's DCIS agents ``routinely 
     violated naval officers' rights with threats of retribution 
     for failure to cooperate,'' Gittins said that Mancuso's 
     supervision of his investigators ``left much to be desired. I 
     would have concern if Mancuso became IG about his integrity 
     and commitment to the rule of law.'' He added he would 
     welcome the chance to give such testimony to Congress.
       Robert B. Rae of Virginia Beach, Va., another Tailhook 
     defense attorney and a former U.S. attorney, said that 
     Mancuso ``abused his position [as DCIS director] and showed a 
     general disregard for laws of military justice'' during the 
     Tailhook investigation. ``He intentionally failed to 
     comply with the judge's order to produce evidence and 
     documents on several occasions. We need somebody [as 
     inspector general] who makes the ethical decision, not the 
     politically correct one. He [Mancuso] was politically 
     motivated.''
       Mancuso told National Journal that ``while I don't remember 
     being directly involved with either of these defense counsels 
     during the Tailhook investigation, it is not unusual for 
     defense counsels to disagree with the government's 
     investigation techniques. I categorically deny that I have 
     ever intentionally failed to comply with any judge's order.'' 
     He said that as DCIS director, he worked to ensure that both 
     sides received all requested information promptly.
       As Pentagon inspector general, Mancuso would be responsible 
     for supervising 1,228 employees, including 323 criminal 
     investigators, and for overseeing a budget of $136.8 million 
     annually. He would be paid a salary of $118,400 a year.
       Grassley is particularly vexed about what Mancuso did--and 
     did not do--about Larry Joe Hollingsworth, a deputy at DCIS 
     who was responsible for keeping agents in line, but who 
     committed a felony that a hearing judge termed ``bizarre.'' 
     In 1992, Hollingsworth found in the records of a Florida 
     library the obituary of Charles W. Drew, who died at age 13. 
     Hollingsworth decided to assume the boy's identity. And by 
     posing as the deceased boy's half brother, Hollingsworth 
     obtained the identification papers he needed to apply for a 
     passport in Charles' name. He appended pictures of himself to 
     the passport application and signed it in such a muddled way 
     that the State Department investigated, leading to 
     Hollingsworth's arrest, indictment, and confession to one 
     count of fraud.
       Why would a 46-year-old, $92,926-a-year Pentagon executive 
     with more than 20 years' experience investigating other 
     people's crimes commit one himself? ``In the last few 
     years,'' Hollingsworth wrote right after his arrest, ``I have 
     seen repeated news stories about how easy it would be'' to 
     assume someone else's identity. ``I decided to see if it was 
     true. This was a Walter Mitty fantasy, however, for 
     excitement and not to hurt anyone.''
       Special Agent Sean O'Brien of the State Department told 
     investigators with Grassley's Senate Judiciary Administrative 
     Oversight and the Courts Subcommittee that ``there were at 
     least 12 overt acts of fraud perpetrated by Mr. Hollingsworth 
     over the course of one year.'' O'Brien told the investigators 
     that ``passport fraud is always committed in furtherance of a 
     more serious crime . . .''
       On April 29, 1996, Mancuso wrote, on assistant inspector 
     general stationery, to federal Judge T.S. Ellis III of the 
     U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA., while the jurist was 
     weighing what penalty to impose on Hollingsworth. ``To this 
     day,'' he wrote, ``there is no evidence that Mr. 
     Hollingsworth has ever done anything improper relating to his 
     duties and responsibilities as a DCIS agent and manager. . . 
     . It is our intention to consider removal action against him 
     after the conclusion of the criminal charges. . . . I would 
     ask that you also consider the severity of these 
     administrative actions as you pronounce sentencing.''
       Grassley accused Mancuso of showing poor judgment in 
     writing what the Senator considered a plea for leniency. 
     Grassley also criticized Mancuso for letting Hollingsworth 
     retire at 50 in 1996 with full pay, 12 years ahead of 
     schedule--a decision that cost the taxpayers an extra 
     $750,000, Grassley said.
       Mancuso denied asking for leniency. He told National 
     Journal that that ``my intent in writing the letter was to 
     advise the judge of SA [Special Agent] Hollingsworth's past 
     job performance while assigned to DCIS, not to ask for 
     leniency. In fact, nowhere in my letter is the term 
     `leniency' used.''
       Hollingsworth, after pleading guilty, was sentenced in June 
     1996 to supervised probation for two years and was fined 
     $5,000, plus $195.30 a month to pay for the cost of 
     supervising him while on probation. He also had to serve 30 
     days of jail time on weekends, perform 200 hours of community 
     service, and pay a $50 special assessment.
       The majority staff of Grassley's subcommittee on Nov. 2 
     filed a 64-page report highly critical of Mancuso's conduct. 
     Cohen responded to Grassley on Dec. 28 that his staff had 
     found nothing in the subcommittee's report to shake his 
     ``complete confidence in Mr. Mancuso's abilities and 
     integrity. Nothing I have seen has caused me to doubt Mr. 
     Mancuso's ability to ably, fairly, and honestly lead the 
     Office of the Inspector General.''
       ``Bill,'' Grassley wrote back to Cohen on Jan. 7, ``you and 
     I have known each other for many years, I know, if given an 
     accurate report on the facts in the case, you would not 
     defend the integrity of the acting IG.''
       Since vote-counters have apparently concluded that Grassley 
     does not have enough Senate allies to defeat the nomination, 
     the White House intends to nominate Mancuso when Congress 
     reconvenes. Will the stubborn Iowan resort to a filibuster, 
     or will he place a simple hold on the nomination, in light of 
     Tailhook and other charges? ``I don't know yet,'' Grassley 
     replied.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to 
speak as if in morning business for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________