[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 114 (Monday, June 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3121-S3122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
State Department Inspector General
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have a
letter printed in the Record
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Department of State,
Washington, DC, June 12, 2020.
Hon. Chuck Grassley,
Chairman, Committee on Finance,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Grassley: Your May 18 letter to the President
concerning his removal of the Inspector General of the
Department of State has been referred to the Department.
In order to address your concerns as they relate to the
Department, the Department is prepared to provide you a
briefing with a senior official at your earliest convenience.
Additionally, the Department is enclosing its recent letter,
on which you were copied, which addresses the reasons for
Secretary Pompeo's recommendation to remove the State
Department Inspector General.
Sincerely,
Mary Elizabeth Taylor,
Assistant Secretary of State,
Bureau of Legislative Affairs.
Enclosure: As stated.
____
U.S. Department of State,
Washington, DC, June 8, 2020.
Hon. Michael E. Horowitz,
Chair, Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and
Efficiency, Washington, DC.
Dear Chair Horowitz: In light of new information disclosed
to the State Department for the first time on June 2, 2020,
the Department is writing to formally request that the
Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
(CIGIE) examine a series of questions related to the conduct
of former State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.
Specifically, the Department has become aware that Mr. Linick
may have hand-selected a potentially-conflicted investigator
to look into possible misconduct by his own office and then
withheld the resulting report, which noted his own apparent
non-compliance with State Department Office of Inspector
General (OIG) email policies, from State Department
leadership, despite repeated requests for a copy of the
report.
In short, the events described below suggest that there may
have been a significant breakdown in the typically-rigorous
standards of an IG investigation, warranting CIGIE review.
Mr. Linick had served as Inspector General of the State
Department since September 2013. On May 15, 2020, President
Trump decided to remove Mr. Linick from that position and
placed him on 30 days of administrative leave. As described
in the attached letter to the House Foreign Affairs Committee
dated June 1 (Tab 1), the President's decision to remove Mr.
Linick from this position was made upon the Secretary of
State's recommendation. This recommendation was based, in
part, on concerns related to Mr. Linick's failure to formally
refer to CIGIE--as agreed with senior Department leadership
in the fall of 2019--the investigation of a leak of a highly-
sensitive draft report to the media on September 13, 2019,
which was attributed to ``two government sources involved in
carrying out the investigation.'' State IG Set to Recommend
Discipline for Trump's Top Iran Hand, The Daily Beast, Sept.
13, 2019.
As described in the Department's attached letter, and
contrary to that fall 2019 agreement, Mr. Linick instead
referred the matter for review by the Department of Defense's
(DOD's) Acting Inspector General--without informing State
Department leadership that he was taking a different course.
Only after the DOD IG provided its initial findings directly
to Mr. Linick in late 2019 or early 2020 did Department
leadership become aware that Mr. Linick had hand-selected his
own investigator for the matter, outside of the CIGIE
process. Mr. Linick then refused multiple requests by
Department leadership for a copy of the resulting report.
Notwithstanding these repeated requests to Mr. Linick, who
reports by law to the Secretary of State, the Department was,
for the first time, provided a copy of the March 17, 2020 DOD
OIG report on June 2, 2020 (Tab 2) as a result of a request
by Congress, nearly two weeks after the President removed Mr.
Linick from his position.
Beyond the concerning process that led to the DOD IG
reviewing this matter, the DOD IG report itself raises a
number of new questions that, together with the Department's
original concerns, further substantiate the Department's
misgivings with Mr. Linick's performance as Inspector General
and merit a review by an independent investigatory body. As
we did originally with Mr. Linick, the Department renews its
request that CIGIE review these questions.
Breach of Agreed Steps for Investigating a Potential Leak
from OIG. Last fall, State Department leadership asked Mr.
Linick to refer for review by CIGIE the unauthorized
disclosure of a draft inspector general report, which the
media attributed to ``two government sources involved in
carrying out the investigation''. State IG Set to Recommend
Discipline for Trump's Top Iran Hand, The Daily Beast, Sept.
13, 2019. It was natural to assume that sources involved in
``carrying out the investigation'' may refer to sources
within the State OIG, which--if true--would undermine
confidence in the professionalism and integrity of the OIG.
Mr. Linick agreed to the request, but the Department learned
months later that, instead of formally referring the matter
to CIGIE, Mr. Linick asked the DOD Acting Inspector General
to review the issue. In other words, Mr. Linick failed to
inform Department leadership that he had hand-picked another
IG to investigate potential misconduct by his office and that
he had deviated from the clear course agreed upon with
leadership.
Following the completion of a draft report by the DOD
Acting Inspector General in late 2019 or early 2020, Mr.
Linick briefed Department leadership on certain findings but
refused to provide the written report, or even a written
summary, to Department leadership for review, raising further
concerns about the fairness of the process followed. As of
the time of Mr. Linick's removal, the Department had still
not received any documented findings on the matter. By
contrast, an appropriate referral to CIGIE would have
produced a final report that Department leadership could
review and assess whether there may have been inappropriate
conduct in Mr. Linick's office.
Potential Conflict of Interest in Choice of Investigator.
The person whom Mr. Linick asked to review the matter,
outside of the CIGIE process, was then-DOD Principal Deputy
Inspector General Glenn Fine, who at the time was the DOD's
Acting Inspector General. This was an unusual choice because
Mr. Fine appears to have been a fact witness, potentially one
with knowledge of information relevant to the subject of the
investigation described in the report. Specifically, the DOD
OIG report notes that Mr. Linick said that he ``spoke about
the evaluation report'' with Mr. Fine before the media leak
occurred. If Mr. Fine himself had confidential information
about the draft report before it was leaked, it raises
serious questions as to whether it was appropriate for him to
lead the investigation into the subsequent leak. It is
unclear whether Mr. Fine was even interviewed in the
course of the investigation. Allowing a fact witness to an
investigation to shape the terms of the investigation--let
alone lead the investigation--seems inappropriate. At a
minimum, the choice of investigator in this case raises
material concerns about whether the report itself
represents a complete and adequate investigation of
potential misconduct within the State Department Office of
Inspector General.
Limited Investigation. As noted above, the Department
finally received a copy of the DOD Acting Inspector General's
report on June 2, 2020, and following the Department's
review, the Department has identified a number of concerns as
to its scope. For example, the report notes that Mr. Linick
himself ``asked the DoD OIG to conduct a limited inquiry into
whether any DOS OIG employee was the source of the
unauthorized disclosure.'' (emphasis added). The DOD OIG
conducted personal interviews, in which all interviewed
staffers ``said they did not release any information in the
report to the media.'' The DOD OIG also reviewed official
email accounts and found that no employee directly sent an
email from their State Department email address to the news
media, other than the communications director.
However, the scope of this review appears to have been
exceedingly cursory, and the report itself indicates that the
scope of the investigation was by design ``limited.'' It is
also unclear whether it was appropriate for Mr. Linick, as a
fact witness to the investigation, to dictate the ``limited''
scope (rather than a ``full'' scope) given the significance
of the leak. It is hard to imagine that an OIG or CIGIE
would, in the course of its normal investigations, allow
possible fact witnesses or interviewees to influence the
scope of the investigation. Moreover, merely asking an
interviewee if he/she directly transmitted the leaked
documents and asking only about emails from official accounts
would catch only the most blatant mishandling of information
and would fail to uncover any person who disclosed the draft
through an intermediary or sent the report from a personal
email address. Further, the DOD IG does not appear to have
questioned whether any interviewee had knowledge of who may
have improperly disclosed the report or engaged in other
questioning aimed at discovering the true source of the leak.
Use and Concealment of Improper Email Practice. The DOD OIG
report identifies a concerning email practice used by Mr.
Linick. The DOD OIG found: ``IG Linick sent a password-
protected, draft version of the evaluation report in question
to his Gmail account eight times over six days in August
2019. On one occasion, he emailed a password-protected draft
of the evaluation report from his Gmail email account to his
government email account.'' As the DOD OIG report notes, this
usage appeared to contravene the State Department OIG's own
policy: ``Use OIG provided equipment and systems/applications
at all times, including OIG email, to conduct official OIG
business. The use of corporate or personal equipment,
systems/applications, to include to email, or other file
storage sites to store, process, or transmit OIG or
Department data is prohibited.'' State OIG Information
Systems Rules of Behavior. Mr. Linick clearly should have
followed his own organization's specific information security
policies--particularly involving a draft report on a highly-
sensitive personnel issue.
[[Page S3122]]
We understand that Mr. Linick may have received the initial
report noting his improper usage of personal email as early
as late 2019 or early 2020, and it is the Department's
understanding that he never shared the written report with
any person at the State Department (including in his own
office), despite repeated requests by Department leadership
for a copy of the report. Likewise, he never informed State
Department leadership that the report found that he did not
comply with OIG email practices. Allowing the head of an
investigated office to determine the manner and scope of the
release of a report that addresses his own conduct is
inappropriate, which is presumably why CIGIE's own guidelines
would have required the results of a CIGIE review to be
shared with appropriate officials in his supervisory chain.
OIG Launches Questionable Parallel Investigation Under a
Possible Conflict of Interest. At the same time that the DOD
IG was conducting its review, Mr. Linick reportedly opened a
parallel investigation of other State Department employees
for the same potential misconduct for which his own office
was being investigated. See Kylie Atwood, Fired State
Department inspector general was cleared in leak inquiry
prior to his removal, sources say, CNN, May 28, 2020. This
decision, if accurately reported, seems unusual because the
September 2019 media leak was specifically attributed to
``two government sources involved in carrying out the
investigation'' (emphasis added), not to Department employees
who may have been fact witnesses (and were clearly not
responsible for ``carrying out'' any investigation).
Mr. Linick's decision also raises the question of whether
this parallel investigation was intended to divert attention
from the DOD IG's own investigation into the State OIG.
Indeed, public reporting suggests that State OIG was
continuing its own investigations of other Department
employees before the DOD OIG report was even finalized. See
id. It should have been obvious to Mr. Linick that launching
a parallel investigation into the same misconduct for which
he and his own office were being investigated created both a
real and apparent conflict of interest and risked interfering
with the DOD OIG investigation into his own office. An
investigator who is still working to clear his or her own
name has a motive to shift the blame to another person.
Inappropriate Contacts with OIG Staff in an Apparent
Attempt to Obtain Department Records, Contrary to
Instruction. When Mr. Linick was removed from his position on
May 15 and placed on administrative leave, his physical
access was terminated, and he was clearly instructed by
Department officials not to contact OIG staff members about
official matters or return to his former office, without
authorization by Department officials, who would facilitate
any such contacts.
However, it has come to the Department's attention that he
has violated these instructions on multiple occasions while
he was on administrative leave. For example, we understand
that, in the days before his Congressional testimony, he sent
a text message to the Deputy Inspector General, Diana Shaw,
requesting a copy of the DOD IG report. Without informing her
own chain of command, we understand that Ms. Shaw then
contacted the DOD Office of Inspector General to request a
copy of the report on Mr. Linick's behalf. It is not clear
what Mr. Linick's motivation was, but it was not his decision
(nor his former Deputy's) to make this request for release
given that he was, at the time, on administrative leave
pursuant to the President's decision with a new Acting
Inspector General in place. We understand that Mr. Linick has
repeatedly returned to his former office without seeking
authorization from his Department superiors, also contrary to
the clear instructions he received. Mr. Linick should follow
the same rules that apply to other government officials who
are placed on administrative leave in such circumstances; he
is not entitled to a different set of rules.
A Pattern of Leaks Continues. Even though no one at the
State Department other than Mr. Linick appears to have had a
copy of the DOD Inspector General's report (not even his
Deputy) before June 2, 2020, CNN ran a story on May 28, 2020
that the DOD OIG report had exonerated Mr. Linick of leaking.
Kylie Atwood, Fired State Department inspector general was
cleared in leak inquiry prior to his removal, sources say,
CNN, May 28, 2020. These reports raise additional concerns as
to this disturbing pattern of leaks, further warranting CIGIE
review.
Last fall, the Department had serious concerns with the
leak of a draft State Department OIG report and recommended
that review by CIGIE was the appropriate step for an
independent review. Unfortunately, Mr. Linick's failure to
follow through on that course--or to seek agreement from his
reporting chain on any change in course--has only confirmed
the Department's recommendation and has raised even further
concerns about Mr. Linick's judgment and conduct.
Therefore, we ask CIGIE to investigate not only the
original unauthorized disclosure, but the conduct described
in this letter.
Sincerely,
Brian Bulatao,
Under Secretary for Management,
U.S. Department of State.