DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Before I began doing interviews on FRESH AIR, I spent many years as a city hall reporter in Philadelphia. And over time, I became fascinated with public corruption. I wondered why public employees would risk their jobs and pensions to abuse their authority and steal tax dollars, and more important, what we can do to detect and discourage bad behavior that eventually becomes criminal.
Our guest today, Glenn Fine, has spent much of his career working inside the federal government to root out waste, fraud and abuse and make public servants better serve the public. He spent 11 years as inspector general of the Department of Justice in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. And later, he served as acting inspector general of the Department of Defense from 2016 to 2020, when he was dismissed by then-President Donald Trump. In his career, he oversaw countless investigations into the mishandling of documents in the Oklahoma bombing case, the treatment of post-9/11 detainees at Guantanamo, the most troubling spy case in FBI history and a massive corruption scandal in the U.S. Navy.
He tells his story in a new book that explains why he thinks the role of inspectors general in government agencies is important and what changes could make them more effective. One step he believes is critical is to establish some oversight for the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. Glenn Fine is now a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown Law School. His book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government."
Well, Glenn Fine, welcome to FRESH AIR. I'd like you to begin by just telling us in simple terms what an inspector general is. I mean, it's sort of self-evident, but how - what distinguishes it from other government auditors and watchdogs?
GLENN FINE: Certainly. So there is an inspector general, federal inspector general, in every cabinet agency - in fact, in every federal agency. Their role is to detect and deter waste, fraud and abuse, promote the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the agency. What makes them distinctive is that they are independent. They report both to the agency head and to Congress, and they expose problems and make recommendations to improve our government. They can't be told how to act, what to investigate, what to audit and what to evaluate, and that's what makes their role so important. They've been called some of the most important public servants you've never heard of, and I hope the book exposes more people to their essential role.
DAVIES: Early in the book, you described a case where -this is when you were the acting inspector general of the Defense Department. That is to say, technically acting, because President Trump actually never got around to appointing a permanent one. But you were the one running the inspector general's office. And you did a lot of reviews of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are big issues. And in early 2019, I believe it was in a cabinet meeting, that President Trump took issue with you making these reports public. Tell us what happened.
FINE: I was what was called the lead inspector general for overseas contingency operations - fancy term for wars around the world, including the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our role, according to the Inspector General Act, was to issue public reports on the status and progress of those wars, and we were doing that for a number of years. During one televised cabinet meeting, President Trump turned to the acting secretary of defense and said, you know those IG reports? They should be locked up. They shouldn't be made public. You know who reads those reports? The enemy reads those reports.
The acting secretary of defense - I'm not sure he understood what was at issue. He came back. I was called into a meeting with the deputy secretary of defense and other high-level department officials and asked to explain. I explained the Inspector General Act requires us to issue those reports. We had been issuing those reports for years. We get the information for those reports from the agencies, including the Defense Department. We vetted the information in the reports to make sure there was nothing that was too sensitive for public release. And then I said, unless and until the Inspector General Act has changed, I intend to keep issuing those reports in accord with the law. No one contested those arguments, and I continued to issue those reports.
DAVIES: So President Trump, I guess, didn't come back to the issue, with you, at least. However, you were, in effect, dismissed by the president about a year later. Tell us what happened.
FINE: About a year later - we all remember where we were when the COVID pandemic hit around March of 2020. Congress immediately appropriated trillions of dollars in COVID relief funds, but they also created what was called the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a committee of inspectors general to oversee the use of those funds, to detect and deter waste and abuse in those funds.
The law also required one inspector general to be named the chair of that committee. I drew the short straw. My fellow IGs selected me as the chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. It was announced on a Monday. Within a week, President Trump, who had famously said, we don't need the oversight; I will be the oversight - he replaced me as the acting inspector general of the Department of Defense, meaning that I could not be on the committee or chair the committee.
It wasn't illegal what he did. It was also part of a series of firings around that time where he replaced or tried to replace five inspectors general - me, the inspector general for the intelligence community who had brought the Ukraine whistleblower matter to Congress, the State Department inspector general, the Transportation Department inspector general and the Health and Human Services inspector general in what one article, according to The Washington Post, called the slow-motion Friday night massacre of inspectors general, because they were normally announced on Friday nights.
DAVIES: Was there a public or media reaction to your dismissal?
FINE: There was a significant reaction. Some people speculated that President Trump did not want independent and aggressive oversight - I had developed a reputation for that - and that he did not want the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee to conduct that sort of oversight. I was never told why I was replaced. I had to inquire about whether it was actually true, and I saw the document with his signature on it, replacing me as the inspector general. And so that closed the door for me. And now, as you mentioned, I am a fellow at the Brookings Institution, I teach law and I had time to write this book.
DAVIES: So you weren't called in and told you were being dismissed. I mean, you didn't learn in a tweet. How did you learn?
FINE: I learned it as we were on a conference call trying to organize the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee with other inspectors general. And Michael Horowitz, who was the head of the Council of Inspectors General, the umbrella group of inspectors general, had heard about it. He told me, please stay on the line at the end of the call. I did. And then he told me that he had heard that I was replaced as the acting inspector general.
DAVIES: He had heard.
FINE: I had - he had heard it, and he told me. Nobody ever contacted me directly. I was never given a reason why. And that was the end of my career as the acting inspector general of the Department of Defense.
DAVIES: Well, I want to come back to the beginning of your career - I mean, pre-career, in fact. I mean, you got your undergraduate degree at Harvard. You went to law school at Harvard. But when you were finishing your undergraduate studies, you were in your senior year co-captain of the Harvard basketball team. You were apparently a pretty good ball-handler. And you had an early encounter with corruption when you played a big game against Boston College. Tell us what happened.
FINE: Yes. It's an ironic story. So the biggest game of the season, my senior year, when I was the co-captain of the Harvard basketball season, was against Boston College in the Boston Garden. The only problem was it was the same day that there was a final interview for the Rhodes scholarship, and I had applied, and I had an interview to be a Rhodes scholar. And that interview was in Baltimore. The game was in Boston.
So I had a dilemma. What was I going to do? I wanted to compete for the scholarship, but I also wanted to play in the game. A Harvard alum said he had a solution. He said he would send down a private plane to pick me up at the Baltimore airport after the interview was over, but before the selection was made, get me to the Boston Garden in time, and so I could do both. And that's what happened. I was whisked from the Boston Airport to the Boston Garden, made it just in time for the game. Boston College was favored by 12. It was a very good team. And I had my best game ever in my entire college basketball career. I had 19 points, 14 assists, eight steals. They were favored by 12, but it was a nip-and-tuck game the whole way. The last minute, they won by three.
DAVIES: Right. So this is interesting - so great game.
FINE: Yeah.
DAVIES: And then you learned...
FINE: Well, yeah, and I remembered, oh, the Rhodes scholarship. So in my uniform, I went to a pay phone on the concourse of the Boston Garden and called back to the Baltimore committee and asked the results. They said, congratulations, Mr. Fine. You're a Rhodes scholar. What a day. The best game of my college career, and I'd won a Rhodes scholarship.
But there was only one problem. The game was fixed. Mafia mobsters had bribed Boston College players to shave points, meaning to win, but by lessening the point spread so that the mobsters could vote - could bet on the other team, in this case, Harvard and win big payoffs. And the first game that they had bribed the players was my game against Boston College. Sports Illustrated broke the story a year later when I was Oxford, and a friend of mine sent me the article, and he wrote on the top, Hey, Glenn, I guess you played your best game when the other team was in the tank. And you know, and in fact, it wasn't any old mobsters. It was...
DAVIES: Right.
FINE: If you've seen the movie "Goodfellas," it was the two main characters in "Goodfellas" - Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, and Jimmy Burke, played by Robert De Niro. They were the mobsters who bribed the Boston College players. And in the movie, there's a scene. They're in a bar. There's a basketball game on the TV. One of the mobsters says, hey. Is that one of the games we're shaving points up in Boston? And the other mobster said, don't worry about that game. It's a lock. And then, I think, the next scene, they strangled another mob colleague. So that was my connection to "Goodfellas."
DAVIES: You know, I have to ask you, you know, since, you know, you didn't learn about the fact that it was fixed until - what? - a year later, when you look back at that game, when you got eight steals, or, you know, you were picking off passes or picking someone's dribbling, did it occur to you, hey; those guys weren't quite as quick as I expected?
FINE: (Laughter) No, not at the time. And they were favored by 12, but it was a close game all the way, so I don't know how much they were trying to go easy on us. And in fact, the prosecutor of the case, a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force, told me later when I met him that they were considering subpoenaing me to see if I could say that it looked like the Boston College players were going easy on us. I told him, I don't think I could have said that, but in retrospect, eight steals is a lot of steals, more than any I've ever had in any other games. So who knows what was happening during that game?
DAVIES: Yeah. Here, kid. Pick this ball up (laughter).
FINE: Yeah, exactly. Here. Here's the ball, and handed it over to me. I don't remember that, but who knows?
DAVIES: I'm sure you played well. We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Glenn Fine. His new book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANILO PEREZ AND CLAUS OGERMAN'S "RAYS AND SHADOWS")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Glenn Fine, who has spent much of his career investigating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government as an Inspector General of two major departments. His new book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government." So you went to law school, studied at Oxford.
You got into private practice, then were eventually recruited to work for the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Justice, which would lead you to a career in that profession. And when you actually became the lead person, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, one of the early cases that you got involved in involved you being picked up on a street corner by U.S. marshals in a van and driven to an undisclosed location, led to a small room where they bring in a guy in an orange jumpsuit. What was this about?
FINE: This was Robert Hanssen, the most damaging spy in FBI history. He was an FBI counterintelligence agent who spied for the Soviets and the Russians from within the FBI for over two decades. He compromised some of our most important intelligence assets, nuclear secrets, and the names and identities of assets who were spying for us, who were executed as a result. And he did this right under the nose of the FBI for over 20 years. When he was eventually caught in 2001, the FBI said, well, the reason he evaded detection for so long was because he was a master spy. He was clever and crafty, and he used his tradecraft to evade detection.
We were asked, I was asked, to investigate whether that was true by the United States Senate and the Attorney General. And what we learned through our investigation was that nothing could have been further from the truth. He was a reckless agent. He exhibited all sorts of red flags that should have aroused suspicion, but that did not. The FBI had a very weak internal security program. It did not give a polygraph exam to him. It did not do a background investigation as required every five years. It did not require financial disclosures. Its internal security strategy was based on trust. They trusted that FBI agents would not commit espionage, and that is a bad internal security strategy.
DAVIES: When you actually sat down with him face to face and were expecting this brilliant master of counterintelligence, what was he like?
FINE: So he had pled guilty and was given a life sentence without parole and had to cooperate with federal investigators, including our investigators. When we were brought to that undisclosed location, he was brought in in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs. He was, in my view, a twisted individual who minimized his espionage, who tried to mitigate the damage that he had caused. He often didn't look at us and stared at the wall. He said, though, that if there was a better internal security strategy, if he thought that it was more likely that he would have been caught, he said he would not have spied for so long. I don't know if I believe that, but I do know that their internal security strategy was extremely weak and needed improvement.
DAVIES: Yeah, so he wasn't like a charismatic guy who actually, like, fooled people. What were some of the red flags that should have been noticed about what he was up to? And why was the FBI so vulnerable to this kind of activity?
FINE: Yeah, he was viewed as an odd and strange individual. He did things that should have aroused suspicion like depositing large sums of money in a bank account a block from the FBI. He used FBI phones to contact the Russians and the Soviets. He hacked into the FBI computer system to read classified information, and when he was found out, he said, the reason I did it was to show how weak the system was. And the FBI blithely accepted that. Instead of dealing with these red flags, this derogatory information, they decided to send him off on a detail to the State Department where nobody supervised him - basically, get rid of their headache. And so he was able to continue that espionage unsupervised for many years.
DAVIES: All right, so you did all this information, you know, you and your staff reviewed thousands of documents. And you produced a classified report, an unclassified report and then, I guess, an unclassified summary of the classified report.
FINE: (Laughter).
DAVIES: What did you recommend? What did they change?
FINE: We made a series of recommendations to upgrade its internal security practices, including polygraphs, financial disclosures, and also to create a unit to look at derogatory information about FBI agents, accumulate it in one place so that they could see patterns - and that that unit had to assume that there had been spies in the FBI before, and there likely would be spies in the future. The FBI accepted some of the recommendations but not all of them, then Congress got involved, which is important. They also pushed the FBI. There was a hearing at which I testified. And eventually, the FBI agreed to implement those recommendations and to upgrade their internal security practices.
DAVIES: You know, you were also involved in several other investigations into practices in the FBI. There were deficiencies in their forensic labs, which could affect court testimony, in big cases like the Oklahoma bombing case. You did a big investigation there. You did an audit of their management of computers and weapons and found that hundreds had been lost or stolen, some of them subsequently used in crimes. And then also, there was the FBI's failure to provide documents to defense attorneys in the Oklahoma bombing case. This cannot have made you popular in the FBI building.
FINE: That's true. As an inspector general, sure, I was not the most popular person in the Department of Justice halls or the cafeteria, or when I was at the Department of Defense, the Pentagon food court. Sometimes an IG is likened to a skunk at the picnic. IGs are called too hard or too soft, engaging in a witch hunt or a whitewash. You're a junkyard dog or a lap dog, sometimes all in the same case. IGs are not going to be popular. We're not there to be liked. I hope we're tough but fair. I hope our work is respected. But most important, I hope we improve the operations of the agency, which is what we tried to do.
DAVIES: I mean, you mentioned, you know, what it's like being in the cafeteria, in the building with people you are investigating. Did you get confronted? Were there arguments?
FINE: Yes, there were arguments. I would say professional arguments. I would have arguments with, for example, Robert Mueller, who was the director of the FBI, who was a strong leader. I had a lot of respect for him. But he would argue back at some of our reports and say, I want more context in the reports. In fact, one time, it was a pretty heated argument, and it was over the phone. And then after the phone call was over, I walked outside my office and one of my assistants said, who were you just yelling at in there? And I said, well, the director of the FBI (laughter). And she was aghast. Probably wasn't my finest moment, but I think the inspector general is the only person who can yell at the FBI director and keep his job.
DAVIES: You know, you're investigators. I mean, when you were at the Department of Defense, 1,700 employees in your office? Do I have that right?
FINE: Yes, over 1,700 employees in the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General.
DAVIES: Right. But, you know, I mean, investigating can mean a lot of different things. I mean, could you just walk into any office and flash a badge and start rummaging through files? Could you compel people to talk to you? Could you compel people to talk under oath? Could your representatives execute search warrants? What kinds of powers and limitations did they work under?
FINE: Yes. We had law enforcement authority at both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. We had a criminal investigative side, where there were gun-carrying law enforcement agents that investigated crimes both within the agency and against the agency. They had the ability to execute search warrants, make arrests, take testimony under oath. We also had an administrative investigative side to look at ethical misconduct. All agency employees had to cooperate with us. We had the authority to subpoena documents anywhere, and at the Department Defense, we had the ability to subpoena testimony from anyone.
We were law enforcement agents. Not everyone realized that we were law enforcement agents. In fact, even my wife sometimes forgot that. One time she was - when I was the Justice Department inspector general, she was called to jury duty. And the judge was interviewing the potential panelists and asked the question, is anyone in here a member of a law enforcement organization or has a family member who's a member of a law enforcement organization?
One woman raised her hand. And the judge said, yes? And the woman said, well, my son works for the Department of Justice inspector general. And then my wife looked around and sheepishly raised her hand. And the judge said, yes? And she said, my husband is the Department of Justice inspector general. So people don't always recognize that, but they have an important role to play. And that's what we did.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We're speaking with Glenn Fine. His new book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government." He'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "BRIGHT MISSISSIPPI")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. We're speaking with Glenn Fine, who has spent much of his career investigating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. He served as inspector general of the Justice Department and the Department of Defense, where he oversaw investigations ranging from the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo prison to spending in the war in Afghanistan. His new memoir is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government."
While you were the acting inspector general of the Defense Department - in effect, the real inspector general for four years...
FINE: (Laughter).
DAVIES: ...There was this huge, sprawling scandal involving a contractor for the U.S. Navy. The guy at the center of this was a Malaysian contractor who was a very large man, who was known within the Navy as Fat Leonard. His name is Leonard Glenn Francis. You want to just briefly tell us about him and explain what he was doing?
FINE: Sure. This was the worst corruption scandal in Navy history. He ran a ship servicing company in the Pacific that would supply ships in port with food, water, fuel, sewage treatment, tugboat services. He bribed many, many Navy officers to give him contracts, to overlook his exorbitant charges, to give him information about his competitors, even to change where the ships would go into port so that he could get the contract. He did this almost like an intelligence agent. He knew what your weakness was.
He'd start by dangling the bait. He would give you small gifts and dinners, then tickets, then trips, then cash, and then sometimes prostitutes. And once he had you on the hook, he demanded something in return. And people were afraid of that. And therefore, they did commit fraud and misconduct by going along with his fraudulent schemes. Several of them were convicted of crimes. Others were found to have committed administrative misconduct, and their careers ended. It was the most damaging corruption scandal in Navy history.
DAVIES: Yeah. I should note for listeners of this program, you - this may sound familiar because in May, we had Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post, who had written a book about Fat Leonard. He investigated this case for 10 years. The name of the book is "Fat Leonard." So, yeah, I mean, these - he would throw these wild, lavish parties for admirals and, you know, procurement officers aboard ships and fleets. Do we know how long he did this?
FINE: He did this for over 10 years at least and - you know, before 2003, was eventually caught in 2013 when our law enforcement agents, along with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego, brought enough evidence to have an indictment of him. And then we lured him into San Diego and arrested him there. He then started cooperating and implicated many, many Navy officers. So it went on for over a decade.
DAVIES: Right, which raises the question, I mean, how did this go undetected for so long?
FINE: So he compromised a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigator who fed him information. And so the NCIS - Naval Criminal Investigative Service - opened several investigations, but they were closed down and squashed because he had people who were doing his bidding within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Eventually, partly through whistleblowers, partly because the San Diego U.S. attorney's office got involved, they brought our office in, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. And then we started a widespread investigation. Investigation started before my time, but there was a widespread investigation and eventually brought him to justice.
DAVIES: You know, whenever a large institution has some mess exposed, some corruption exposed within its ranks, I mean, there are usually two reactions. One is, gosh, this is terrible. Let's stop the conduct and hold people accountable. And then the second reaction is, oh, my heavens, if this becomes public, it's going to harm all of our reputations. Let's handle this quietly. Did the Navy try to do that in this case?
FINE: I think there was partly that. The Navy didn't want to expose it publicly, but eventually they did. In some sense, that's the importance of an inspector general. An inspector general's outside the organization. That's one of our fundamental precepts, that we bring transparency to government operations, and we don't cover anything up. We don't sweep anything under the rug. And while it may be painful in the short run, it makes it better in the long run.
I mean, I also want to say this, too. Most - the vast, vast majority of people in the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense are honest, effective, hardworking public servants. And so I don't want the listeners to get the wrong impression that it is so widespread and that everybody who works for the government is corrupt - no, no, no. But any organization that large will have its problems. There will be some bad apples, which is why you need an effective, aggressive, independent inspector general's office to expose it.
And it reminds me a little bit of what Harry Truman said. He said, no government is perfect, but one of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected. That, in essence, is what an inspector general does.
DAVIES: I want to come back to this issue of accountability and transparency. And, I mean, in this case, there were a few dozen prosecutions. I think more than 30 senior Navy officers were either convicted or pled guilty. Some of those cases were undermined by some mistakes by prosecutors. It got messy. But apart from the criminal prosecutions, there were hundreds of senior officers who were investigated for improper conduct that faced administrative sanction, potentially. Craig Whitlock, who wrote about this for The Washington Post, said that a thousand people were interviewed. You write in the book that more than 400 were referred to the Navy to determine if administrative sanctions were warranted, and there was a special panel established for that.
I want to play a clip from my interview with Craig Whitlock again. This was May. This is Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post, who wrote this book, spent 10 years investigating the case of this corrupt contractor. And here's what he said about the Navy's posture on providing any information about the outcome of those investigations into these officers, which would be some measure of how widespread this misconduct was. Here's what he said.
CRAIG WHITLOCK: I had a very sobering conversation with a four-star admiral at the Pentagon several years ago when I was working on this book and pushing to get documentation on senior officers who had been found guilty of misconduct. And the Navy was digging in its heels. And this four-star admiral told me, you know, what metric exists that says, this will benefit the Navy if I give you that information? And I was pretty appalled. I was like, well, you know, it's the right thing to do, and your own regulations state that this information should be made public. The Navy is supposed to be transparent about misconduct by senior officers. Its own regulations state you should make that public.
And he was unmoved. He said, well, why should I throw our people under a bus? This is so embarrassing. It's going to embarrass our people, and it's going to damage our reputation. So clearly, a decision had been made at the highest levels of the Navy that they were going to bury this story and hope the storm blew over.
DAVIES: Again, that's Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post. So, Glenn Fine, who - and we should note that this corruption scandal both predated and post-dated the four years you were in this job. But I mean, is - and I talked to Craig Whitlock recently for an update. He says, yeah, the Navy has not provided any information about these cases where, you know, there's supposed to be administrative action against people that were caught up in this thing - hundreds of officers. Is he right? They're not following their own rules?
FINE: Well, I don't know if he's right with regard to the specific case, but he's right with regard to the principle. And that is, this should be transparent, and often organizations look at it in the short term, not the long term. In the short term, it might be embarrassing. In the long term, it's better to expose it. And I've been on panels with Craig Whitlock. He has said he's relied on our work, which is important. But I think it's also important to have a free and robust press to use Freedom of Information Act to push the Navy to get this information out there. And I do agree with Craig and that this - the public has a right to know it.
And that's one of our principles at the Department of Defense Inspector General's Office. We would issue our reports publicly. We would not wait for a Freedom of Information Act request because we thought the public had a right to know when there was misconduct, particularly against high-level people, and that it was substantiated, and that there was somebody who was watching over this. I think that benefited people in the long term. I would often get the same thing that Craig heard. That is, senior leaders saying, well, why do you have to issue your reports publicly? Well, because it is important to be transparent, and it makes the organization better, even if it is embarrassing in the short term.
DAVIES: OK, but has the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Defense, the agency that you headed - has it issued a report on this?
FINE: It hasn't issued a report on this because there are criminal cases ongoing. And the consolidated disposition authority was a Navy operation. We...
DAVIES: Sorry. What is the consolidated disposition authority?
FINE: I'm sorry. That was the organization that the Navy set up to determine the administrative sanctions against the Navy officers. So they're the ones with the information. So we don't have that information as to the ultimate disposition, but it should be issued, particularly when there are substantiated cases.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Glenn Fine. His new book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GERALD CLAYTON'S "ENVISIONINGS")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Glenn Fine, who has spent much of his career investigating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government as an inspector general of two major departments. His new book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government."
You know, in the book, after you described this scandal, you list some advice that you gave at a training session for officers on how senior commanders should avoid situations like this. There were five specific things you mentioned. And I have to say, when I read them, they struck me as things that they should already know, like, stay in the ethical midfield, consult with experts, don't investigate or retaliate against whistleblowers. I mean, it seems like those are kind of things that they really ought to already know. But what might really make an impact is if, you know, people see that when hundreds of people commit this kind of misconduct, there are consequences, and we haven't seen that yet, right?
FINE: Well, we have seen consequences. There were 30 people who were convicted of crimes...
DAVIES: Right.
FINE: ...And others lost their careers as a result. So when I would give that talk to all the one-star admirals and generals, they all knew about the Fat Leonard case, and they knew that it had hung up many of their colleagues who couldn't be promoted, who ended their careers. So it was a very well-known thing in the Navy. But you're right. They have to be reminded of that. And one of the things I talked about is why this misconduct happens, why people think that they will get away with it. One of the things is they think they're out in the Pacific, and no one will find out. Others think, well, other people are doing it, so maybe it's OK to do. What I would tell them to do is also consider The Washington Post test.
How would your actions look if they were on the front page of The Washington Post? Would you feel comfortable with that? Would you be able to support it? So while, yes, they seem basic, a lot of times people forget that, and they need to be reminded of it, and they need to be reminded of the consequences of it. So I think that's one of the values of both an inspector general and also public reports to let people know that there are consequences. It's not a good strategy to hope that you won't ever get caught, and many of them did get caught and their careers were ended.
DAVIES: You know, we didn't talk about it earlier, but Inspectors General - they are created by an act of Congress in - was it 1978? Do I have that right?
FINE: Yes.
DAVIES: Yeah.
FINE: 1978.
DAVIES: Post-Watergate. And it's been amended a few times. You, at the end of the book, kind of ruminate a bit on how this system can be improved. And one of the things that you note is that inspectors general themselves ought to be evaluated by some independent body because they aren't all great, right? I mean, some don't do such a great job. Without naming names - you can if you want - you've seen some inspectors general, that, I assume, you thought weren't up to the task. In what ways did they fall short?
FINE: Some of them are unwilling to take on the hard cases. They think that if they don't take on those hard cases, they won't make waves, and they won't upset high-level officials. I would say that's not typically the case, but there are a few that are like that. Some of them just don't have the management skills to do the job. Others of them have just been there too long and want to remain in the job and not make waves.
I remember a story that Secretary Mattis told when - he said that when he was selected to be the Secretary of Defense in 2016, he was a Marine, so he was at the time teaching at Stanford, as he put it, happily corrupting the youth of America. He said he went to the senior Marine on campus to ask for advice. The senior Marine on campus at the time was George Shultz, the former Secretary of State, and he reported advice that George Shultz gave him, which is, you can't want this job too much, meaning you have to do it so that even if it's taken away, even if you alienate certain people, you're OK with that.
And that's the same thing with an inspector general. You need to be aggressive and speak truth to power, even if that is going to upset people. Not all of them are willing to do that. Most are but not everyone.
DAVIES: One of the other recommendations you make is that we need an inspector general for the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. Explain that a bit.
FINE: Yes. My view is that all organizations need oversight. Most resist it. Even in the Department of Justice, for example - when the IG Act was passed in 1978, they said, we don't need an inspector general. We're lawyers here. I don't think that argument aged that well, and eventually, opposition was overcome, and Inspector General of the Department of Justice was implemented by an amendment. Same with the FBI - the FBI said, well, an inspector general would compromise our independence. That too argument didn't age well, and the benefits of an inspector general in those organizations are manifest now. I believe that the judiciary and the Supreme Court also needs an inspector general for a variety of reasons. One, the Supreme Court and the judiciary has a huge operation. The federal judiciary, for example, has an $8 billion budget, has over 1,000 judges, has 30,000 employees.
There is going to be waste and misconduct and abuse, and we need an inspector general to improve the operations of the federal judiciary. With regard to the Supreme Court - trust in the Supreme Court is an all-time low. In my view, part of the reason is controversy about the decisions. People may disagree with the decisions. But another part of the reason is unaddressed ethical allegations against the justices, who decide themselves how the ethics rules apply to them. And it violates the principle that no person should be a judge of their own case.
I believe that an inspector general to establish the facts when there are serious allegations of ethical misconduct, while recognizing the independence of the judiciary, not getting involved with judicial decision-making, but at least investigating serious allegations of misconduct, would improve trust in the court and would be good for the court. So I make that recommendation, and I hope that it's implemented at some point.
DAVIES: Yeah, you know, state supreme courts, at least the ones that I know of, there is a process. I mean, there's a judicial inquiry review panel of some kind at which citizens or lawyers or, you know, parties to cases can file complaints, and if it's serious, it can be investigated, and there can be sanctions imposed even on the highest state courts. Is there anybody that can impose a sanction against - a punishment against a justice of the Supreme Court?
FINE: Well...
DAVIES: I guess they can be impeached - other than that.
FINE: Well, they can be impeached, and if there's - I guess if there's a criminal allegation, perhaps. But ultimately, with regard to ethical allegations, it's the justices themselves who decide whether there's anything to see here or whether there's any misconduct, and they, in the recent past, have put forward their views, sometimes in statements, sometimes in selected media outlets, sometimes not at all.
I think it would benefit them and the public to at least establish the facts through an independent inspector general, and others have proposed that there should be a judicial panel of lower-level judges to determine what should happen when those facts are established. It shouldn't be the IG, and even in federal agencies, the IG does not impose discipline or make management decisions, but at least they determine what the facts are and make transparent what the facts are so that we are not riveted with partisan differences about what happened. We can at least establish the facts, and hopefully, that would improve trust in the court.
DAVIES: So is it up to Congress to do this, to make an inspector general for the courts?
FINE: So there's two ways it could happen. In my view, Congress could legislate, although there's some controversy about that. Some believe that it would violate the separations of power, if Congress legislated both an enforceable code of conduct and a method to investigate these allegations. I disagree. I think Congress already legislates with regard to the court, both its jurisdictions, financial disclosure, other aspects dealing with the court. I think this would be held upheld as constitutional - at least it should be. But the problem is, who would determine that? The Supreme Court itself.
I think a better solution - for the court itself to implement an enforceable code of conduct. It recently implemented a code of conduct, but there's no enforcement mechanism. I think the court should establish both an inspector general and perhaps a mechanism to enforce the code through perhaps lower-level panel of judges, so that would avoid the issue of whether it's constitutional or not and would improve trust in the court. I think that would benefit everyone, including the court itself.
DAVIES: Well, Glenn Fine, thanks so much for speaking with us.
FINE: Thank you for having me.
DAVIES: Glenn Fine's new book is "Watchdogs: Inspectors General And The Battle For Honest And Accountable Government." Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews "Clean," the new novel by Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zeran, about a woman suspected in the death of the 7-year-old daughter of a wealthy couple she works for. This is FRESH AIR.
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