Clinton Tenure Lacked Top Watchdog --- The State Department had no permanent inspector general during her time as secretary (The Wall Street Journal)

Clinton Tenure Lacked Top Watchdog --- The State Department had no permanent inspector general during her time as secretary (The Wall Street Journal)

March 25, 2015

President Barack Obama didn’t put forward a nominee to lead the inspector general’s office while Mrs. Clinton led the State Department, making it the only agency with a presidentially appointed inspector general that had neither a confirmed nor nominated head watchdog during that full time period.

Five months after Mrs. Clinton left office, Mr. Obama nominated a permanent inspector general, who was confirmed by the Senate three months later.

The lack of a confirmed inspector general raises questions about oversight of the department under Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. The department has been criticized for its failure to gather and archive the email records of Mrs. Clinton and other officials and for responses to public-record requests that lawmakers and advocacy groups say were insufficient, including its response to requests for information from a congressional panel investigating the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The vacancy in the top watchdog spot left the State Department with no confirmed inspector general for more than five years, the longest gap since the position was created in 1957, according to department records. While other agencies have had no permanent inspectors general at various points in recent years, some of those vacancies were due to a lack of confirmation by the Senate on nominees put forward by Mr. Obama.

Is isn’t clear whether Mrs. Clinton had any role in the lack of a nomination.

The acting inspector general, Harold Geisel, had served in a variety of roles, including U.S. ambassador to Mauritius in Bill Clinton’s administration and in a State Department job under Richard Nixon. Because he was a longtime foreign-service officer, Mr. Geisel was banned from becoming permanent inspector general, a prohibition to ensure that oversight is conducted by people who don’t have ties to the departments they investigate.

“It’s a convenient way to prevent oversight,” said Matthew Harris, a University of Maryland University College professor who has worked in law enforcement and researches inspectors general. Acting inspectors general “don’t feel empowered; they don’t have the backing of their people.”

Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Mr. Geisel’s role as a Clinton administration ambassador undercut his status as a watchdog.

“We did not believe he could be truly independent. We raised the issue,” Mr. Royce said. He said an independent inspector would likely have uncovered and raised objections to Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email account and computer server for official correspondence.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, said Mr. Geisel “was a career official spanning Republican and Democratic administrations alike, independent and hard-hitting.” A spokesman for the State Department said Mr. Geisel led a team that “conducted more investigations between 2007 and 2012 than the IG had under his predecessor.”

The White House declined to elaborate on the reason for the lack of an appointment. A White House spokesman said the inspector general’s office issued more than 450 reports while there was no permanent head.

Mr. Geisel, assuming his tenure would be short-lived, said he did little to decorate his office. “I never even put up a picture,” he said in an interview. After his five-year stint, the State Department gave him a paid temporary assignment reviewing staffing conditions at outposts in Egypt and Nairobi, Mr. Geisel said.

Designed to be isolated from political pressure, inspectors general are tasked with uncovering waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement of federal agencies. The State Department office has a large staff that conducts audits and investigations.

During Mr. Geisel’s tenure, members of Congress and watchdog groups raised questions about his distance from top leadership at the State Department.

The nonpartisan Project On Government Oversight said Mr. Geisel had an unduly close relationship with Patrick F. Kennedy, the department’s undersecretary for management, a top post. In a 2010 letter to the White House, the group cited friendly emails between the two as evidence of a close relationship, as well as the fact that Mr. Geisel recused himself from an investigation into a situation involving Mr. Kennedy during his tenure.

Asked whether he believed he was compromised in his ability to do his job, Mr. Geisel said: “My work absolutely speaks for itself.” He described his mission as “telling the truth that needs to be told, which may not be the truth that people want to hear.”

One person who worked in the office from 2009 to 2013, Evelyn Klemstine, spoke highly of Mr. Geisel. “I personally never felt that he inhibited any of the audits that we did,” she said.

U.S. visa official faulted; Homeland Security’s No. 2 leader created appearance of special access, a report says. (Los Angeles Times)

March 25, 2015

Alejandro Mayorkas, while head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, created an “appearance of favoritism” in a program that offers visas to wealthy foreigners willing to invest in American companies, the report says, though it stops short of saying Mayorkas was guilty of wrongdoing.

More than 15 whistle-blowers came forward to complain that Mayorkas was giving special treatment to connected applicants, the report by the department’s Office of Inspector General says.

The projects included McAuliffe’s electric car company, GreenTech Automotive; a series of films by Sony Pictures; and a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

Mayorkas intervened “in unprecedented ways,” the report says, and “created a perception ... that certain individuals had special access and would receive special consideration.” If it were not for Mayorkas, the report says, the applications would have been decided differently.

The report says the projects eventually won approval after Mayorkas heard from advocates like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, both Democrats.

In a 32-page response, Mayorkas, now the department’s deputy secretary, said he weighed in only to fix a broken system that wasn’t moving applications.

“I did so not because I wanted to but because I needed to,” Mayorkas wrote. “It was not easy or pleasant to hear complaints of how poorly our agency was performing.”

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he still had “full confidence” in Mayorkas, but said the report also showed that leaders needed to avoid the “appearance of special treatment.”

The complex EB-5 visa program, mixing immigration policy with economic development goals, offers U.S. visas to people willing to invest at least $500,000 in projects that create at least 10 jobs and meet other requirements.

Most of the visas, about 10,000 annually, are snapped up by wealthy Chinese investors.

But a number of the deals have turned out to be fraud schemes, and critics in Congress have charged that the government isn’t properly screening the investors for security risks.

Mayorkas, who once served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the visa program was a mess when he began at Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2009. The office was short-staffed, he said, and the agency was deluged by complaints about stalled applications.

Some of the complaints were from McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who helped run presidential campaigns for Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Gulf Coast Funds Management, a company run by Anthony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, was trying to attract EB-5 applicants to invest in GreenTech, where McAuliffe was board chairman until he left in 2012 to run for governor.

The report says Mayorkas became involved at some point in the long application process but declined to do so in others, saying it was inappropriate. The project eventually won approval. Though Mayorkas didn’t ultimately make the decision, the report says, his unusual involvement was “corrosive” and intimidated staffers. Mayorkas, though, said McAuliffe kept complaining about his treatment, at one point leaving an expletive-laced message.

Mayorkas also intervened in 2011 in a project called LA Films, set up to steer money from about 200 investors into Sony Pictures films, the report says. His staff members wanted to deny the project, the report says, but that changed after Mayorkas received a call from Rendell, who knew the project head from his previous dealings in Philadelphia. And Reid, then Senate majority leader, asked Mayorkas to look into a stalled application from a company that wanted to invest in the SLS Hotel in Las Vegas.

The report spurred biting criticism of Mayorkas from Republicans.

The report shows “just how questionable Mr. Mayorkas’ ethics and judgment were,” said Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a long-standing critic of Mayorkas and the EB-5 program.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said he would hold a hearing Thursday to explore the report’s findings.

Johnson said that he also had concerns about the integrity of the EB-5 program but that the problem was not Mayorkas, but lawmakers.

“Officials of this department are constantly contacted by outsiders, including members of Congress of both parties, on behalf of those with an interest in the outcome of a particular EB-5 case,” Johnson said. He said he had asked his staff to come up with a way to keep the program free from outside influence.