Word: ig
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...civil liberties, there are few, if any, where the motivating factor was something other than law and order or national security. There are no scandalous examples of the White House using the Patriot Act powers for political purposes or of individual agents using them for personal gain. The Justice IG report released Thursday, for example, examined some 50,000 National Security Letters issued in 2006 to see whether the FBI misused that specialized kind of warrantless subpoena. The IG found some continuing abuse of the power, but blamed it for the most part on sloppiness and bad management, not nefarious...
...There may, nonetheless, be reasons to feel wary of the civil liberties vs. security trade-off into which Americans have bought. If the misuse documented in the Justice IG report stems from incompetence, Americans may not be getting the security they bargain for in sacrificing their civil liberties. It's also possible the Justice IG may yet find among the abused Patriot Act powers examples of an FBI agent stalking his girlfriend or doing a favor for a political operative friend. Fine is still preparing a report on the illegal use of "exigent letters" in unauthorized demands for records from...
...Being an IG is no easy task - some liken the job to straddling barbed wire, or to being a skunk at a garden party. The IG must maintain a good working relationship with the agency director but at the same time maintain independence. At the CIA, for instance, there is always tension when headquarters staff investigate field operatives, who often complain that the Langley suits don't understand field conditions, says Frederick Hitz, CIA IG from 1990 1998 and now a lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. "That accusation is leveled at every...
...Hitz views Hayden's investigation of his IG as a dangerous precedent that contains an implicit message to "call off the dogs" or go easier on his reporting. Helgerson has already rankled senior CIA staff, particularly with his examination of the agency's pre-9/11 intelligence failures, which broke with tradition by naming names, including CIA director George Tenet. Hayden fiercely resisted releasing even the executive summary of that report but was finally compelled to when Congress passed a law ordering...
...original version of this article incorrectly included former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz as one of the number of Bush administration IGs who "have been forced to resign under a cloud as a result of bipartisan pressure, often because of bald incompetence or gross interference with the IG mission." While at least one Democrat and one Republican senator were raising questions about Schmitz's job performance at the time of his resignation in September of 2005, Schmitz had in fact conveyed to the Secretary of Defense his decision to step down a year before. Moreover in October...