Word: inspectorate
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to compel document disclosure, but would limit that power to the records of people connected to terrorism or espionage. It would make numerous other changes, such as limiting use of National Security Letters - a power the FBI has misused in the past, according to the Inspector General of the Justice Department - to force document disclosure and lifting telecommunication companies' immunity from civil claims arising from the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretaps. (Read about the Bush Administration and the Patriot...
...broken system." In addition to hiring 37 mental-health professionals, the feisty Bronx attorney has significantly restricted the use of physical restraints, created a 24-hour hotline for kids to report abuses and reinvigorated oversight mechanisms, like an ombudsman and independent review board - which most observers (including the state inspector general) agree had been terribly neglected under her long-serving predecessor, John A. Johnson. (Reached at his home in Buffalo, Johnson declined to discuss his tenure or the DOJ report he claimed not to have heard about. "There's the truth, and then there's God's truth...
Those memos were declassified on Aug. 24, along with a 2004 inspector general's report on the CIA's interrogation program. Rather than provide a smoking gun, the documents may have just created more smoke. The detainees who endured the harshest methods coughed up all sorts of information, including plans to attack U.S. targets at home and overseas. But the inspector general's report, which remains heavily redacted, notes investigators "did not uncover any evidence that these plots were imminent" and sidestepped the question of whether the information could have been gleaned by other, less brutal methods...
...while the report hammers the SEC for repeated instances of incompetence, it stops well short of declaring the SEC liable. "The OIG [Office of Inspector General] investigation did not find evidence that any SEC personnel who worked on an SEC examination or investigation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC had any financial or other inappropriate connection with Bernard Madoff or the Madoff family that influenced the conduct of their examination or investigatory work," the report notes. (See a Madoff family photo album...
...Overcoming the sovereign-immunity protection is the biggest hurdle, concurs David Bernfeld, a partner at Bernfeld Dematteo & Bernfeld LLC, who represents about a dozen Madoff victims. However, he believes the inspector general's report offers enough ammunition to prove negligence - which is the bullet needed to pierce the sovereign-immunity defense and make the SEC liable...