Inspector General

Eight years after it was passed, the USA Patriot Act remains among the most controversial pieces of counterterrorism legislation in the so-called “war on terror.”

The congressionally chartered commission on wartime contracting is meeting today, and one of its witnesses is Danielle Brian, the Project on Government Oversight executive director who blew the lid off of ArmorGroup’s failures in protecting the U.S. embassy in Kabul.  In her prepared testimony, she excoriates the State Department for its laxity in overseeing its [...]

It’s still unclear exactly when the State Department’s inspector general began its inquiry into department contractor ArmorGroup’s apparent physical and sexual harrasment at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Spokesman Ian Kelly said yesterday that the department has known about the latest allegations from the much-criticized company for “ten days,” but couldn’t answer when the inquiry [...]

While many of us have been speculating about what the 30-plus pages of blacked-out material in the newly released 2004 CIA inspector general report might be hiding, Brian Ross and Matthew Cole at ABC News have found a former intelligence official who’s seen the unclassified version and said it includes information about three detainees killed [...]

Classified for years — and still heavily redacted — here is former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s 2004 report into the CIA’s Bush-era interrogations operations. The ACLU sued to obtain the controversial report, which was so charged within the agency that former CIA Director Michael Hayden clashed with Helgerson over the inspector general’s independence and [...]

As Newsweek reported Friday evening, the CIA inspector general report expected to be released on Monday reveals that the CIA staged mock executions to terrify terror suspects into talking. Regardless of whether interrogators got the information they were looking for, these actions were clearly against the law. It is a violation of both the federal [...]

So the Justice Department got most of what it wanted here. Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled this morning that the CIA will have until August 24 to release a declassified version of the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture, a report that documents abuse so disturbing it reportedly brought Attorney General Eric Holder to the [...]

Remember how the Justice Department was supposed to declassify the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on the “enhanced interrogation program” today? Not going to happen. There’s continued legal wrangling over how much to declassify. The latest I’ve heard is that the declassification could happen tomorrow — happy Fourth of July! — or perhaps next week. [...]

I mentioned in my story today about the Washington Examiner that political correspondent Byron York has had the paper’s first big success with a blogosphere-style, flood-the-zone story: relentless coverage of the firing of Americorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. York has an update today that consists of advice for Republicans on how to turn this into [...]

While the Republicans in Congress are up in arms about the possibility that a handful of Uighurs will be released into the United States, it’s worth noting that these Chinese Muslims could have some disturbing stories to tell about their treatment at Guantanamo Bay.
Buried in a 2008 Justice Department inspector general report is the strange [...]