Free Republic

Ridiculously overbudget? Check. Unnecessary? Check. Impossible to support in the long run? Check. Zero accountability? Check and double-check. If a novelist wrote this as a satire of government operations, there wouldn’t be an editor who’d buy it — not for 43 cents, and certainly not for $43 million: Nearly $43 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money was spent on building a gas station in Afghanistan — 140 times more than it should have cost, according to a government watchdog.The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also said that one of the most “troubling” issues is how the Department of Defense...

A report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security has found that the Department’s Federal Protective Service (FPS) division wasted about $2.5 million of taxpayer money in 2014 on an extravagant fleet vehicle program. It is not surprising that images show that the vehicles in question appear to be manufactured by crony company , General Motors. A House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, headed by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), requested the audit on the FPS’ fleet operation. The report unveils a fleet of 1,169 vehicles which were leased at...

Full title: Judicial Watch Obtains Previously Classified CIA Inspector General Report Strongly Condemning Agency Handling of Briefings and Interviews with the Entertainment Industry Report specifically criticizes CIA’s briefings ‘in which foreign nationals may have participated’ specifically criticizes CIA interface with ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ filmmakers (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has received a previously classified December 2012 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) strongly condemning the agency’s handling of “briefings, interviews, visits, and other support” given to the entertainment industry. The report specifically criticizes the CIA’s granting of “Secret level” access...

In the sadistic era of fraudulent Hope and Change, inspectors general inside the federal government have been kicked, neutered and starved of the authority and information they need to do their jobs. It's transparently clear: President Obama loathes and fears independent watchdogs. Accountability is an empty talking point without whistleblower protection and investigative autonomy. That is why Capitol Hill must do everything in its power to stop the White House war on the public's ombudsmen. Federal inspector generals across dozens of agencies are begging lawmakers to grant them access to public records as guaranteed by the 1978 Inspector General Act....

An Inspector General of the Department of Energy report that picked over the bones of the Solyndra green energy fiasco placed most of the blame on Solyndra executives for losing more than $500 million in taxpayer money. But a close reading shows DOE made plenty of mistakes as well. The report authored by DOE Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman came just short of calling Solyndra’s highest officials liars, saying their actions during the loan process were “at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally deceive and mislead the Department.” While the 13-page report...

Agency watchdogs are up in arms over a Justice Department memo questioning the legality of turning documents they say are crucial to their investigations. The new policy protecting certain portions of sensitive documents — announced last month by the DOJ’s office of legal counsel — came under fresh fire from lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. Lawmakers in both parties, including the top Republican and Democrat on the panel, disagree with the policy shift, saying it goes against the specific intent of the Inspector General Act of 1978. The law specifies that inspectors general have access to...

U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that she did not use a private email account to send or receive classified information while she was secretary of state, in response to a government inspector's letter this week. "I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time," Clinton said at a campaign stop in Iowa. The email controversy has dogged Clinton's bid for the presidency, fuelling worries that the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination has tried to sidestep transparency and record-keeping laws. At least four emails from the private email account that Clinton used while secretary...

An inspector general investigating the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups has found thousands of emails from Lois Lerner, the agency official at the center of that controversy, according to committees involved in the probe. Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) said it found roughly 6,400 emails either to or from Lerner from between 2004 and 2013 that it didn’t think the IRS had turned over to lawmakers, the congressional committees said. The committees have yet to examine the emails, aides on Capitol Hill said. The IRS said last year that Lerner’s computer crashed in 2011, leaving it...

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the FBI on Monday of not cooperating with the Department of Justice’s top watchdog in the investigation of the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, among others, endangering Congress’s ability to be a check on the administration’s actions

The State Department’s inspector general has agreed to investigate the program that allowed former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton to hire one of her key advisors, Huma Abedin, for government work even as she was also employed by a private firm, a senator revealed Friday. Inspector General Steve A. Linick also said he wasn’t aware of Mrs. Clinton’s or Ms. Abedin’s use of a non-government email account to conduct official business, and said that’s generally been frowned upon at the department. He pointed to a 2012 report that instructed an embassy to stop using a commercial email system as evidence. And...

The State Department had no permanent inspector general—the lead watchdog charged with uncovering misconduct and waste—during Hillary Clinton’s entire tenure as secretary, leaving in place an acting inspector who had close ties to State Department leadership. ...

In the latest of many scandals involving U.S. aid for Afghan social issues, tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars have been wasted on programs to supposedly assist women in the Islamic country escape repression yet we have no idea if it’s made a difference because there’s no accountability or follow up. During a two-year period from 2011 to 2013 the U.S. blew $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs and initiatives to support Afghan women though details of how the money was spent and the effectiveness of the costly experiments aren’t available, according to a federal audit. The cash flowed...

The “independent” watchdogs that are supposed to root out waste, fraud and corruption inside U.S. government agencies often help cover it up, according to a scandalous newspaper exposé that reveals sometimes they actually become the lapdogs of the agencies they’re charged with overseeing. Published this month by the capital area’s conservative newspaper, the four-part series exposes the state of inspectors general tasked with keeping an eye on the government. In all there are 72 inspectors general—with heads appointed by the president—thanks to a decades-old law that passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress. The idea is to have a completely...

The Obama Justice Department endangered public safety by allowing a renowned weapons smuggler to continue working for Mexican drug cartels even after the agency had more than enough evidence to indict him, according to a federal audit made public this week. As if this weren’t bad enough, the case is all the more outrageous because it involves the same preposterous strategy the administration used in the disastrous gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious. That once-secret program allowed weapons from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement...

A report from the Veterans' Administration Office of Inspector General identified at least 1,700 veterans at the agency's beleaguered Phoenix clinic who were not properly registered on waiting lists, putting them "at risk of being forgotten or lost." The independent report, released Wednesday, confirmed recent allegations that VA locations have been relying on sketchy scheduling practices amid treatment delays, some of which have resulted in the deaths of vets.

Former HUD-OIG Special Agent In Charge Indicted on Mortgage Fraud Charges Herschell Harvell, Jr., 53, Conyers, Georgia, made his initial appearance in federal court on charges of making false statements to a bank to obtain a mortgage loan and conspiring to obstruct an investigation into his real estate transactions by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG). Until he was terminated in 2013, Harvell was the Special Agent in Charge of HUD-OIG’s Atlanta office, which encompasses several southeastern states. Harvell’s co-defendant and nephew, Tavus A. Wright, 32, Milledgeville, Georgia, also made his initial appearance...

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz has published a memorandum to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole about “challenges” facing the Justice Department. Among the list of challenges: misconduct and malfeasance by DOJ employees and units which PJ Media has been reporting about for years. That these instances of misconduct were included in Horowitz’s report infers that Holder’s Department has either taken inadequate action to address the behavior, or has taken no action at all. Based on what sources inside DOJ are saying, I suspect the latter. The report provides material which senators on...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report released today. The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare. According to the report: “Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify...

Lack of money and testing delays mean NASA will not be able to send astronauts into orbit until at least 2021, according to a report released Aug. 15 by the NASA Office of Inspector General. “NASA plans to delay delivery of several systems required to ‘human rate’ the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and as a result, the Agency does not expect the spacecraft to be available for crewed operations until at least 2021,” said Paul K. Martin, NASA’s inspector general. Under current funding levels, astronauts will be limited to orbital missions, because the systems necessary for surface exploration have...

An audit by theDepartment of Energy’s Inspector General found that the persistent weak demand for electric vehicles harmed the deployment and timeliness of a $135 million-plus taxpayer funded charging network, which spun a cycle of excessive grants and project expansion, that led to an enormous waste of public money. The investigators, led by IG Gregory Friedman, determined that conditions for reimbursement to Ecotality, Inc. (and its subsidiaries) for the EV charging demonstration project were “very generous,” although not explicitly prohibited under federal regulations. “While we acknowledge that the Department had maintained and archived award documentation, an independent reviewer cannot understand...