As I savor my morning coffee, I am reminded of my tour of duty on the Inspector General’s Team for the Military Airlift Command while in the Air Force. It was a tough assignment for a newlywed since it involved travel about 70% of the time, but the Air Force never asked whether you would “like” an assignment or not. You received your orders and packed your bag.
I quickly learned why the Inspector General was, in fact, a General. The Inspector General or IG is responsible for the independent evaluation of the combat readiness of the unit being inspected and how well the unit conforms to the fiscal and management regulations related to its readiness. Senior officers do not like independent outsiders giving them a “grade” for their performance and are not above “leaning on” the inspector to soften his/her assessment. When this occurs, you let the General deal with the politics of the situation which usually ends the discussion in a hurry. Thus, you can be reasonably assured that the findings are free from coercion and fairly reflect the actual situation. Disagreement is not forbidden, but it is done above board in a fact-based manner.
This background is what makes me so disturbed by our “Commander in Chief’s” cavalier attitude toward independent oversight. His dismissal of Steve Linick, the State Department’s Inspector General was the fourth such dismissal in this administration in the last two months. How effective Linick was or was not, is not something an outsider like me can determine without access to the facts, but he obviously raised the ire of Pompeo which may be a good thing. Let me say that when an event occurs with such regularity, it makes one suspicious that independent oversight is the target not individual competence. If your child had a personality clash with a teacher, your might be inclined to side with your kid. If it happened four times, you might in a private moment of candor suspect it might be your child’s behavior at fault, not the teacher.
When you weaken independent oversight, you weaken the entire structure of the government. The complexity of daily operations is so great that the opportunity for corruptions and/or abuse is certainly abundant. In most cases the beneficiary is the person charged with the oversight and management of the operation. I always felt that the real benefit of the IG was not so much the audit itself, but the deterrent value of having the maleficence uncovered. When you remove this deterrent, you open the door to the notion that nobody will ever find out what is going on; it is too complex.
The current administration has an amazing record of corruption and incompetence. If ever there were a need for oversight it is now. A little publicized decision occurred when the Trump administration rejected a course for senior White House staff, Cabinet nominees and other political appointees that would have provided training on leadership, ethics, and management. Both the Bush and Obama administrations made this training part of their transition program. It is obvious that ethics is not on today’s agenda, and the more that can fly under the radar, the happier they will be. If only the Senate had the balls to mandate the oversight that the citizens in this country deserve.
I will sadly get another cup of coffee this morning and lament what might have been.