Inspector General, Department of State

The Inspector General of the Department of State is responsible for detecting and investigating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General has a rank equivalent to Assistant Secretary.

The State Department Office of Inspector General (State OIG) has a critical responsibility in preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement; and in providing independent audits and investigations of the department’s programs and operations. In addition, the Foreign Service Act of 1980 requires the State OIG to perform inspections of the department’s bureaus and posts, which is a unique requirement for an IG office…

[T]he appointment of management and Foreign Service officials to head the State OIG in an acting capacity for extended periods of time is not consistent with professional standards for independence (GAO).

Under the Obama Administration, the Office of Inspector General was vacant for the entirety of Hillary Clinton’s term of office as Secretary of State. This lack of oversight is unprecedented.

Moreover, the lack of oversight is a modern executive office practice.

This IG is one of the inspectors general that require Senate confirmation. For the first six years of Obama’s eight-year term in office, the U.S. Senate was controlled by his own party; the Republicans did not take control of the Senate until January 2015.

When the position of IG is vacant, a career bureaucrat serves as acting IG. From the Project on Government Oversight (a “left-leaning” organization “critical of government waste,” according to the Wall Street Journal):

OIGs are best positioned to be effective when led by a highly qualified permanent IG, rather than an acting official or no IG at all. Permanent IGs undergo significant vetting—especially the IGs that require Senate confirmation—before taking their position. That vetting process helps to instill confidence among OIG stakeholders—Congress, agency officials, whistleblowers, and the public—that the OIG is truly independent and that its investigations and audits are accurate and credible.

In addition, a permanent IG has the ability to set a long-term strategic plan for the office, including setting investigative and audit priorities. An acting official, on the other hand, is known by all OIG staff to be temporary, which one former IG has argued “can have a debilitating effect on [an] OIG, particularly over a lengthy period.”

Timeline of criticism

The Center for Public Integrity pointed out in 2010 that 15 of the 73 inspector general posts were vacant. 

Specifically related to the Department of State, POGO reported:

POGO wrote in 2010 that “[n]umerous State whistleblowers have come to POGO due to a perception within the Department that employees with knowledge of wrongdoing cannot go to the OIG because they believe it to be captured by management.”

In May 2010, the Center for Public Integrity chastised the Obama administration for ongoing vacancies — at least 15 of the 73 positions — among the inspectors general, chief auditors, or whistleblower protection jobs.

The State Department, for instance, has been without its chief watchdog since early 2008 when President George Bush’s inspector general appointee resigned after a controversy involving investigations into spending in Iraq and Afghanistan…  the inspector general’s website hasn’t updated its press releases since late 2007.

Mainstream media criticism of the vacancy first surfaced in 2011.

From the Washington Post:

The inspector general’s position in the department has been unfilled since 2007, longer than any of the other 72 such positions in the government…

[T]he Government Accountability Office, lawmakers from both parties and nonprofit groups have recently stepped up calls for the White House to appoint someone independent of the Foreign Service to ride herd over any spending problems and other diplomacy-related mischief in the Middle East and at U.S. outposts around the globe…

The open slot at the State Department is one of 11 unfilled inspector general appointments at major federal departments and agencies, including the Justice Department, the Troubled Assets Relief Program and the Homeland Security Department. The Labor Department slot has been unfilled since July 2009, and the Housing and Urban Development slot since last October…

In a report prepared for the House hearing, GAO auditors said again that inspections conducted overseas by State’s office of inspector general had sometimes been conducted under weak standards, and they faulted the department for staffing its inspection teams with foreign service officers who rotate in and out of the assignments. “How can they be trusted to provide objective, unbiased reviews of State Department operations when their career advancement hinges on the type of assessment they give to programs or peers?” Ros-Lehtinen asked at the April 5 hearing…

A peer review of State’s work by NASA’s inspector general‘s office, published late last year, separately found that numerous inspections in the Middle East had been mischaracterized as audits and that “the evidence contained in audit files did not support audit conclusions.” It also found that some of those who performed the work for the inspector general‘s office had failed to sign statements promising that their analysis would be independent of any influence

In January 2012, the Washington Post editorial board wrote:

The State Department [Inspector General] position has not been filled with a confirmed chief for nearly five years; it is occupied in an acting capacity by a career foreign service employee. The IG’s office came under attack last year for allegedly shoddy audits of overseas operations. The State Department’s increasing role in Iraq in the aftermath of the military’s withdrawal calls for filling this position quickly with a tough-minded and qualified individual [Proquest].

In May 2012, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) urged the Obama administration to fill 10 vacant federal agency inspector general positions; four of the position had been vacant for more than 1,000 days. In addition to the vacancy at the Department of State, there were vacancies at the Departments of Defense, Labor, and Interior; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Securities and Exchange Commission; the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction; and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

And the Washington Post editorial board also followed up in May 2012:

The president has a responsibility, which he has not fulfilled, to nominate candidates for those inspector general jobs that require Senate confirmation and to ensure that the posts are filled in agencies whose inspectors general do not have to go through the confirmation process. The Senate has a responsibility, on which it too has fallen short, to swiftly act on those nominees that are sent its way. The current morass does not serve the public well.

The New York Times pointed out that “16 of the department’s 59 top jobs were vacant or filled with men and women performing the duties in an ‘acting’ capacity.”

In June 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Some of the government’s largest cabinet agencies, including the departments of Defense, State, Interior and Homeland Security, haven’t had permanent inspectors general in place for one to five years … departments lacking permanent inspectors general account for about $843 billion in annual spending, almost a quarter of the federal budget…

Of the six vacancies for which Mr. Obama nominates the inspector general, five lack a pending nominee.

On June 26, 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced that he would put a hold on all State Department nominations until the President nominated a permanent Inspector General for the State Department.

By the fall, Administration officials were complaining about the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, whose reports — critical of State Department initiatives — had criticized spending $34 million for an empty military headquarters and “U.S.A.I.D. programs that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars yet accomplished little.”

John Kerry became the Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.

Steve A. Linick was confirmed as IG on September 30, ending an almost six-year vacancy.

In June 2013, at a Congressional hearing, Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO, agreed with Daniel Epstein, executive director of the legal group Cause of Action:

[L]ongtime acting State Department Inspector General Harold Geisel, a Foreign Service officer ineligible for the permanent job, might not have vetted Clinton’s unusual email arrangements as a permanent IG would have. “Obama’s decision not to appoint a permanent IG at State may have been political,” Epstein said, since “acting IG’s have the incentive not only to delay but to avoid investigations.”

Extended Vacancies
Office of Inspector General of the Department of State and the Foreign Service

List of Inspectors General of the Department of State and the Foreign Service

From 1906 until 1957, inspections were to be carried out at least once every 2 years and were viewed as a management function, and not a function of an independent inspector general.

In 1957, the State Department administratively established an Inspector General of Foreign Service, which was the first inspector general office within the State Department to conduct inspections.

Congress enacted legislation in 1961 and in 1980 creating statutory inspectors general who were tasked with performing inspections on certain State Department activities.

In 1978, GAO reviewed the IG’s inspection reports and questioned the independence of Foreign Service officers who were temporarily detailed to the IG’s office and recommended the elimination of this requirement.

The 1980 legislation, section 209(a) of the Foreign Service Act, required the State IG to inspect every foreign service post, bureau, or other operating unit in the State Department at least once every 5 years (GAO).