Cynthia A. Schnedar appears before the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee (Photo by Fahima Haque/Main Justice)
The Acting Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Cynthia A. Schnedar, acknowledged on Wednesday that the DOJ needs to improve communications within the department and between DOJ sections and law enforcement units elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy.
Too often, she told a House panel, the DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI do not coordinate their efforts sufficiently. Moreover, she said, the ATF sometimes seems to be “not talking” to people in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
While frayed communication lines across the vast federal bureaucracy are not uncommon, poor coordination among law enforcement agencies has been viewed as especially troubling since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In the post-mortems of 9/11, it became clear that the poor communication between agencies helped the terrorists carry out their operation.
Schnedar highlighted fighting terrorism, enhancing information technology systems and improving the management of grant funds as big challenges for the DOJ in her testimony before the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee.
Following up on a report released in November 2010, Schnedar reidentified 10 challenges outlined by then-Inspector General Glenn Fine. The assessment of activities is crucial, especially amid a federal government spending freeze, because the subcommittee oversees the DOJ budget.
In addressing counterterrorism efforts, Chairman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) asked why the FBI failed to hire enough linguists in critical languages, especially after the creation of a high-value detainee interrogation team. The team was created in 2009 to obtain information from a detainee as soon as possible.
Like his fellow GOP members, Wolf criticized the FBI’s handling of the attempted Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. ”That team could have been sent out, there could have been someone who spoke the language, who understood the culture, and that is not the case,” Wolf said.
Schnedar answered that the background-check process for linguists is long. She also said that the FBI is handling a backlog of tracking and prioritizing materials that usurps time from other projects like making evaluations for the interrogation team. Wolf called the team a priority and said he would “hate for something to happen in the meantime.”
She also cited insufficient counterterrorism coordination between the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF normally presides over cases involving explosives, but if a case involves terrorism the FBI has jurisdiction. But the expertise does not reside equally and the “guidelines are not clear” according to Schnedar.
Both ranking member Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) and freshman Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) questioned Schnedar on the Sentinel program, an overdue initiative to convert the FBI’s criminal investigative records from paper to a computerized process.
In 2006, the FBI hired Lockheed Martin as a contractor to help develop the Sentinel program. The FBI originally estimated the program would cost $425 million and be finished by December 2009. In 2007, the cost rose to $451 million and completion was pushed back to June 2010. The most recent report states that two phases of the task are complete, but the most challenging work remains, and the FBI is now $100 million over budget and at least two years behind schedule.
The FBI’s new approach for the Sentinel, called “agile methodology,” is to reduce the role of contractor Lockheed Martin. Wolf said he lacked confidence that the FBI has the expertise to finish implementing this system, but doubted how the agency could hire another contractor with restricted funds.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.) asked Schnedar on how to enhance efforts of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives led Operation Gunrunner. The program has been heavily criticized as largely ineffective because of its focus on gun dealers and straw purchasers as opposed to higher-level traffickers.
More specifically, Schnedar said ATF “is not talking to” Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and both groups need to coordinate with each other. She also said officials involved with the project in Mexico were not sharing information in a timely fashion.
Wolf asked why Mexico has not been cooperative and if ATF and Mexican officials convened in either country. Schnedar was unsure of the particulars, but said ATF traveled to Mexico, but not vice versa.
The 2010 DOJ report outlined the full list of challenges:
- Counterterrorism
- Restoring Confidence in the Department of Justice
- Southwest Border Security Issues
- Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
- Information Technology Systems Planning, Implementation, and Security
- Violent and Organized Crime
- Financial Crimes and Cyber Crimes
- Detention and Incarceration
- Grant Management and Recovery Act Funding and Oversight
- Financial Management
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The Justice Department Office of Inspector General cast doubt Wednesday on FBI plans to finish its new case management system within a year and on budget.
Efforts under the Sentinel program to convert FBI’s criminal investigative records from paper to a computerized process have been fraught with delays and setbacks. The FBI initially planned to complete the project by December 2009 with a $451 million budget. Sentinel is now only about half done and has cost about $405 million so far, according to an Inspector General’s report released Wednesday.
The FBI has said it intends to stay within its $451 million budget for the project and finish Sentinel by September 2011. The Office of Inspector General was less optimistic.
The second part of the four-phase project “has not gone smoothly,” the report said. Changes made to the project and concerns about Lockheed Martin’s work on Sentinel has led to the continued use of the old FBI case management system.
“We believe that these issues and these concerns affect whether Sentinel will ultimately provide, in a timely manner and within a reasonable budget, the automated case management system that FBI employees need to most effectively perform their vital mission,” the Inspector General report said.
Members of Congress have also expressed concern about Sentinel. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a statement that the Inspector General report is “disheartening.”
“Information exchange is critical to protecting our national security,” Leahy said. “These stumbles continue to be alarming.”
Chad L. Fulgham, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI Information and Technology Branch, wrote in a letter to Inspector General Glenn Fine that the FBI is working to address the concerns raised.
But FBI Associate Deputy Director Thomas J. Harrington said in a statement that there are problems with the report.
“We believe that the interim report does not accurately reflect the FBI’s management of the Sentinel project, and fails to credit the FBI with taking corrective action to keep it on budget,” Harrington said. “Moreover, the interim report comes at a time when the FBI has changed its plan for completing the project, and the Department of Justice has authorized us to go forward with our new approach. The report, however, continues to rely on outdated cost estimates that do not apply to the current FBI plan.”
This story has been updated.
The Justice Department will put into action additional oversight of the Patriot Act, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday.
Patrick Leahy (photo by Andrew Ramonas / Main Justice)
Panel Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who introduced Patriot Act renewal legislation last year, urged Attorney General Eric Holder in March to implement safeguards for the use of Patriot Act even though they are not required by law.
In a letter to Leahy dated Tuesday, DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine wrote that the DOJ Office of the Inspector General plans to review many of programs for which Leahy asked for additional oversight.
“[W]hile our review may not address every one of the specific provisions that were contained in [Leahy's bill], we anticipate that the results of our review will address many of the important issues reflected in the oversight provisions that were part of that bill,” Fine wrote.
The Senate Judiciary approved the legislation in October that would reauthorize the “lone wolf,” business records and “roving wiretap” powers in the Patriot Act and require additional civil liberties and oversight protections for four years.
The full Senate has yet to vote on the bill. The House Judiciary Committee also approved a Patriot Act extension bill that has since stalled on the House floor. The House bill includes the civil liberties and oversight protections, but the legislation would only renew the records and “roving wiretap” authorities.
The House and Senate bills also call for more restrictions on the use of national security letters, which are used by the FBI to obtain evidence without a court order.
In the letter, Fine said the review would look into the use of national security letters and the business records provision of the Patriot Act, as well as other issues.
A DOJ Inspector General report released in January found that the FBI inappropriately secured phone records through informal requests by post-it notes, telephone, e-mails and what the FBI called “sneak peeks.”
With the provisions set to expire at the end of 2009, Congress temporary extended the powers through Feb. 28, 2011, but did not include any of the proposed civil liberties and oversight provisions.
Here is a summary of the provisions:
- Lone wolf: Allows the government to track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power, such as an international terrorist group. The provision only applies only to non-U.S. persons. It has never been used by the government.
- Business records: Allows investigators to compel third parties, including financial services and travel and telephone companies, to provide them access to a suspect’s records without the suspect’s knowledge.
- Roving wiretaps: Allows the government to monitor phone lines or Internet accounts that a terrorism suspect may be using, whether or not others who are not suspects also regularly use them. The government must provide the FISA court with specific information showing the suspect is purposely switching means of communication to evade detection.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine told members of Congress Wednesday that the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were not coordinating efforts with the agencies’ explosives investigators racing to the scene of an incident in the hopes of calling dibs on a case. As some agents acknowledged to Fine, they believed “possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
Inspector General Glenn Fine, Margaret Gulotta of the FBI and Jennifer Shasky Calvery of the DAG's Office at a hearing on Wednesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).
The Inspector General audit report issued in October found that the FBI and the ATF management of their coordinated efforts was ineffective.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Fine reported that conflicts over which agency should lead investigations continue to occur even though the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was transferred from the Treasury Department in 2003.
According to the report, 33 percent of ATF specialists and 40 percent of FBI bomb technicians who responded to the Inspector General’s survey reported having disputes with their counterparts at explosives incidents in fiscal years 2007 and 2008.
Jennifer Shasky Calvery, senior counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, told the committee that the Justice Department had already implemented several of Fine’s recommendations and had formed working groups to resolve the issues raised in the report.
Fine and other DOJ officials also testified on a separate Inspector General report, also issued in October, on the FBI’s foreign language translation program.
Jennifer Shasky Calvery, senior counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, testifies before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on Wednesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).
That report found that the FBI lacks a consolidated, accurate collection and statistical reporting evaluation system for the foreign language material it collects. It also found that the FBI continues to have significant amounts of unreviewed audio and electronic files it collected for its counterterrorism, counterintelligence and criminal investigations between fiscal year 2006 and 2008.
Margaret Gulotta , section chief of the Language Services Section of the FBI, said that the FBI continues to struggle to find qualified staff for the section.
The audit found that the number of linguists performing translations for the FBI has decreased from 1,388 in March 2005 to 1,298 in Sept. 2008, and that the FBI had not reached its hiring goals.
The audit found that it took the FBI approximately 19 months to hire a contract linguist, an increase from the 16 month period it took in 2005. Fine said that one of the reasons that it was so difficult for the FBI to add staff was because it is currently taking 14 months to complete a background investigation.
“You don’t think terrorists would be willing to wait fourteen months if they know we’ve got this problem?” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), ranking member of the subcommittee. “They don’t wait fourteen months, they take advantage of our weaknesses.”
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said the panel would discuss the Inspector General report regarding the FBI’s use of informal requests for phone records at an upcoming hearing.
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The leader of the New Black Panther Party skipped a deposition scheduled for this morning by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Main Justice has learned.
A commission hearing on the Justice Department’s handling of the case against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, including party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz, is scheduled for Feb. 12. Today’s deposition was intended to allow the commission to gather more information about the case, which centers around a politically controversial incident at a polling place in Philadelphia on Nov. 4, 2008.
Malik Z. Shabazz
A government lawsuit filed in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration in January 2009 alleged that two Black Panthers intimidated voters at the polling place by standing outside its entrance in military-style garb, one of them holding a night stick. Shabazz wasn’t present at the Philadelphia polling place, but he was named a defendant by virtue of his position as head of the Washington, D.C.-based black power fringe group.
When the Black Panthers last year failed to respond to the lawsuit, a career DOJ attorney named Loretta King, who was then acting head of the Civil Rights Division, recommended dismissing most of the case. Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, an Obama administration political appointee, approved her recommendation.
Outraged Republicans have asked the DOJ’s internal ethics watchdog to investigate whether politics played a role in the dismissal. The Justice Department, however, has said the lawsuit was dismissed because it didn’t rise to the level of a coordinated voter intimidation campaign and there were questions about suing people in part based on their clothing. The government did obtain an injunction against the Black Panther who’d held the night stick.
David Blackwood, counsel to the commission, wrote a letter today to Shabazz noting the commission had received no communication from him, despite issuing a subpoena for his testimony on Jan. 22 and writing him a follow-up letter on Jan. 25.
Starting at 10 a.m. Tuesday, commission staffers sat around for 25 minutes waiting for Shabazz to appear, according to Blackwood’s letter. He added that unless the commission received communication with him before Feb. 4, the matter would be referred to the Justice Department for enforcement and sanctions.
The conservative-dominated Civil Rights Commission intends to make the incident the focus of its annual enforcement report for 2010. Last year’s report focused more broadly on the issue of the mortgage crisis. In recent meetings, Democratic Commissioner Michael Yaki has denounced the conservative majority for focusing on the Black Panther matter. Yaki has sought to broaden the scope of the 2010 enforcement report, which Commissioner Todd Gaziano titled “Implications of DOJ’s Actions in the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) Litigation for Enforcement of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act.”
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hopes to release a list of witnesses scheduled for the Feb. 12 hearing on the handling of the case in the upcoming days, said commission spokesperson Lenore Ostrowsky.
No representatives of the Justice Department are expected to attend, but the Republican poll watchers who complained may, according to a person familiar with the commission’s plan. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has requested and been granted time to speak during the commission’s upcoming meeting.
OPR now conducting full investigation, IG says
Separately today, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine replied to a letter from Wolf which requested an investigation into whether the politics affected the division’s handling of the case.
Fine wrote that he “has advocated changing the [Office of the Inspector General's] jurisdiction to allow us to investigate all matters within the Department, including matters such as this one that involve Department attorneys’ exercise of their legal duties. Unfortunately, unlike all other [Office of the Inspector Generals] which have unlimited jurisdiction to investigate all allegations of waste, fraud, or abuse within their agencies, the Department of Justice [Office of the Inspector General] does not.”
Fine wrote that Office of Professional Responsibility had told his office it was “in the midst of its investigation – which is a full investigation, not a preliminary investigation or inquiry.” It intends to share the results of its investigation with Congress, according to Fine’s letter. Previously OPR had only said it was conducting a more limited preliminary “inquiry” into the matter, according to documents released last summer by House Republicans.
Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Ron Weich also wrote Wolf today regarding his concern that the Office for Professional Responsibility could not conduct an “unbias and independent review” of the matter. “We believe that such a charge is groundless,” Weich said.
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Restoring confidence in the Justice Department remains a major challenge for the Obama administration, according to a report by the agency’s watchdog.
The Office of the Inspector General’s semiannual report, released Tuesday, said the department had taken measures to prevent politicized personnel decisions that plagued the Bush administration, but that the botched prosecution of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens “created concern about the prosecutors’ adherence to professional standards of conduct.”
Stevens was prosecuted during the Bush administration, but Attorney General Eric Holder moved to dismiss the indictment in April, after an internal review of the case uncovered instances in which prosecutors improperly withheld material favorable to Stevens’ defense. A court-appointed counsel is investigating whether they did so intentionally. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator, was convicted of lying on his Senate disclosure forms and lost his re-election bid in 2008.
“Restoring confidence in Justice Department” was first ranked as a management and performance challenge in 2007, amid investigations into the purge of U.S. Attorneys and other instances of politically tinged personnel decisions. At the time, it ranked as the No. 2 challenge, behind counter-terrorism. In 2008, it fell to No. 5 on the priority list.
The 2009 report released Tuesday hoisted “restoring confidence” to the department’s No. 2 challenge — again, behind counter-terrorism — citing the Stevens case and other allegations of prosecutorial misconduct by federal judges.
“The department needs to ensure that the diligence, hard work, and sound ethics of the overwhelming majority of department employees are not undermined by the few but highly visible incidents of potential misconduct,” the report said. “While the department’s leadership, both at the end of the past administration and during this administration, has taken important steps to confront this challenge, it must remain focused on this critical issue.”
The report noted that the Justice Department has announced a series of reforms in the wake of the Stevens case, including a new training program for prosecutors and a position at Main Justice dedicated to overseeing the efforts.
And while the report was largely complimentary of efforts to depoliticize hiring practices, it said the department had failed to clarify policies on the use of political or ideological affiliations in selecting career attorneys.
Many of the challenges from the 2008 list remain, but the Office of the Inspector General dropped “violent crime” and “cybercrime” from the list and added “Recovery Act funding” and “financial crimes.”
The Obama administration recently unveiled an interagency task force to target financial crimes that played a role in the financial crisis and try to deter future fraud. It replaced the Corporate Fraud Task Force, which President George W. Bush established in 2002 to restore investor confidence following revelations of criminal wrongdoing in America’s boardrooms.
See the full list of challenges from 2008 and 2009 below, and click here for a more detailed look at each of them.
- Counterterrorism
- Restoring Confidence in the Department of Justice
- Recovery Act Funding and Oversight
- Civil Rights and Civil Liberties:
- Financial Crimes
- Sharing of Intelligence and Law Enforcement Information
- Grant Management
- Detention and Incarceration
- Information Technology Systems Planning, Implementation, and Security
- Financial Management and Systems
- Counterterrorism
- Sharing of Intelligence and Law Enforcement Information
- Information Technology Systems Planning, Implementation, and Security
- Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
- Restoring Confidence in the Department of Justice
- Violent Crime
- Cybercrime
- Grant Management
- Detention and Incarceration
- Financial Management and Systems
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Paul Martin, a veteran of the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, was confirmed as NASA’s top watchdog on Friday.
Martin, who was approved by voice vote, joined the Justice Department in 1998, as Special Counsel to the Inspector General. In 2001, Martin became Counselor to the IG. He’s served as Deputy in the office since 2003.
Prior to his work at OIG, he spent 13 years at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an agency he helped establish. He served in various roles, including Deputy Staff Director.
Martin (Penn State, Georgetown Law), began his career as an investigative reporter at The Greenville News in Greenville, S.C.
NASA has been without a Senate-confirmed inspector general for more than six months.
serious crime. He does so in five ways
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The Justice Department’s Inspector General investigated two DOJ officials in connection with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, but they were never charged, according to court papers filed Wednesday night.
The disclosure came in a government sentencing memorandum for Robert Coughlin II, a former lawyer in the Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison and deputy chief of staff in the Criminal Division. Coughlin, the only DOJ official to be charged in the influence-peddling probe, pleaded guilty in April 2008 to a conflict of interest charge. Coughlin is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 24.
The memo does not name the other two DOJ officials, but it notes that the investigations are closed. The sentencing memo seems to put to rest questions about whether any other Justice officials, past or current, could face prosecution in the Abramoff probe.
The memo notes Coughlin’s help to prosecutors in probing other aspects of the case, but points out that he was “minimal assistance” in its investigation of former Abramoff associate Kevin Ring. Still, the Justice Department is crediting him for his earlier help. Coughlin faces up to six months in prison — but that’s unlikely, given his assistance and the treatment received by the majority of the other 17 officials convicted in the probe.
Federal prosecutors had planned to use Coughlin as a witness in the trial of Ring, who gave him more than $4,000 in meals and tickets to concerts and sporting events. Prosecutors say Coughlin helped Ring achieve lobbying victories, giving him inside information and setting up meetings with officials in return for a stream of gifts.
Days before he was to testify, Coughlin told prosecutors during a mock cross-examination that he felt he was unfairly targeted by the Justice Department and that “the things of value Mr. Ring gave him did not influence his official actions,” according to court papers.
Prosecutors dropped Coughlin from the witness list and “had to scramble on the eve of the trial to find other witnesses who could fully and accurately describe Ring’s efforts to corruptly influence and reward DOJ officials,” the memo says. (Ring’s case ended last month in a mistrial. Prosecutors have said they will bring the case again.)
Before Coughlin’s revelation during trial preparation, he had submitted to eight interviews with various agents.
According to prosecutors:
Coughlin was interviewed by DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) agents regarding other DOJ officials. He was also interviewed by an FBI agent regarding the broader Abramoff investigation. And he was interviewed by a DOJ Inspector General agent regarding allegations of politicized hiring at DOJ. The bulk of these interviews required him to travel to Washington, D.C., and to stay overnight. These interviews were of some use in closing the OIG’s investigations of two DOJ officials, and in completing the investigation of allegations of politicized hiring at the DOJ.
During the Ring trial, David Ayres, the chief of staff to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying.
Ring’s lawyers wanted to question Ayres about a $16.3 million grant the Justice Department awarded to one of Ring’s tribal clients in 2002 and college basketball tickets he and his wife received from the lobbyist.
Prosecutors said Ring intended to cultivate Ayres, who is now CEO of Ashcroft’s consulting firm, with the tickets in return for future favors.
The government alleged that in January 2002 Ayres helped Ring secure the grant for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, overruling then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tracy Henke, who thought the $16.3 million figure, to be used for a new jail, was too much.
Ring’s defense lawyers said they could show that Ayres did not make the decision to award the grant.
