Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[The Bush Reich bastards just don't give up.]

LA Times - Oct 12, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-
cia12oct12,0,2473391.story?coll=la-home-center

CIA Investigates Conduct of Its Inspector General

The internal inquiry is prompted by senior agency officials who say
they were criticized unfairly in the watchdog's reports on secret
overseas prisons.

By Greg Miller

Washington - CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has mounted a highly
unusual challenge to the agency's chief watchdog, ordering an internal
investigation of an inspector general who has issued a series of
scathing reports sharply critical of top CIA officials, according to
government officials familiar with the matter.

The move has prompted concerns that Hayden is seeking to rein in an
inspector general who has used the office to bring harsh scrutiny of
CIA figures from former Director George J. Tenet to undercover
operatives running secret overseas prison sites.

The probe is focused on the conduct of CIA Inspector General John L.
Helgerson and his office. Officials said it is aimed in particular at
evaluating whether his office was fair and impartial in its scrutiny of
the agency's terrorist detention and interrogation programs. But
officials said the probe also spans other subjects and has expanded
since it was launched several months ago.

U.S. intelligence officials who are concerned about the inquiry said it
is unprecedented and could threaten the independence of the inspector
general position. The probe "could at least lead to appearances he's
trying to interfere with the IG, or intimidate the IG, or get the IG to
back off," said a U.S. official familiar with the probe.

Frederick P. Hitz, who served as the CIA's inspector general from 1990
to 1998, said the move would be perceived as an effort by Hayden "to
call off the dogs."

"What it would lead to is an undercutting of the inspector general's
authority and his ability to investigate allegations of wrongdoing,"
Hitz said. "The rank and file will become aware of it and it will
undercut the inspector general's ability to get the truth from them."

But other officials described the probe as a chance to turn the tables
on an inspector general who has been accused by some of his targets of
treating career officers unfairly and letting personal biases undermine
his objectivity.

"There is across-the-board distrust with the IG function and disrespect
for Helgerson, who many believe has a personal agenda on issues," said
a former high-ranking CIA official who, like others interviewed, spoke
on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the
inspector general's work. Helgerson, the former official said, "always
went in with a presumption of guilt."

Helgerson oversees a large staff of investigators whose activities
include everything from detailed examinations of highly classified
programs to routine audits of mundane agency functions. He has served
as inspector general at the CIA since 2002.

The CIA probe comes at a time when the powers of inspectors general in
agencies throughout the federal government are under renewed debate.
Earlier this month, the Bush administration threatened to veto a House
bill that would strengthen the independence of inspectors general by
giving them seven-year terms and permit the White House to fire them
only for cause.

Hayden, an Air Force general who became CIA director last year, has not
been involved in any publicly known clashes with Helgerson. But Hayden
has been a staunch defender of the Bush administration's
counterterrorism programs, and has lamented publicly what he describes
as a tendency by outside observers and critics to second-guess the
activities of the nation's intelligence agencies.

In response to questions about the unusual arrangement, CIA spokesman
George Little said that Hayden "firmly believes that the work of the
Office of Inspector General is critical to the entire agency, and,
since taking the helm at CIA, he has accepted the vast majority of its
findings." However, Hayden's goal is to "help the office do even
better," Little said.

The CIA's review is being led by Robert Deitz, an attorney with
long-standing ties to Hayden who was brought in to serve as a senior
counselor to the director. Deitz, who served as general counsel at the
National Security Agency when Hayden was director there in the 1990s,
has assembled a small team of investigators to conduct the probe.

Little, the CIA spokesman, said Deitz came to the post with "an
absolute belief in the value of an independent, rigorous Office of
Inspector General."

The inquiry has been driven in large part by senior operations officers
who have complained to Hayden that they were unfairly criticized by
Helgerson in classified reviews of the CIA's secret prisons programs.

The probe is set up to examine "how those people were treated, how the
investigations were conducted," said an official familiar with the
probe.

The official declined to discuss the conclusions of those IG
investigations, which are classified, but said that "the people who are
upset didn't think they were glowing reviews."

Among the issues being explored are whether agency officers were given
adequate opportunity to defend their actions, and whether the inspector
general's conclusions accurately represented their roles.

Officials declined to provide names of the CIA officers behind the
complaint. One former official said, "We're talking about undercover
people at mid- to senior-grade ranks."

The CIA created a network of secret overseas prisons shortly after the
Sept. 11 attacks, and has faced severe international criticism for
employing harsh interrogation tactics as well as a program known as
"extraordinary rendition," in which prisoners have been transferred to
countries known to use torture.

To date, officials said, the probe has largely involved gathering
information and statements from CIA officers who came under scrutiny in
Helgerson's review.

But officials expressed concern that the probe will also involve
reviewing the inspector general's files. Such a step could have a
dramatically chilling effect, officials said, making agency employees
reluctant to cooperate with future investigations for fear that their
involvement and the information they provide would be exposed.

The focus on the prison program represents an expansion of a probe that
officials said began several months ago into the relationship between
Helgerson's office and that of the CIA general counsel.

Officials said that Hayden was concerned about friction between the two
offices, and tapped Deitz to explore the matter. The nature of the
friction was unclear, but involved complaints that Helgerson had
overstepped his role by offering legal opinions on agency programs.

One former high-ranking CIA official said that Helgerson has not shied
away from taking positions in heated internal policy debates. The
former official recalled attending staff meetings in which Helgerson
expressed opposition to agency involvement in handling detainees as
part of the war on terrorism.

A career CIA officer who holds degrees in political science, Helgerson
had previously served as chief of the agency's analytic branch as well
as head of the National Intelligence Council, which produces
authoritative reports on key national security issues.

Helgerson has become an unusually high-profile occupant of the position
largely because his tenure has coincided with a series of historic
intelligence blunders.

An examination of failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks was
sharply critical of Tenet and other senior CIA officials, saying they
"did not discharge their duties in a satisfactory manner," and calling
for the creation of special in-house panels to determine whether they
should be reprimanded.

The CIA had fought to keep that report secret. But Hayden reluctantly
released the report's key findings in August after Congress passed
legislation requiring the CIA to declassify the document's executive
summary. The conclusions were denounced by many targets of the probe,
including Tenet, who issued a statement saying, "The IG is flat wrong."

The tone of the report also angered officials who were not singled out
for criticism. Robert Richer, who was the assistant deputy director for
operations at the CIA before retiring in 2005, said that shortly before
he left the agency, he sent a memo to then-director Porter J. Goss
requesting that the IG be reviewed for his impartiality.

"The basis of it was the 9-11 report," Richer said in an interview,
referring to Helgerson's examination of Sept. 11-related failures. Goss
did not act on that request, and it is unclear whether it played any
role in Hayden's decision to initiate a review of Helgerson's conduct.

Because of its role, the inspector general's office is viewed with
distrust and suspicion by other parts of the agency, particularly case
officers who operate overseas and "feel they're being investigated by
people who don't fully understand their business," said one former CIA
official.

Helgerson's office has also been accused of leaks to the press. Goss in
2006 fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy, who worked in the inspector
general's office, after she was accused of inappropriate contacts with
journalists, including with a Washington Post reporter who wrote
articles about the CIA's secret overseas prisons.

The relationship between the CIA director and the inspector general is
complicated. The law creating the watchdog position specifies that the
IG "shall report directly to and be under the general supervision of
the director." The law also makes clear that the CIA director can
ignore recommendations from an IG and even prohibit him from initiating
investigations.

But Hitz, the former CIA inspector general, and others said the
position has traditionally operated with a great deal of autonomy, and
that there are other mechanisms for holding an inspector general
accountable. In particular, a 1992 executive order established what is
known as the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency and gave
it authority to evaluate the work of inspectors general in agencies
across the government.

"I don't think it's appropriate for the IG to be in an offline way
investigated by his superior," said Hitz. "If the director has a
problem with the way the IG is performing his job, he can go to the
Congress, to the president's intelligence oversight board, or he can go
to the president himself."

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