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RECOMMENDATIONS AND REFORMS FROM THE 

INSPECTORS GENERAL 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

November 15, 2017 

Serial No. 115–50 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://oversight.house.gov 


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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

Trey Gowdy, South Carolina, Chairman 

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee 

Darrell E. Issa, California 

Jim Jordan, Ohio 

Mark Sanford, South Carolina 

Justin Amash, Michigan 

Paul A. Gosar, Arizona 

Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee 

Blake Farenthold, Texas 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

Thomas Massie, Kentucky 

Mark Meadows, North Carolina 

Ron DeSantis, Florida 

Dennis A. Ross, Florida 

Mark Walker, North Carolina 

Rod Blum, Iowa 

Jody B. Hice, Georgia 

Steve Russell, Oklahoma 

Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin 

Will Hurd, Texas 

Gary J. Palmer, Alabama 

James Comer, Kentucky 

Paul Mitchell, Michigan 

Greg Gianforte, Montana 

Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

Carolyn B. Maloney, New York 

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Columbia 

Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri 

Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts 

Jim Cooper, Tennessee 

Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia 

Robin L. Kelly, Illinois 

Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan 

Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey 

Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands 

Val Butler Demings, Florida 

Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois 

Jamie Raskin, Maryland 

Peter Welch, Vermont 

Matt Cartwright, Pennsylvania 

Mark DeSaulnier, California 

Jimmy Gomez, Maryland 

SHERIA CLARKE, Staff Director 

WILLIAM MCKENNA General Counsel 

JULIE DUNNE, Government Operations Subcommittee Staff Director 

DREW BANEY, Professional Staff Member 

SHARON CASEY, Deputy Chief Clerk 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on November 15, 2017 ...................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

The Hon. Michael E. Horowitz, Chair, Council of the Inspectors General 

on Integrity and Efficiency, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 5 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 7 

The Hon. Kathy A. Buller, Executive Chair, Legislation Committee, Council 

of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, Inspector General, 

Peace Corps 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

The Hon. John Roth, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Homeland Security 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 23 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 25 

APPENDIX 

Response from Mr. Horowitz, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, 

to Questions for the Record ................................................................................. 62 


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RECOMMENDATIONS AND REFORMS FROM 

THE INSPECTORS GENERAL 

Wednesday, November 15, 2017 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:15 a.m., in Room 

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Trey Gowdy [chairman 

of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Gowdy, Duncan, Jordan, Amash, Gosar, 

DesJarlais, Massie, Meadows, Walker, Blum, Hice, Russell, 

Grothman, Hurd, Palmer, Comer, Mitchell, Cummings, Maloney, 

Norton, Clay, Lynch, Cooper, Connolly, Kelly, Lawrence, Watson 

Coleman, Demings, Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Welch, DeSaulnier, 

and Gomez. 

Chairman GOWDY. The committee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. I 

will recognize myself for an opening statement, then my friend 

from Maryland, and then we’ll recognize the witnesses. 

When defending against waste, fraud, and abuse, Inspectors 

General play a critical role within our Federal agencies. While congressional oversight is essential, the 73 inspectors general best understand their agency issues and can clearly identify areas in need 

of reform. In fiscal year 2015, IGs saved taxpayers roughly $37 billion on the total budget of $2.7 billion, which is a tremendous return on every dollar given to the IGs. 

In December 2016, the Inspectors General Empowerment Act 

was signed into law with bipartisan support. That was an effort 

lead by the ranking member, Mr. Cummings, and the gentleman 

from North Carolina, Mr. Mark Meadows. Designed to support and 

strengthen IG independence, the IG Empowerment Act ensures 

Federal investigators have full and prompt access to all agency documents needed for the investigatory process. 

In addition, the Act streamlines investigative procedures, improves transparency by instituting new reporting requirements and 

increases efficiency to IG operations. 

While the Act implemented much-needed reforms, the IG community still has legislative priorities which could strengthen oversight of Federal programs and resolve challenges facing the inspector general community. The IG community is also currently facing 

the challenge of filling IG vacancies. Of the 73 IGs across the Federal Government, 14 positions remain vacant because either no 

nominee has been appointed, or the appointed nominee still awaits 

Senate confirmation. For example, the Department of the Interior 


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has not appointed a permanent IG since 2009. Still, no nomination 

has been made to fill the position. In case of the National Security 

Agency, which has been without a permanent leader since May 

31st of 2016, it’s been 147 days since this administration announced a nominee on June 19, 2017. The administration has 

worked toward filling the vacancies by announcing an intent to 

nominate or officially nominate individuals to fill vacancies, but 

these nominees still required a confirmation process. 

When a vacancy occurs in an IG office, the agency head appoints 

an acting AG. These appointed, often perform excellent work, but 

they are inherently less independent and less effective than one 

who is Senate confirmed. While the Senate and administration are 

the key players in insuring timely nominations and confirmations, 

the House will work with them to help speed appointments, however and wherever we can. The work of our inspectors general is 

too important for temporary leadership in the investigatory process. 

In order to ensure successful investigations, Federal investigators must have access to information. Too often, IGs perform excellent oversight work, but they can’t do it fully if an individual retires or resigns and removes them from the IG’s jurisdiction. This 

leads to incomplete audits, incomplete investigations, or, in some 

instances, closed investigations. 

One solution is to grant IGs testimonial subpoena authority. This 

would allow an IG to subpoena witnesses as necessary when performing the functions of the IG Act. Leaving office would no longer 

allow a Federal employee to avoid testifying about potential misconduct, or, frankly, any fact pattern. 

We look forward to working with our colleagues in the minority 

and the Senate to create a solution to grant IGs testimonial subpoena authority. I thank our witnesses again for your service to our 

country and for your appearance today. 

With that, I would recognize the gentleman from Maryland. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank 

you for calling this hearing. Inspectors general serve a critical role 

by providing an independent check on the executive branch. They 

investigate waste, fraud, abuse and they provide recommendations 

to improve agency performance. I want to thank each of the IGs 

who is testifying here today. And I want to thank all of the IGs 

who do a phenomenal job in the various agencies. 

The work that you and your staff members do is more important 

now than ever. The Oversight Committee is the primary investigative body in the House, and we rely tremendously on IGs in conducting our own oversight work. 

Let me address one key example: In 2015, this committee 

launched a bipartisan investigation, following revelations by John 

Roth, who is present with us today, the IG at the Department of 

Homeland Security. Mr. Roth identified grave concerns about security deficiencies in our Nation’s airports. As part of our investigation, our committee heard from numerous whistleblowers who 

bravely reported security problems at airports, management challenges faced by the Transportation Security Administration. Some 

of those individuals allege that TSA retaliated against them for 

making those disclosures. 


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In March, Carolyn Lerner, who was serving as a special counsel, 

testified before our committee that TSA was refusing to provide information about whistleblower cases. She also testified that TSA 

was impairing the ability of the special counsel to fully investigate 

those cases. 

On March 6, 2017, our former chairman, Jason Chaffetz, sent a 

letter to TSA requesting the information that TSA was withholding. The acting general counsel at DHS responded that the 

agency, ‘‘Objects to the demand,’’ end of quote, that it provides 

these documents to the committee. 

So on March 17, 2017, the committee issued a subpoena for these 

documents, but DHS—listen to this, DHS still refused to turn over 

the documents. On March 31st, 2017, the acting general counsel 

sent a letter to the committee writing that the agency is, and I 

quote, ‘‘not in a position to produce those documents at this time.’’ 

That was in March. 

To address this refusal, Chairman Chaffetz and I joined together 

in sending a bipartisan letter to the acting administrator of TSA 

warning that, ‘‘Failure to comply with a congressional subpoena 

may result in serious consequences for you,’’ end of quote. We also 

requested transcribed interviews with three TSA employees, the 

deputy administrator, and acting assistant administrator and the 

chief counsel. None of these witnesses voluntarily complied with 

our request, which we made in May. 

In the meantime, Mr. Roth has continued in his oversight work, 

and he has issued two classified reports in recent weeks with critical warnings that many security problems remain unresolved. Listen up, listen up, I’ve often said that if we find out about our problems with Members of Congress, and then we fail to act on them, 

when we have been given the authority by the American people, 

then we become a part of the problem. 

So I appreciate that the chairman, Chairman Gowdy, agreed to 

join me in sending a letter to TSA to request the documents related 

to the IGs’ findings. But that request has nothing to do with the 

documents that we are being—that are being withheld about the 

whistleblowers. We must also take action to compel TSA to comply 

with the committee’s subpoena, which TSA has been defying for 8 

months. 

Yesterday, I sent a letter to Chairman Gowdy laying all of this 

out and requesting the committee enforce its subpoena for these 

documents. I also requested deposition subpoenas for the three 

TSA officials who have refused, refused, refused to participate in 

transcribed interviews. These are issues my staff have been raising 

for several weeks, if not months. 

Here’s the bottom line: I do not believe that we can afford to 

wait. The security of air travel is not a partisan issue. Every person who flies on an airplane, works in an airport, or drives to the 

airport to pick up a family member wants to know that they will 

be safe. God forbid if something terrible were to happen, I want to 

know that we did everything, everything single thing in our power 

to conduct vigorous oversight to protect the American people. That 

is what we are sworn to do. 

And in addition to that, if we do not protect these whistleblowers, if we let the agency defy the subpoena, and we allow the 


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agency to flout our interview requests, that will have a negative 

impact on whistleblowers across the board. And all of us know in 

this committee that a lot of our work and a lot of the waste, fraud, 

and abuse that we’ve been able to discover have been because people have sat at that table, many times with tears in their eyes, 

trembling, they simply wanted their government to work properly, 

but they came forward bravely to offer evidence so that we could 

do our jobs. So, it will act as a deterrent to anyone who is thinking 

about coming forward to report dangerous security failures or anything else, and that, in turn, will damage our oversight efforts in 

the operations of our government. 

And with that, I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman GOWDY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, for all these reasons pursuant to 

House rule 11, clause 2(k)(6), I hereby move to subpoena TSA officials Huban Gowadia, Francine Kerner, and Steven Cohen to appear before this committee. And it is public knowledge, Mr. Chairman, that these folks allegedly were a part of the retaliation. That 

is my motion. 

Chairman GOWDY. Well, I want to thank my friend from Maryland for a couple of things. Number one, for the passion with which 

he spoke on this issue. I’ve heard you do it before and I know you 

mean every syllable of what you said. We should not have to resort 

to compulsory process to gain access to documents or witnesses, but 

I want every agency that’s paying attention to know that we will. 

And you have my commitment—we are in one accord, you have my 

commitment Mr. Cummings that when you and I see each other in 

Baltimore, we’re either going to have a date or a voluntary interview, or we’re going to have a date for an involuntary interview, 

but we’re going to have a date with an interview, to either gain access to the information or have a much better understanding of the 

legal basis by which this committee is being denied the information. You have my commitment on that. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. With that, Mr. Chairman, let me be clear so that 

everybody in the room knows when he says ‘‘in Baltimore,’’ he’s not 

coming for a walk in the park, although, I’d like for him to come 

to my city to do that, we have a—that’s our next hearing, members 

of the committee. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I take your word. I want to thank you 

for working with me and trying to resolve this issue. Mr. Chairman, I—it is embedded in the DNA of my brain, watching people 

tremble at that table, trying to share their views and knowing that 

they are—that they could be harmed. And so with that, I withdraw 

my motion and I look forward to what we have on the 28th. Thank 

you. 

Chairman GOWDY. Well, they have a powerful persuasive advocate in you. And we are in one accord on this and I appreciate you 

working with me on it. 

With that, all of us would welcome our witnesses, I will introduce 

you en bloc, and then recognize you individually for your 5-minute 

opening. 

From my left to right we are pleased to have The Honorable Michael Horowitz, Chair of the Council on Inspector General on IntegVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 May 22, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\28508.TXT APRIL

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rity and Efficiency, and Inspector General at the U.S. Department 

of Justice; The Honorable Kathy Buller, Executive Chair of Legislative Committee on the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, and Inspector General at the Peace Corps; and 

The Honorable John Roth, Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Welcome to all of you. 

And with that, IG Horowitz, you are recognized. 

WITNESS STATEMENTS 

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL E. HOROWITZ 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Cummings, Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me 

to testify today. The IG community appreciates this committee’s 

steadfast bipartisan support, including your efforts last year to get 

the IG Empowerment Act adopted. 

Because of our statutory independence, IGs are uniquely positioned to identify waste, fraud, and abuse. As the chairman indicated in fiscal year 2016, the IG community identified potential 

cost savings of over $45 billion, compared to our community’s budgets combined of about $2.7 billion, that represents about a $17 return on investment. 

In addition, IG investigations resulted in almost 5,000 successful 

criminal prosecutions, over 1,500 civil actions, over 6,000 suspensions and debarments, and over 4,000 personnel actions. And I am 

pleased to report that for the first time, all public IG reports can 

be found in one place at a website that the Council of IGs launched 

on October 1st called oversight.gov. 

We also launched on that date our first ever Twitter account at 

oversight.gov. We hope that everyone who is interested and cares 

about our work in the IG community visits oversight.gov and follows us on Twitter. 

The passage of the IG Empowerment Act greatly enhanced our 

ability to conduct independent oversight. The Act made it clear 

that IGs must be given unimpeded and timely access to all agency 

records. And since the passage of the Act, I am not aware of any 

IG office facing a legal impediment to IG access. However, there remain concerns by several IGs about the timeliness of our access to 

information. Foot dragging by agencies delays our work, impacting 

our ability to identify important issues that could save the taxpayers significant amounts of money, and it’s wholly unacceptable. 

CIGIE will continue to work on these issues and we appreciate the 

continued support of this committee in those efforts. 

The IG Empowerment Act also granted IGs an important tool in 

our fight in improper and duplicative payments, an exemption from 

the Computer Matching Act. I can report to you that the IG community this year has been moving forward to use this new tool in 

appropriate and effective ways, and I expect it will demonstrate 

real results because of your giving us that authority. 

As IG Buller will outline, we believe that some additional authorities would further enhance our ability to be identify wasteful 

and improper spending. One example is testimonial subpoena authority, as the chairman mentioned. One—my office continues to 

face issues with regard to getting access to information and testiVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 May 22, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\28508.TXT APRIL

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mony from former DOJ employees in our investigations, audits and 

reviews, including in recent whistleblower retaliation matters and 

sexual harassment claims. Having subpoena—testimonial subpoena 

authority would allow us to obtain that critical evidence. 

Another area of potential concern to the IG community, which IG 

Roth will discuss, is the impact that flat or declining budgets would 

have on our ability to conduct the kind of oversight that the public 

expects from us. Given our track record of returning to the Federal 

Treasury far more money than we are budgeted, and our important 

role in public safety in national security matters, we believe careful 

consideration should be given before impacting our budgets. 

Finally, I’d like to briefly mention an issue that affects my office 

in particular. Unlike IGs throughout the Federal Government, the 

DOJ OIG does not have authority to investigate allegations of misconduct by all DOJ employees. While we have jurisdiction to review 

misconduct by agents and nonlawyers in the Department, the IG 

Act does not give us that same authority of the Department prosecutors when they act in the capacity as lawyers. In those instances, the IG Act grants exclusive investigative authority to the 

DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility. There’s no principled 

reason why FBI misconduct is investigated by a statutorily independent IG, while prosecutorial misconduct is overseen by a DOJ 

component head appointed to the Department’s leadership. I want 

to thank Congressman Hice for cosponsoring a bill with Congressman Richmond and Congressman Conyers that would fix that issue 

and address that anomaly. 

This concludes my prepared statement, I would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Horowitz follows:] 


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Chairman GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. 

IG Buller. 

STATEMENT OF HON. KATHY A. BULLER 

Ms. BULLER. Chairman Gowdy, Ranking Member Cummings, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to 

appear before you today and discuss the work of the inspectors general to promote integrity and efficiency. 

As both the inspector general for the Peace Corps and the chairs 

of legislation committee for the Council of Inspectors General on 

Integrity and Efficiency, my testimony today underscores our appreciation for the bipartisan support we’ve received from this committee and from Congress. 

For almost 40 years, IGs have helped hold Federal agencies accountable, protected whistleblowers, exposed corruption and mismanagement, and helped Congress make informed decisions about 

the agencies within their purview. 

This work is made easier thanks to the Inspectors General Empowerment Act, which reaffirms a fundamental authority under the 

Inspector General Act of 1978 that ‘‘all’’ means ‘‘all,’’ that IGs may 

access all materials and documents necessary for our oversight 

work. 

Thanks to the bipartisan efforts of this committee and its staff, 

the passage of the Inspectors General Empowerment Act restores 

what Congress intended. IGs must have timely access to all of the 

materials and documents necessary to oversee their agencies. 

At the Peace Corps, I am pleased to report that the IG Empowerment Act has restored critical access that allows us to oversee the 

Peace Corps’ response to sexual assaults. This helps to ensure volunteers who experience sexual assault receive the care and services 

they deserve. I’ve seen an appreciable positive change towards a 

culture of openness and cooperation. I hope this emboldens whistleblowers who are reluctant to step forward in the past. 

The IG Empowerment Act also provides the tools to ensure independence and improve our oversight authority. In particular, exemptions from the Computer Matching Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act insure IG independence and help us more efficiently 

prevent and detect fraud and conduct timely surveys without being 

subject to approval from the agencies we oversee. 

The IG council has taken steps, including creating guides and 

working groups to help IGs use these new tools thoughtfully and 

responsibly. I’m encouraged by IG initiatives to use computer 

matching, such as the one initiated by the IGs at the Department 

of Labor and VA to detect fraud in Federal benefit programs. Our 

growing capabilities will improve the data informed oversight 

sought by Congress. 

The legislation committee assists Congress as it considers legislation to improve IGs’ ability to carry out oversight of taxpayers. I 

want to briefly mention three priority items that the IG community 

has identified to further improve our ability to oversee Federal operations. First, IGs would like to work with Congress to protect information that can be used to exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities. 

Our reviews, including congressionally mandated reviews, identify 


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weaknesses in Federal IT systems. Public disclosure of this information could be a roadmap for malicious entities. While classified 

and law enforcement information is protected from public disclosure, there is no single protection that covers all IT security vulnerability information. 

Second, as other IGs have testified before, the resignation of Federal employees during the course of an audit, investigation, or review, has substantially hampered our work. Most IGs lack the ability to compel the testimony of witnesses who have information that 

cannot be obtained by any other means. This authority was unanimously supported by this committee and the House during the last 

Congress, so it was not included in the bill that became law. We 

are encouraged by this committee’s continued consideration and bipartisan support of testimonial subpoena authority for IGs. 

Finally, legislative reforms have the potential to turn the Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act from an underutilized tool into an 

effective mechanism to recover fraud expenditures. CIGIE has proposed several straightforward changes to help agencies use the Act 

in cases of small dollar fraud or qui tam-related cases where DOJ 

declines prosecution. If used to its full potential, the recoveries 

could be significant. 

The inspector general community is grateful for the steadfast bipartisan support we have received from Congress. Collaboration 

with this committee and its dedicated staff, both for the Inspector 

General Empowerment Act and other initiatives has been incredibly constructive. From our training initiative, ‘‘Meet the IGs,’’ to 

the regular technical assistance we provide, our proactive efforts to 

keep each other informed have yielded productive results for the 

taxpayer. 

We look forward to continuing to be an important resource to 

this committee and other congressional stakeholders as you pursue 

your oversight and legislative work. 

I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Buller follows:] 


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Chairman GOWDY. Thank you, IG Buller. 

IG Roth. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN ROTH 

Mr. ROTH. Chairman Gowdy, Ranking Member Cummings, and 

Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today 

to testify. 

I believe I speak for the entire OIG community in expressing my 

gratitude to the committee for its leadership and championing the 

IG Empowerment Act and the cause of vigorous and independent 

oversight. 

OIG’s reporting relationship to Congress is a key feature of the 

Inspector General Act. Inspectors general can only recommend to 

our agency, but we cannot direct our agency. Therefore, congressional oversight plays a critical role in ensuring department operations. That which gets paid attention to, simply put, gets fixed. 

Probing fact-based oversight, whether done internally by an inspector general, or externally by a congressional committee, can 

help bring about positive change. The critical and skeptical review 

of programs and operations, conducted in full view of the public, 

acts as the disinfectant of sunlight to insure improved transparency, accountability and efficiency in government. 

We appreciate that Congress, and this committee in particular, 

recognizes the value of inspectors general, and willingly steps up 

for OIGs by passing legislation that empowers us. Simply put, 

without the support of Congress and the significant independence 

and access provisions contained within the IG Act, we would be unable to our job. 

Let me give you an example: After conducting our most recent 

test, covert tests at airport security checkpoints, we identified 

vulnerabilities with the TSA screener performance, screener equipment, and associated procedures. Ultimately, we made eight recommendations in our classified report that, when implemented, 

should improve TSA’s performance in this area. 

Within weeks of our report being issued, this committee had already followed up with the Department, reaching out to the Acting 

Secretary, to determine what actions TSA is currently taking to address issues we raised in our report. 

This committee has held numerous hearings on other aspects of 

TSA’s programs and operations and have assisted in bringing senior level focus to some of those challenges. Additionally, this committee is well aware of the work we’ve previously done regarding 

Secret Service workforce issues and the oversight of this committee 

was integral in getting the Department to focus on those issues and 

change the culture there. 

Without such vigorous oversight and congressional interest in 

evaluating programs, there’s less motivation to enact difficult institutional change. Unfortunately, many OIGs, including my office, 

faced cuts in the President’s fiscal 2018 budget request. Some of 

these cuts are incremental, but some offices are cut quite drastically. These budget cuts can present an ongoing challenge for 

many in the inspector general community. The vast majority of our 

expenses are used to pay our auditors, inspectors or investigators. 


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So budget cuts have a dramatic impact on operations, particularly 

with the small IG offices. Without the resources to do the job, no 

matter how strong the provisions in the IG Act with regard to independence and access to information, and no matter how strong the 

support from this committee and others, money can always be used 

as a weapon to diminish our ability to conduct the active and independent oversight that Congress and the public deserve. 

These proposed cuts make little sense, given the contributions inspectors general make. The Brookings Institute recently issued a 

report which analyzed the financial impact on government when 

OIGs budgets are cut, and found that cuts to OIG budgets actually 

costs the government money, and contributes to the Federal deficit. 

In fact, Brookings concluded, and I quote, that ‘‘OIGs often function 

as revenue positive institution, entities that bring in more revenue 

than they cost.’’ 

And as Mr. Horowitz noted in his testimony, he said his own 

data showed a 17-to-1 ratio of money spent by OIGs to money 

saved by our recommendations. So cutting the inspectors general 

doesn’t make any sense economically. 

And that 17-to-1 figure actually understates our performance, because it does not measure improvements that result in increased 

national security and public safety. Much of our best work, audit 

inspections report that shed light on dangerous or ineffective programs, for example, don’t carry with it a cost savings, but the value 

of the American taxpayers is incalculable. 

Finally, let me permit me to publicly acknowledge the auditors, 

inspectors and investigative agents that worked not only for me at 

DHS IG, but throughout the IG community. They come to work 

every day with a mission to make our government work better, to 

be more effective and efficient, and to ensure integrity. Being an 

independent entity within the organization whose job it is to ask 

the hard questions is a tough job, but without the dedication of the 

men and women who do the work, we would not be able to point 

to the successes that we have talked about this morning. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I’m happy to answer any questions you or members of the committee may have. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Roth follows:] 


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Chairman GOWDY. Thank you, IG Roth. 

Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will be sworn before 

they actually begin to testify, so I would ask you to please rise and 

raise your right hand. 

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are 

about to give should be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but 

the truth, so help you God? 

Let the record reflect all witnesses answered in the affirmative. 

You may be seated. 

The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Meadows, is recognized. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for 

your leadership on this particular issue. Obviously, as we look at 

making sure that accountability and oversight is conducted. There 

is no group of individuals that are truly more welcome than our inspectors general. I can say that having worked with all three of 

you, this is not your first rodeo, we welcome you back. 

But Mr. Roth, as you were just mentioning, it is the men and 

women who serve within your particular agencies that deserve a 

round of applause from the American people, and quite frankly, 

from Members of Congress. What I have come to understand far 

too often is that Members of Congress normally only show up when 

there is a problem, not when things are going well. So you have 

my commitment to all three of you as you invite me and other 

members of this committee to come in to do what I would say is 

a thank you tour, thank you for a job well done. 

So Mr. Horowitz, let me come to you, because obviously with all 

the attention that has been directed at the Department of Justice 

and ongoing investigations, are you finding, because of the IG Empowerment Act, your job is a bit easier to do with regards to cooperation within DOJ? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I have heard from my entire staff, auditors, investigators, review teams, that their job has been made much easier by that. We are no longer getting the legal impediments, roadblocks thrown in our way. We occasionally have timeliness issues 

that come up that require elevating and they get fixed. But it’s 

night and day from what you and other members of this committee 

heard repeatedly over the past 5 years about our ability to get our 

jobs done. That has improved markedly. 

Mr. MEADOWS. And, so, do I have all three of your commitment 

that if you start to see those impediments, even under a new administration, that you will report back to this committee expeditiously to let us know, so that we can hopefully alleviate any of 

those hurdles? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Absolutely. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Mr. Chairman, if you could acknowledge that all 

the witnesses answered in the affirmative on that particular issue. 

Mr. Horowitz, let me come back to you, because obviously, there 

are some ongoing investigations as they relate to some of the issues 

at DOJ. In the past, we have run into not with DOJ, but we have 

run into other issues where the inspector general has said, Well, 

they didn’t want Congress doing oversight and investigations simultaneously. Based on some of the ongoing investigations that 

you are involved with, do you see if Congress embarks on a strenVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 May 22, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\28508.TXT APRIL

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uous oversight investigation, would that hamper your ability to do 

your job? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. No, we—I believe, we believe, and we’ve talked 

about this, that we would be able to move forward with our review, 

particularly, for example, our election—ongoing election review, 

that where looking forward to completing, in the not-too-distant future, and it would not impact us. And I would just point to this— 

our experience with the Fast and Furious review that we did. 

When I became IG in 2012, this committee had an ongoing and 

quite active review, and both moved forward in parallel fashions, 

and it did not impede us in any way. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So any requests for documents that this committee or members of the Judiciary Committee, since they have primary jurisdiction over DOJ, any requests for documents that they 

would make, either here in the House or in the Senate, would not 

be seen as being an impediment to your ongoing investigation at 

this particular point? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That’s right. Any documents that the Department 

has created itself, obviously we would want to have discussions before any records we had produced created in the course of this 

would be produced, but any preexisting and other records in the 

Department’s custody we would have no objection to the Department providing response to congressional requests. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well As you’re aware, there had been some requests for documents that have actually been conveyed. So outside 

of private grand jury information that you’ve received, can you see 

any reason why any of the other documents that have been shared 

with you would not be shared with either the House or the Senate? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I’m not aware of any such issues. Grand jury 

would be the obvious one. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Sure. 

Mr. Roth, let me come to you in my final 16 seconds. You have 

been hard-hitting on some of your analyses in a number of ways, 

and I’ve enjoyed reading your reports, and have read them many 

times over and over again. Do you believe, at this particular point, 

that you have the tools necessary to make sure that from a DHS 

standpoint, that we can get to the bottom of so many things that 

have plagued the agency? And do you have the necessary tools to 

be able to do that? 

Mr. ROTH. We do. I was in a somewhat different position than 

Mr. Horowitz that the culture at DHS was to provide documents. 

We’ve never had access issues. We have some timeliness issues, but 

that is a matter of ensuring that those issues get escalated to the 

right level and then they get solved. But given the IG Act and the 

IG Empowerment Act, we are in a pretty good place. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I yield back. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized. 

The gentleman from North Carolina yields back. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Very quickly, I want to clarify a comment I made earlier, Mr. 

Chairman. The subpoena that I requested earlier relates to three 

TSA officials who were either allegedly involved in retaliation, or 

involved in the decision to withhold documents regarding retaliaVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 May 22, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\28508.TXT APRIL

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tion. I didn’t want to paint a broad picture, but at least two of them 

were involved in retaliation. I just wanted to clear that up. 

Chairman GOWDY. Yes, sir. We’re in one accord. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Horowitz, in your testimony, you stated that there are currently 14 vacant IG positions, and that 12 of those are presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed positions. The President has 

not nominated a candidate for five of these positions, including the 

Departments of the Interior, Energy, Defense, Housing and Urban 

development and the Federal Election Commission. Is that right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That’s correct. Although the FEC position is an 

agency appointment, so that wouldn’t be a Presidential one. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. The Department of the Interior has been without 

a permanent IG for over 3,000 days. Mr. Horowitz, in your testimony, you stated and I quote, ‘‘A sustainable absence of permanent 

leadership is not healthy for any office, particularly one entrusted 

with the important and challenging mission of the IG.’’ Do you believe extended vacancies could affect the ability of the IG offices to 

make long-term commitments to projects? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Absolutely. And, you know, acting IGs do great 

work. My position was vacant for about 15 months, but the IGs— 

acting IGs understand that they have got to be careful on any longterm issues while there’s a vacancy. And not surprisingly, the access issues I faced, as you know, occurred during that period where 

there was no confirmed IG. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Are there any constraints on acting IGs being 

able to make decisions in the same way that a permanent IG would 

do? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There aren’t. And we at CIGIE strongly supported acting IGs to make sure they know we’ve got their back, if 

that comes up. But it’s—it means—there’s a significant difference 

between having been confirmed for a position and going through 

and knowing your staying versus filling a seat with the unknown 

of how long is that going to be and who’s going to come next. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. On April 12th, 2017, then-Oversight Committee 

chairman Jason Chaffetz and the ranking member, myself, wrote 

to President Trump asking him to nominate qualified, independent, 

individuals to fill these open spots. You said in your testimony that 

CIGIE works with the White House to recommend candidates with 

exemplary qualifications. Are you satisfied that the White House is 

considering the recommendations from CIGIE? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We’ve had a very good working relationship with 

them. In reviewing candidates, they’ve made sure we reviewed and 

interviewed and passed along our views of every candidate. So far, 

all seven candidates that have been nominated have come through. 

Our office obviously can’t speak to how the other vacancies will 

play out, but so far, it has been an open and productive dialogue. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. On my way over here this morning to the committee, a reporter asked me a very interesting question, he asked, 

what do I worry about, or am I concerned about the folks being appointed to the IG positions. And I told him, No, I’m not worried at 

all, because the people that I—every IG that I’ve ever met have 

been very honorable people, and they are going to do what is right 


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no matter what, and uphold the Constitution. And so, I don’t have 

any—any concerns about that. 

Some vacancies, of course, are pending before the Senate. Robert 

Storch, who worked for you, Mr. Horowitz, was nominated almost 

5 months ago, but his nomination still has not been approved by 

the Senate. Is that right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yeah. And I’ll make a pitch for Rob. He is still 

my deputy, National Security Agency nominee and my whistleblower ombudsman. So to your point earlier, this is someone who 

would bring to the intelligence community real experience in whistleblowing issues, which, as we know, is critically important there. 

He’s gone through three committees, three committees have approved that nomination because of the position, and he is awaiting 

confirmation on the floor. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Last question, tell us how significant the whistleblower ombudsman is, and what—and exactly what do they do? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I share your passion, Congressman, about whistleblowers and the importance of supporting them. We’ve dealt 

with them, and if anybody has any question about how important 

whistleblowers are, go to oversight.gov, type in whistleblowers in 

the search term, you’ll get all the reports that reference whistleblowers that have resulted in important reports that we’ve issued. 

There are hundreds of them. And that’s because they know the key 

information that we need. And having whistleblower ombudsmen is 

a way to further encourage people to come forward, have a comfort 

level that they are going to talk with somebody who understands, 

and cares about, and knows about the challenges they are going to 

face, and can give them information about the process, so it’s not 

mysterious, it’s not an unknown. 

And all of us in the IG community take seriously any retaliation 

against whistleblowers. So our ombudsman are involved in training 

within the community. We’ve created in CIGIE our first-ever ombudsman group that’s helping agencies with training, my own 

agency, DOJ; we have worked with the Department as well. So this 

is a very important issue for us. And we support, by the way, legislation that this committee has put forward, and you have been so 

instrumental on, it would make those positions permanent. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from Maryland yields back. 

The gentleman from North Carolina is recognized. 

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all on the 

panel for being here today as always. 

Mr. Horowitz, according to your website, your office is conducting 

an ongoing review of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s effort 

to prevent opioids from being distributed to unauthorized users. 

Can you give me an update of the status of the review and when 

will that review be complete? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, we initiated that just a couple of months 

ago, and, so, we’re in the frankly relatively early stages; we’re in 

the middle of getting documents, reviewing documents and conducting interviews. I can probably give you a better idea early in 

the year on what our timeline looks like, but our reviews roughly 

take about year or so. 


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Mr. WALKER. Okay. Any initial or early delays that you are concerned about at this point? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. No. The relationship with DEA has changed dramatically from what it was, and this committee understands, perhaps, better than anybody. 

Mr. WALKER. We are thrilled to continue hear about, to continue 

to expound on that even more in the days ahead. 

Mr. Roth, or General Roth, the DHS OIG released a management 

alert for FEMA on September 29, 2017, relating to the housing programs FEMA is implementing in Texas following Hurricane Harvey. The OIG made a point to release this management alert quickly so FEMA would still have time to heed the OIG’s recommendation. Is that correct? 

Mr. ROTH. That’s correct. 

Mr. WALKER. Has FEMA responded to that management alert or 

provided feedback in any way? 

Mr. ROTH. They have responded, and we are working with them. 

What we want to try to do is have a relationship where we can 

give—bring attention to these issues and work with them to try to 

get a solution. 

What we were worried about particularly in that situation was 

the fact that they contracted with a local State entity to provide 

housing assistance, but the contract that they used didn’t have the 

kind of measures that a typical Federal contract would have, you 

know, what is the responsibility of FEMA? What is the responsibility to the State? How do you measure performance? What happens if performance isn’t conducted, those kinds of things. So we 

were working with them to try to convince them, or to have them 

understand why it is that these things are important. 

Mr. WALKER. You are familiar with the step pilot program that 

FEMA first used after Hurricane Sandy, I would imagine. FEMA 

continues to use variations of this pilot program. They used it 

again after the flooding in Baton Rouge last year, now they are 

using it again after the hurricanes this year, but the problem, I 

guess, is they still haven’t implemented your recommendations. 

Can you speculate, or tell me why it is important? First of all, speculating why they have it, and tell me why it is important that 

FEMA does include those recommendations? 

Mr. ROTH. Yeah. This is one of the constant criticisms that we’ve 

had over time with FEMA, is the fact that every disaster seems to 

bring challenges that they had faced before, and yet had not put 

in procedures in place. FEMA is a very highly decentralized organization that’s really developed around the regional structure. So the 

procedure that was used, for example, in Miami would be different 

than the procedure that was used in Houston, as opposed to having 

sort of standardized national criteria and policies and procedures. 

And the step program really is the poster child for that. 

We first notified them that this was a high-risk pilot program 

back in 2012. They didn’t do anything. We did another audit report 

in early 2017. Again, there were issues. And then, finally, we have 

this management alert that says, you need to develop policies and 

procedures so you’re not making this up every single time. 

Mr. WALKER. So we’re now, I guess, past 5 years from your initial recommendations to FEMA. Is that correct? 


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Mr. ROTH. That’s correct. 

Mr. WALKER. Thank you. 

With that, I yield back to our chairman. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from North Carolina yields 

back. The gentlelady from New York is recognized. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Excuse me, I will be right back. 

Chairman GOWDY. Yes, Ma’am. The gentlelady from the District 

of Columbia. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate not 

only this hearing, Mr. Chairman, but all of our witnesses. 

Mr. Roth, I have questions for you because of my concern about 

Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. On a scale of 1 to 10, let us 

look at Puerto Rico first, because the distress continues there. 

What would you give the response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico 

on a scale of 1 to 10? 

Mr. ROTH. We are looking at that very issue, as is the GAO, to 

try to assess exactly how the situation has been. We haven’t come 

to any conclusions that I’m prepared to talk about at this point. 

But we have people right now on the ground asking that very question. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, because of my confidence in inspectors general, I am sure you were unaffected by the fact that the President 

has already given the Federal response a grade of 10 out of 10, 

very concerned for the future of responses, not only in places like 

Puerto Rico surrounded by water, but throughout the United 

States, that there could be a $300 million contract given to a company that had two employees. 

Mr. Roth, I have to ask you, is there anything that could flag 

that instantly so that we don’t have what we have now? What we 

have now is a contract that’s finally been withdrawn. It wasn’t 

withdrawn because of any action of this committee or the Congress 

of the United States, it was a public outcry to what continues in 

Puerto Rico. So it was—it was, indeed, withdrawn. 

Is there—I mean, once—once somebody gets a contract, I won’t 

even—because I think, in a real sense, I’d like to put aside the possible—or the conjecture about political contracts and the rest of it. 

Isn’t there anything in the government or your office to flag somebody getting a contract who has two employees, or do we have to 

wait until the public demands that that contract be withdrawn? 

Mr. ROTH. Certainly when FEMA is involved, we can tell you 

what the process is. Now my understanding with the Puerto 

Rico—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, sure, FEMA was involved. 

Mr. ROTH. Well, that’s still unclear. In fact, we’re looking at that 

specific issue, the circumstances surrounding the letting of that 

contract, and whether the Federal Government was involved in 

that. But I will tell you what we are doing in all three disaster 

areas. We are part of the joint field office. So we have auditors and 

criminal investigators who are part of the team there. And one of 

things that they do—— 

Ms. NORTON. Are they doing that—are the auditors there now? 

Mr. ROTH. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. Because I note that I have a New York Times article here that Governor Rossello has asked for a Federal investigaVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 May 22, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\28508.TXT APRIL

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tion of the contract—I’m now quoting from The New York Times— 

and for the power authority—the power and authority to appoint 

a trustee to review contract bidding. Is that the direction in which 

we’re going now with respect to Puerto Rico? 

Mr. ROTH. So what we’re doing in Puerto Rico is, again, we have 

an audit staff that’s down there. In fact, my deputy is down there 

as we speak. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, that’s very reassuring. I have one more question that I must ask you before my time runs out. There was an 

8-day delay in appointing a three-star general to go down there. I 

don’t know when there’s been a disaster as bad as Puerto Rico. 

Now, we understand that that Attorney General—that general lieutenant, General Jeffrey Buchanan, is leaving Puerto Rico, along 

with all of his military equipment. And they don’t have power in 

Puerto Rico yet. How is that justified, Mr. Roth, to be pulling the 

military who was necessary to get anything going in the first place? 

And are you looking into the withdrawal of the military after the 

delay in getting military there and the continuing crisis in Puerto 

Rico with no electricity, and people still screaming and yelling that 

they are not being treated fairly? 

Mr. ROTH. We are looking at FEMA’s response and DHS’ response—— 

Ms. NORTON. Are you looking at the withdrawal of the military? 

Mr. ROTH. To the extent that DHS was involved in that decision, 

we will—we will certainly consider it as part of our overall review. 

I would also note that GAO has announced that they are doing a 

fairly fulsome review of those very same issues. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that I believe there ought to 

be a subpoena because the White House is withholding information 

relating to the administration’s response to hurricanes in Puerto 

Rico and Virgin Islands where, there is still immense distress. If 

we can’t get it any other way, I hope we will consider a subpoena. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentlelady from the District of Columbia 

yields back. The gentleman from Alabama is recognized. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Roth, we sent a letter—we requested—to your office requesting that you produce complete case files for your office report, 

FEMA’s initial response to the 2016 catastrophic flooding in Louisiana. And we ask that you provide those materials no later than 

5:00 p.m. On July 31. Those materials were not produced. We extended that, yet I gave you a little bit longer. And you still—your 

office still hasn’t provided those. Can you tell me why you haven’t 

provided those documents? 

Mr. ROTH. Sure. The reason we haven’t provided them is that the 

audit is not complete. We issued a report with regard to the flooding in northern Louisiana. And it was pointed out that there was 

some factual discrepancies within that report. We took those very 

seriously. We took down that report because we had concerns about 

the accuracy of it. 

I instituted an entirely new audit team that was completely separate, had a different chain of command from the audit team that 

had done the original report. They are still working through those 


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issues right now, so the audit is not complete. And as a result, 

we’re not able to produce those documents. 

Mr. PALMER. When do you anticipate completing the audit and 

producing the documents? Can—— 

Mr. ROTH. I will have to give you an update on that. I don’t have 

that information in front of me. It should be a matter of months, 

because we want to do this thoroughly. We understand the concerns that were raised with regard to that report. 

Mr. PALMER. How much material are you having to go through? 

I mean—— 

Mr. ROTH. I’m sorry? 

Mr. PALMER. You’re talking about a matter of months, I mean, 

are we taking 10,000 pages, a million—why can’t we be a little bit 

more timely with it, a little bit more specific about how long it will 

take to produce those documents? 

Mr. ROTH. As I said, we’re just going to have to take a look. I 

mean, it’s simply I have to take a look and see where we are with 

regard to the process. We take it very seriously when people raise 

issues with regard to the accuracy of our reports, that’s our bread 

and butter. We want to make sure it is completely accurate before 

we release a report, or decline to release a report if we can’t salvage it. 

Mr. PALMER. I’m not satisfied with a matter of months. I want 

to know why you can’t produce an audit. Do you not have enough 

people doing the audit? What’s the hold-up? I mean—— 

Mr. ROTH. As I said—— 

Mr. PALMER. You’ve had more than 4 months, so we would—I 

don’t think it’s acceptable to say that, you know, it’s open-ended response that it will be a matter of months. When can we expect to 

get a report? 

Mr. ROTH. Well, I can’t give you a definitive answer here. I’ll go 

back to my folks and see if we can accelerate the time schedule. 

Mr. PALMER. Okay. How long with it take for a definitive answer? 

Mr. ROTH. As to a timetable? I imagine we can do that by next 

week. 

Mr. PALMER. Okay. Can we get that answer by Friday of next 

week—well, no a minute, that’s Thanksgiving. 

Mr. Chairman, what would be acceptable time? The Monday 

after Thanksgiving? 

Chairman GOWDY. If that is within the realm of possible for the 

IG, and acceptable to my friend from Alabama, we will say the 

Monday after Thanksgiving. 

Mr. PALMER. Is that good? 

Mr. ROTH. We’ll report back then. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, sir. Mr. Horowitz, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency has plans for the expansion of the oversight government.gov—oversight of oversight.gov and other related efforts. How have the IGs and agencies 

responded to that initial effort? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, certainly, the IG community has been very 

supportive and we’ve gotten that up and running. And oversight.gov was put forward and put together with no additional 

funding. We would like to and have talked with Members of ConVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 May 22, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\28508.TXT APRIL

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gress and OMB about creating an open recommendations website. 

I think that is something members across the board have asked us 

about, OMB’s interested in, they would be very valuable. Many of 

those open recommendations carry billions of dollars in cost savings. We’d like to get a whistleblower-friendly reporting web page 

up. Some of that would require some additional funding. We’ve estimated in the $1 million to $2 million range to develop the pages 

and staff them, and we are looking forward to talk to Members of 

Congress and OMB about that. 

Mr. PALMER. Well, quickly have you looked at creating a recommendations database similar to what the GAO uses? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. 

Mr. PALMER. I worked on a number of issues where the GAO and 

General Dodaro, and it’s been extremely helpful. Are you guys 

doing the same thing? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Absolutely. In fact, that is the impetus for a lot 

of this. In fact, that was the first impetus for oversight.gov was 

looking at GAO’s web page, because you can to GAO’s web page 

and you can go to oversight.gov and see all of their work across the 

entire Federal Government. You couldn’t do that until October 1 

with the IGs. 

So the first step was oversight.gov; we talked with Mr. Dodaro 

and others at GAO about how we can do that. And I don’t know 

if this is possible, because I’m not the right tech person to figure 

this out, but the ideal scenario would be, we can develop an open 

recommendations page that talks with their open recommendations 

page so that Members of Congress, OMB, the public, can see across 

both of our organizations, the open recommendations and how long 

they’ve been open. 

Mr. PALMER. Excellent. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from Alabama yields back. 

The gentlelady from New York is recognized. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking 

Member and all the panelists. 

I’d like to ask Mr. Roth, your office recently issued a classified 

report on the Federal Air Marshals Service, or FAMS. The unclassified summary of your classified report includes the title of the report which is, and I quote, ‘‘FAMS, contribution to aviation transportation security is questionable.’’ Now, I recognize that you can’t 

speak about classified material. But to the extent that you can talk 

about the unclassified part of this report, can you explain why the 

contribution of the Federal Air Marshal Service to aviation transportation is, in your opinion, questionable? 

Mr. ROTH. I can’t obviously talk about the specifics of the report. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Yeah. 

Mr. ROTH. But what I can talk about is TSA’s attitude assessing 

risk, in that they will assess risk in certain areas of transportation, 

whether it is ground transportation, or air transportation, or specific aspects within the transportation. 

The difficulty is they don’t budget the same way that they assess 

risk. So things that are low risk, for example, still notwithstanding 

the change in, for example, the risk environment, or the intelligence that they receive with regard to terrorist activity, their 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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budget does not change in accordance with that, so money gets 

wasted basically fighting the last war. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, building on what you said, the CRS reported that we spent over $800 million on the Federal Air Marshal 

Services in years 2015, 2016, and 2017. And that’s an incredible 

amount of money to be spending on a service that is, quote, ‘‘questionable.’’ 

And the Government Accountability Office stated to the unclassified version of a report, and I quote, ‘‘For FAMS, TSA officials explain that it’s very difficult to measure the effectiveness of Federal 

air marshals and the program, and that there’s absolutely no way 

to collect data,’’ end quote. 

Do you agree with that? How in the world can you not measure 

when you’re spending $800 million on it, is the result? 

Mr. ROTH. I don’t agree with that, and TSA will tell you they 

have specific classified documents that talk about the risk of specific events occurring. So they measure it, and can measure it. Our 

difficulty is that their management of the risk doesn’t match their 

spending. 

Mrs. MALONEY. So what do we do about it? 

Mr. ROTH. Well, I’m a big fan of congressional oversight. One of 

the things that we’re doing is that report is now classified at the 

secret level. We are going to redact the secret portions to make it 

a little more accessible. It will be at the SSI level, so more Members of Congress, for example, can see it and see whether or not 

this is an issue that is useful for oversight. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, since you can’t discuss it because it’s classified, could you meet with the members in a bipartisan way that are 

interested, and discuss the classified sections with us? 

Mr. ROTH. Absolutely. We welcome the opportunity. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Okay. Maybe we can do that. 

I’d also like to follow up on one of the posts from TSA. Their 

website said they had 20 layers of U.S. aviation security. But, 

again, you have reported that the checkpoint screening layer is deficient. Can you, to the extent that you can discuss the unclassified 

areas, could you share information on the screening deficiencies? 

Mr. ROTH. Well, the only thing I can really say is that, again, 

we do these tests about every 2 years. The last time we did these 

tests was in 2015. I characterized those tests back then as disappointing and disturbing. I would characterize the results this 

time the similar way. 

We found deficiencies in the equipment, we found deficiencies in 

the personnel, and we found deficiencies in the process by which 

they interacted with the equipment. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, I can say for a system that is critical to 

protecting American lives, this is unacceptable, and we need to be 

briefed on the classified section of it. 

And the warnings that are being raised about the extent of the 

problem, I find absolutely alarming, quite frankly, and we should 

begin by enforcing the existing subpoena that the TSA has ignored, 

completely ignored. And we should require depositions with TSA 

employees that have refused, absolutely refused to answer questions voluntarily that this committee has put forward. 


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So I personally look forward to your briefing, and thank you very 

much. 

Mr. ROTH. Yes. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentlelady from New York yields back. 

The gentleman from Kentucky is recognized. 

Mr. COMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Roth, I have a few questions relating to the ongoing disasterrelated investigations. First of all, this committee staff recently met 

with your staff in Texas regarding the response and recovery to 

Hurricane Harvey. In Texas, the Office of Inspector General has 

been investigating disaster-related fraud claims. 

The impersonation of FEMA officials, bribery, extortion, and 

even human smuggling, are these typical crimes you see following 

a natural disaster? 

Mr. ROTH. Yes, we do. One of the things that we try to do in the 

very early stages of a natural disaster, is that these folks have 

been victimized once by the natural disaster; we want to make sure 

that we try to prevent a second victimization by sort of the criminal elements who would come in, either with various sort of scams 

or identity theft, those kinds of things. 

So we do see a lot of that typically in every natural disaster, So 

that’s why we want to jump on it as early as we can. 

Mr. COMER. What kinds of crimes and misconduct are you investigating in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? Are there any particular trends you have assessed at this point? 

Mr. ROTH. It’s going to be roughly the same kind of things that 

your staff saw in Houston. So, again, impersonation of FEMA officials, for example, identity theft, various kinds of scams. Charity 

scams, for example, are always a big one that we always have to 

take a hard look at. So it’s really the panoply of criminal conduct 

that we almost see every—every disaster. 

Mr. COMER. How are you allocating the OIG resources to ensure 

that disaster relief funds are not misdirected to bad actors who try 

to take advantage of Federal programs to assist disaster survivors? 

Mr. ROTH. Yeah. We have a full court press on this. I mean, typi- cally, we spend roughly between $25- and $30 million a year on 

disaster relief. That’s going to go up, obviously, as a result of these 

disasters. 

We’re doing a full court press, particularly early on in the disaster, to make sure that we have a public presence, that people 

know we’re there. We’re doing really on-the-spot auditing work to 

sort of take a look at some of the contracts that have been let to 

do sort of the basic name checks and criminal checks of the individuals who are getting contracts, to make sure that these aren’t folks 

that are, for example, prohibited from Federal work or, you know, 

related in some way to a public official. 

You know, those are the kinds of things that we do early on. And 

then, obviously, once the public assistance money comes in, we’ll be 

doing early warning audits to take a look at whether or not the entity that’s involved has the capacity to use this money in an effective way. 

So we have a whole series of things that we’ll do over the course 

of time. I mean, we’re still finishing up Sandy work, for example. 

So it will take some time. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Mr. COMER. Right. I understand the complexities and the difficulty that an agency like FEMA would have coming into a situation where you’ve had a natural disaster, but in the past, FEMA 

has had a lot of bad press, and a lot of bad stories. Congress has 

continued to question FEMA, and hopefully trying to determine if 

FEMA has learned from past mistakes. 

Do you feel like FEMA is on the right track as far as being efficient and trying to be responsive to the people in need, or what’s 

your assessment right now of the direction we’re headed with 

FEMA? 

Mr. ROTH. Yeah. When you look at all of our audits reports, and 

there are hundreds of them, the picture that gets painted is that 

this is still not a mature agency. They don’t have the kinds of internal controls that sort of a mature sort of organization should 

have in the spending of money. 

Their culture is one of disaster relief. They’re very victim centric, 

and I applaud the fact that they want to go in and they want to 

do whatever it takes. But what I worry about is that they don’t 

have processes in place that will help during stressful times, like 

a natural disaster. 

Mr. COMER. And that’s what makes it difficult for members like 

myself who are concerned about the debt. I believe in a limited government. It’s government’s responsibility to help people that can’t 

help themselves like in a disaster situation. 

But my—speaking for myself—confidence level in FEMA isn’t 

where it needs to be, and that’s unfortunate, because I know we 

have a lot of people in need, and I believe that this agency can and 

should be the point of contact between the government and the 

people. 

But I’m hopeful that FEMA will try to improve and restore confidence in at least members like myself that have read some of 

these audits and have serious concerns about the direction that 

agency is headed with it. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentleman from Kentucky yields back. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking member. 

I want to thank our witnesses. Thank you for the job that you 

do every day. Not only is it very important work, but it is becoming 

rarer as, at least on this committee, we have, I think, abdicated our 

responsibility to conduct meaningful oversight. So your work becomes even more important. 

Mr. Roth, it would be great to hear, maybe offline, your most recent review of TSA and what’s going on. They’ve done incredible 

work. 

Ms. Buller, I had a chance to visit with the Peace Corps volunteers in Tanzania. We’ve got some young, young American kids 

over there that are out there hundreds of miles from any major 

town, and basically trying to instruct the folks there, the tribal 

members on avoiding HIV infection, things like that. 

But, you know, I know we instantly recognized the heroism and 

the courage of our military personnel, but I don’t think we give 

enough respect and acknowledgment to some of these kids in the 

Peace Corps. Carrie Radelet, who is running the program over 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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there, at least was recently, and they’re doing incredible work over 

there, really deserve a lot of support. So I really appreciate the 

work you’re doing. 

Mr. Horowitz, I want to talk to you about—you did a wonderful, 

in-depth, thorough investigation of the use of confidential informants by the ATF, the FBI, and DEA. And we found—you found— 

that there was almost no oversight being done in terms of how we 

select confidential informants. 

In my district, we had a couple of instances where confidential 

informants were actually committing murders while they were on 

the payroll of the FBI. And we’ve got a lot of evidence out there 

that bad things are happening. 

So ATF has about 1,800 active informants. DEA has about 1,800 

informants. There’s a—I think there’s a blind spot here. The DEA 

has paid approximately $237 million out of—out to about 9,000 of 

their informants. They paid $25 million to eight people over the 

last 5 years. 

There is very little evidence that we can see about how these 

people were chosen, where the tax money is going to pay these informants, what value they are to law enforcement efforts. It’s a 

black hole. 

So, you know, you’ve done some great reports. I know there’s an 

addendum here, this year addendum to last year’s review. Has anything improved here in terms of their accountability, in terms of 

who they choose as an informant, whether they report the crimes? 

So there’s a lot of crimes being committed by confidential informants with the protection of government under the pay—on the payroll of the government, and we don’t get any reports at all. Congress gets nothing. We don’t want to know anything. That’s just 

out there. They do their thing. It’s unconscionable, but that’s the 

situation that exists. 

Has anything gotten better? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. First of all, I agree with you on your assessment. 

And as you know, and we’ve talked about, our office worked on the 

Bulger matter that you referred to, which was the FBI informant, 

both on his prosecution and the agent’s prosecution. 

Mr. LYNCH. Right. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. These are very serious issues. These are people 

who are usually involved in illegal activity before they become informants—not always, but often—who are then being authorized to 

conduct additional illegal actions with the stamp of approval of the 

Federal Government, and the Justice Department in this instance. 

We found widespread problems, as you noted. Part of the report, 

the addendum is the classified piece of it, so I can’t go into some 

of those details but—— 

Mr. LYNCH. Let me just stop you right there. We have to do this. 

We have to do our work. You know, Mr. Horowitz, all three of you, 

I would recommend we do a separate hearing with each one of you, 

public hearing, about what we can talk about, and then we do 

three confidential—you know, three basically restricted forums, 

where it’s in camera, and that we get the rest of the information 

for you, because this is just unconscionable that this would be allowed to continue. It’s putting the national security and the privacy 

protections of the general public at great risk. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Mr. HOROWITZ. I agree, and I’d be more than happy to come and 

speak with you and other members about the nonpublic information but also, obviously, keep you and the committee informed 

about what we’re seeing as we do follow-up work. 

Obviously, we will continue to watch how this is going, because 

we agree, these are very significant issues that we’ve identified. 

Mr. LYNCH. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. GOWDY. The gentleman from Massachusetts yields back. 

The gentleman from Georgia is recognized. 

Mr. BLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Horowitz, I want to come to you. I would like to change gears 

a little bit, go back to the Puerto Rico discussion. Last month, the 

DOJ recommended that the oversight board that Congress established for Puerto Rico, that it take steps to ensure that the Federal 

disaster relief funds are protected from creditors. 

Has—has your office, have you all reviewed those recommendations? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We have not yet, and I’d be happy to follow up 

and check into that and get back to you. 

Mr. BLUM. Is there any reason that you haven’t? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Frankly, with the variety of work and—on our 

plate, we are, you know, obviously interested in looking at it and 

talking with you further about it. 

Mr. BLUM. Please do, and I would like your input on that. Yesterday we had, in Natural Resources, a hearing that involved the 

government of Puerto Rico, and I was able to question. I have some 

very serious concerns with this whole thing. 

October 23, he established, by executive order, the CRRO, the 

Central Recovery and Reconstruction Office for Puerto Rico. And 

according to that executive order and his own testimony, the purpose of the CRRO would be as a central collector of all the various 

streams of financial support that the island is receiving. 

All right. That sounds pretty good, but when you start coming 

down to the enormous amounts of money that are coming in—I 

mean, just yesterday, he requested between $90- and $100 billion 

yet to come. And so my question is, if we here in Congress have 

authorized the oversight board to oversee the economic recovery of 

Puerto Rico, where does this leave the CRRO and what kind of conflict is involved in it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yeah. And I’m certainly happy to look into that. 

We did an audit report last year on the Department’s money going 

into Puerto Rico and found a wide variety of concerns and problems 

about that, so this is a very important issue. There’s a lot of Federal Government money going, not just with the disaster relief efforts, but day in and day out. 

Mr. BLUM. Right, day in and day out. 

And let me ask a couple more questions with this. And, Mr. 

Roth, I’m going to come to you on this too, because I want to get 

my head wrapped around as much of this as I can. 

Do you know whether or not the CRRO will be accountable to the 

oversight board? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know the answer to that as I sit here, but 

I’m certainly happy to look into it. 

Mr. ROTH. Yeah. I don’t know either. I’m sorry. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Mr. BLUM. How can we be looking at all this money flowing in 

there with a new, established office, the CRRO, and we don’t have 

any idea where all this—I mean, streams of—gobs of money going 

in this. And there seems to me that there’s no accountability in 

this, and they’re asking for more and more all along. 

Will the Office of the Inspector General be investigating the 

CRRO? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, I’m going to follow up and look at the 

issues. I will just say, in terms of the disaster recovery moneys, I 

just want to mention that CIGIE, the Council of IG, has a disaster 

assistance working group to make sure we’re all coordinated as 

IGs. 

Actually, IG Roth leads that effort. We—he’s had meetings already about it. We’ve coordinated and we’re talking to GAO. They 

have participated in these discussions. We want to have a comprehensive review on the disaster recovery effort. 

And I’ll just add, you’re going to see in the next several weeks, 

on Oversight.Gov, a new link and a web page so the public can 

watch where that money has been going in our oversight efforts on 

the disaster recovery efforts. 

Mr. BLUM. That would be very helpful. We’re just talking tens 

and tens of billions of dollars involved, and more probably on the 

way. And there appears to me to be absolutely no accountability. 

I’d like to know if there’s going to be any auditing. I want to know 

if the oversight board is going to have any real oversight or involvement in this. They may be a conduit for the money to go into 

and be disbursed, but who’s overseeing that—— 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, and that’s the issue that I think we have 

to follow up and see where the money is coming from and where 

it’s going to so that we understand who’s conducting oversight. 

Just to be clear, with all of the oversight work we all do, the first 

line of defense has got to be the agency and the entity. We have 

limited staff. I have 450 people—470 people now in my OIG to 

oversee 110,000 people. 

I have $100 million budget, $95 million budget to oversee a $28 

billion budget. So—and John’s numbers, actually, IG Roth’s numbers are probably even more skewed the other way. So, you know, 

we’ve got limited resources. We’ve got to make sure our agencies 

are doing the work they need to do as well. 

Mr. BLUM. We do. And we’ve got to make sure there’s oversight 

of all of this. I was stunned with his request of 90- to $100 billion. 

And I did a little research. That’s more than what NASA is requesting for the Mars One project that goes from the 2011 to the 

mid-2030s, where we’re actually going to be putting a permanent 

human colony on Mars, for crying out loud. 

And Puerto Rico is wanting more money. It’s like, this is an unbelievable amount of money, and we have got to make sure that 

the accountability is there. And I thank you for your assistance in 

that. 

I yield back. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from Georgia yields back. 

The gentlelady from Illinois is recognized. 

Ms. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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I wanted to talk a little bit about the hiring freeze. On January 

23, 2017, President Trump imposed a government-wide hiring 

freeze for civilian employees. In April, the Office of Management 

and Budget replaced the President’s hiring freeze with a directive 

to all Federal agencies, quote: ‘‘Begin taking immediate actions to 

achieve near-term workforce reductions and cost savings.’’ 

The Democratic committee staff surveyed inspectors general at 

two dozen Federal agencies to determine the potential effect of 

these actions on their ability to conduct oversight of Federal programs and operations. 

Mr. Horowitz, the response we received from your office in March 

stated, and I quote, ‘‘As we continue to assess the impact of the hiring freeze and prospect of a reduced budget, DOJ, OIG is concerned 

about the potential impact that a period of sharply limited resources could have on our ability to continue to perform the kind 

and range of audits, evaluations, and investigations that are expected of us.’’ 

I understand that your office was able to hire some staff this 

year. How could a hiring freeze impact an IG office in its ability 

to conduct oversight? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Obviously, a hiring freeze would have an impact, 

or could have an impact on IGs because of the limitations on adding staff. We are—as IG Roth mentioned earlier, all of our work is 

driven by our staff and our ability to do their work. 

I’ll just add this caveat: We were largely exempted from the hiring freeze as IGs because of our law enforcement and other important responsibilities. What does worry myself and other IGs is flat 

budgets for us is, in effect, a hiring cut, because costs increase, rent 

increases, healthcare increases, other benefits increase, meaning 

we have to reduce staff if we’re held flat. 

And that does have an impact on us. We’re not like the FBI, 

DEA, other parts of the Justice Department that can look to nonpersonnel costs to save money. We’re all about two things as a general matter: People and rent. And we’re not going to close our 

buildings because we still have people working in them. So it’s all 

going to have to come out of personnel. 

Ms. KELLY. So freezes and flat budgets both impact the mission 

of your organizations? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. So I would just—that is actually far more 

important to me in my office than perhaps the hiring freeze was 

because of the exemption we were given. 

Ms. KELLY. Okay. Mr. Roth, the survey response that our staff 

received from your office stated, and I quote, ‘‘That said, to adhere 

to the intent of the hiring freeze, there is still many support positions that are on hold during the freeze that we believe, based on 

past experience, will over time reduce the Department’s overall capacity and capability. However, the long-term impact remains to be 

determined.’’ 

Has your office taken any actions to implement the OMB directive? 

Mr. ROTH. Yes. So what we have done—and, again, the freeze 

was lifted in April, as you note, and, you know, since then we are 

hiring up to our budget levels. So there was a pause while we tried 

to understand what it was that was going on, but we have now 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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been able to continue to hire basically to our full-time equivalent 

level. 

Again, to reiterate what I said in my testimony as well as what 

Mr. Horowitz testified to, what we worry about is future budgets. 

The President’s budget for me for fiscal 2018 has a 10 percent cut 

in our budget, and that would be 10 percent below this year’s level 

at the same time that the rest of DHS is increasing. So as their 

risks increase, our opportunity to take a look at those risks and try 

to mitigate those risks decline. So that’s what we worry about more 

than a freeze. 

Ms. KELLY. Okay. Many IG offices responded to our survey noting serious concern about the impact of the administration’s hiring 

freeze and proposed staffing reductions. The Department of State 

IG reported that it faces, and I quote, ‘‘staffing challenges in our 

oversight of operation, inherent resolve in Operation Freedom Centennial, the U.S. efforts to defeat the Islamic state of Iraq and the 

Levant and the Taliban respectively.’’ 

The EPA IG warned that staffing reductions could, and I quote, 

‘‘hinder significantly our ability to exchange protective intelligence 

information with the FBI, Secret Service, and Marshal Service, 

which would delay the apprehension of criminals.’’ 

Given how impactful IG offices can be in preventing waste, fraud, 

and abuse, it makes very little sense to impose a freeze, staffing 

reductions, or budget cuts on IGs. The Government Accountability 

Office found that a previous hiring freeze, and I quote, ‘‘caused decreased oversight of Federal programs by making it more difficult 

for the inspector general offices to do their jobs, something we want 

you to have the capability to do. 

And I yield back. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentlelady from Illinois yields back. 

The gentleman from Oklahoma is recognized. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thanks to all three of you for the work that you do. Our government would be far less efficient without the fantastic work that 

you do. 

Ms. Buller, I would like to start with you, but actually ask all 

three of you, because you had expressed concern, along with Mr. 

Horowitz, about desire for an independent testimonial subpoena 

authority. And I think this is important that—you know, that we 

explore that a little more. 

Would you speak to that, and actually all three of you, of why 

this subpoena authority you feel is necessary? 

Ms. BULLER. Often during the time that we’re conducting an 

audit or an investigation, people who have knowledge of events 

that happened during the course of the event—of the activities that 

resulted in the auditor investigation leave for whatever reason, either they retire conveniently, sometimes, or they just leave. 

And we cannot, once they leave the government, make them talk 

to us. When they’re employees of the government, we do have the 

ability to access them. Once they’re gone, we don’t. 

And in the Peace Corps, it’s exacerbated because we have a 5- 

year term limit. So there is people coming and going all the time, 

and most of the time, they don’t even stay for the 5 years. So once 

they’re gone, and we’re in the middle of an audit, we can’t talk to 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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them about it or—if they don’t want to talk to us. That’s the importance of a testimonial subpoena. 

Mr. RUSSELL. And I appreciate the insight on the 5-year term 

limit, which makes it even more difficult. 

Mr. Horowitz, and then Mr. Roth. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I’ll speak to whistleblower matters. Congress, for 

good reason, gave IGs authority to look at whistleblower retaliation 

at contractors and grant recipients when management there tried 

to shut down employees from reporting waste, fraud, and abuse to 

us. 

Well, the challenge is, unlike employees in the Federal Government, which when they’re employed, they have to speak to us, the 

same isn’t true for current or former employees of contractors or 

grant recipients. 

And so, we have that authority now to investigate, but I’ve had 

cases where the people who were the alleged retaliators, either left 

their jobs, in which case they clearly were unreachable to us because they weren’t going to voluntarily speak to us, or even if they 

were still at the job, it would require management of that organization to tell the employee to speak to us because there’s no other 

way to do that. 

And so, it’s very important the whistleblower space, as well as 

frankly the misconduct space. We see, not infrequently, Department employees conveniently retiring on the eve of being questioned about the misconduct we’re—— 

Mr. RUSSELL. That seems to be a bad habit. 

Mr. Roth. 

Mr. ROTH. Yeah. And I would add, for example, in the FEMA 

context, you know, most of the money goes to States as grantees 

and then the State and locals as municipalities and then to private 

contractors. So just to trace the money and do a basic fraud investigation, never mind the whistleblower retaliation, requires the cooperation of all those folks. 

Now, the grants give us access to documents, but they don’t give 

us access to people. So being able to go in and interview folks and 

get people on the record in those kinds of fraud contexts is enormously important. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Well, that’s great insight. And so we’ve had some 

authority kind of like this in the past. It’s now disappeared. What’s 

the fix? It’s obviously going to require legislative, but what are 

your ideas on this? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, it would require a legislative fix. And to be 

clear, the Defense Department IG has this authority—— 

Mr. RUSSELL. Right. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. —and has used it very judiciously and appropriately. And as they’ve noted, just having the authority causes 

people to want to speak voluntarily, frankly, probably much like 

this committee—— 

Mr. RUSSELL. Right. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. —right. You don’t probably have to issue many 

subpoenas to get people to come in and speak with you, but it helps 

to know that that subpoena power is there. 

We would need legislation. We worked very closely with the supporters of this in this committee and on the Senate side to put in 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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place controls around it because it was reasonable—there were reasonable concerns to make sure that we would use it in connection 

with people who actually benefited from government programs. 

We weren’t running around trying to subpoena people who I’m 

not sure I would have the time to do that, but we wouldn’t use it 

for that purpose. So we’re prepared to sit down and address any 

concerns about the use of it, make sure there’s effective oversight. 

We had talked about a three-IG panel to make sure that existed, 

and that was what was originally in the draft legislation we 

worked with the committee on. We’re prepared to work and make 

sure this is used reasonably and appropriately. Frankly, just having the authority, I think, will cause us to not need to use it. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Well, and your point on Department of Defense is 

spot on. Them having the authority really precludes a lot of subpoenas. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I think this is something that we ought to 

explore, that we ought to try to do, because without teeth behind 

the bark it’s not really going to matter much. And for the record, 

I would like to assist this committee in that effort. I think that it 

is something worth doing. 

And I’ve run out of time, and I yield back. 

Chairman GOWDY. We’ll do one better. We’ll let you take the 

lead. Why don’t you be our lead on finding a way to—— 

Mr. RUSSELL. Well, I’m happy and honored to work with the IGs 

on this issue. I do think it is—we see it in other aspects of government where it’s very effective, it’s not abused. And I think for our 

IGs to do even more incredible work, we need to give them the 

proper tools. Thank you. 

Chairman GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma. 

I’ll now recognize myself. I’ll start by thanking all three witnesses. 

IG Horowitz, I’m going to probably direct my questions to you, 

in part because of what you do now, and, in part, because of what 

you used to do in a very distinguished career as an assistant 

United States attorney. 

Give us the other side over the argument on compulsory process, 

because when something—it sounds like a great idea, and this 

does, the ability to compel evidence really. The fact that we don’t 

have it leads me to believe that there is at least some argument 

on the other side. What would it be? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. So the Justice Department itself has opposed giving IGs—— 

Chairman GOWDY. That would be an argument. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And their concern is, then, that if we subpoena 

somebody and compel them to speak to us, that could negatively 

impact their ability to pursue criminal cases in matters they may 

have ongoing that we don’t know about. We put in place a procedure in the Act to address that. The Department would get notice 

before we gave any—issued any subpoenas. 

Much like is currently in existence, as you know, from being an 

AUSA yourself, that before anybody gives immunity to anybody in 

the Justice Department, there’s a central process for doing that to 

make sure an AUSA in New York doesn’t harm a case going on by 

an AUSA in South Carolina, for example. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
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That’s what we’ve proposed here. And, frankly, I, as a former 

prosecutor, don’t understand that argument. If I was if AUSA handling that case that was criminal, and they didn’t know about our 

work, I’d want to know about our work, because that could give 

them additional leverage in their criminal case. 

So as a former prosecutor, frankly, I don’t understand the argument once you’ve put in place the protections. And Mr. Roth also 

is a former prosecutor, and we very much respect the concern, and 

we’ll work with them to put that in place. But there’s a way to address that, I think. 

Chairman GOWDY. Well, I hope so. I think there has to be. The 

ability to simply leave your place of employment and avoid scrutiny 

or having to provide information makes it really tough to conduct 

fulsome investigations. 

Keep that same old hat on for a second. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Okay. 

Chairman GOWDY. There’s an issue with respect to OPR. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Uh-huh. 

Chairman GOWDY. Explain for those who may not have worked 

for the Department of Justice, don’t explain—don’t understand 

what OPR is, what is the issue there and what are both sides of 

the argument? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Okay. So the office—OPR, the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department, was created long 

before the IG Act was passed to look at misconduct by prosecutors. 

The head of that Office is appointed by the Department’s leadership, the Deputy AG and the Attorney General, and they handle 

all allegations, prosecutorial misconduct against prosecutors for 

conduct in connection with their jobs as lawyers. So, for example, 

in the courtroom and those kinds of issues. 

That’s a carve-out that exists now in the IG Act, so that when 

my office was created back in 1988, it was carved out of our jurisdiction. We’re the only IG with this carve-out. And it means that 

while we look at misconduct by FBI agents, DEA agents, ATF 

agents, other personnel, non-lawyers in the Department, as well as 

lawyers when they engage in misconduct outside of work, we can’t 

look at prosecutorial—allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. 

We don’t see a principled reason why we should be able to look 

at FBI agents’ misconduct, but not misconduct by Federal prosecutors. If there’s—if it’s important enough to have independent oversight by a statutorily independent IG over FBI agents, surely it’s 

the same for prosecutors who wield at least as much power as FBI 

agents by their ability to act improperly in a courtroom. 

The flip of that has been, the Department’s argument has been— 

and again, they’ve always opposed giving that authority to us—is 

that the Office of Professional Responsibility has managed that 

function effectively since its creation, they know how to do those 

cases, and there’s no reason to change the process. 

It’s my view that for purposes of independent oversight and 

transparency, there have been many issues coming forward in the 

last many years about questions of oversight of prosecutors. Several judges have raised concerns. And I think it is—people would 

be hard-pressed to explain to an FBI agent why they need independent oversight by an inspector general. But the prosecutors 


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they’re working with day in and day out, they go in another— 

through another door. 

Chairman GOWDY. Particularly, in many instances, the Bureau 

agent, herself or himself, may also be an attorney. So their agent 

conduct is scrutinized or investigated one way. 

And if I heard you correctly, Representative Hice, Cedric Richmond from Louisiana, have worked with you on proposing a legislative remedy in this area as well as the one Stevie made reference 

to? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That’s correct. 

Chairman GOWDY. All right. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And we have—we’ve worked, as well, with bipartisan members on the Senate side to do the same. 

Chairman GOWDY. Last issue, because I’m out of time. I don’t 

like to do it. But quickly, I’m not asking you about the merits of 

it, you couldn’t talk about it, don’t—I wouldn’t ask you about it. 

But your reputation for integrity is well-deserved, and has been 

around for a long time. 

You are looking into certain matters and decisions made by the 

Department of Justice in the 2016 election cycle, calendar year. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. 

Chairman GOWDY. Do you have an update from a time standpoint? And, secondarily, are you able to access all the witnesses 

and documents that you think are necessary for you to conduct a 

fulsome investigation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And I can certainly talk to the process questions 

and the timing questions, and I appreciate your respecting the ability to complete that in an independent way. 

In terms of process, we have gotten all the records we’ve asked 

for. We’ve gotten them, as a general matter, in a timely fashion. 

We’ve interviewed dozens of people. We’re not at the hundred level 

yet, but we’re in the dozens range. 

We’ve reviewed about 1.2 million records in the course of the investigation, so a pretty substantial effort by the team, which has 

done great work. We are aiming to release the report in late winter, early spring, so hopefully in that March, April time period. 

Obviously, I can’t commit to that because, as we’ve seen, events 

can arise, issues can arise that require us to do additional interviews or get additional records. And given there’s a classified piece 

to this, as you know, it requires a significant process to make sure 

that individuals who are no longer at the Department or are lawyers for individuals who are no longer at the Department can actually be a part of those interviews by getting renewed clearances. 

So that’s impacted somewhat the timeframe, but we’re moving 

along quite expeditiously, and that’s my hope. 

Chairman GOWDY. Thank you. 

I thought I was last, but the gentleman from Wisconsin has 

joined us and—I apologize. The gentlelady from Michigan. I didn’t 

see you. I’m old and I can’t see that far. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. No, you have a lot of years left, sir. 

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. Roth, 2 years ago, you testified before this committee after 

your team completed testing at TSA checkpoints that your team 

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ferent airports. The report—you reported, and I quote, ‘‘The test results were disappointing and troubling.’’ Is that right? 

Mr. ROTH. That’s correct. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Okay. With that being said, 2 years ago, you 

testified that, quote, ‘‘The Department’s response to our most recent findings have been swift.’’ You said that then-Secretary of 

DHS directed that an immediate plan of action be created to correct deficiencies uncovered during that testing. 

Was that plan implemented? And if not, why not? 

Mr. ROTH. It was implemented. The difficulty, of course, is that 

it’s a massive problem in three areas: One, training personnel. 

They have over 40,000 transportation security officers that would 

need to get trained; they have technology issues that are going to 

require a long-term fix of research and development and deployment; and then they had process issues as far as their standard operating procedures missed certain methods of concealment that 

needed to get tightened up. 

They started a training program, a fairly rigorous training program, particularly for new employees. They are on their way to try 

to fix the technology. And then, lastly, they have, I think, done a 

pretty good job of tightening up their procedures with regard to 

that. The difficulty is the training and the technology piece are 

long-term fixes. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. So with that being said, as we know that it’s 

troubling to you, is absolutely troubling for the American citizens 

who are subjected to this obvious inefficiency. So we talked about 

long term. What is long term, and what is the expectation? I say 

to you that we can expect this removal of troubling findings that 

we are aware of. 

Mr. ROTH. We made eight recommendations in this last audit report. The Department agreed with each of those eight recommendations. This is an enormously difficult problem, but it’s one that’s— 

it’s going to require constant attention to get right. 

One of the things that we found, for example, when we did our 

covert testing this time is that we asked whether or not the TSOs, 

who we discovered deficiencies with, had gone through the training. And, you know, frankly, notwithstanding the fact that they 

have been training people at a record pace as a percentage of the 

workforce, only a small percentage of that workforce has been 

trained. 

You know, we found other issues that we hadn’t discovered in 

our last—— 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. What’s the timeline? What is—— 

Mr. ROTH. I don’t have the timeline. The process that we use is 

that we make our recommendations. The Department takes it, and 

in 90 days, they give us a plan. So we have not received that plan 

yet. So I can’t—— 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. I would like for this committee to be updated 

because the American people need to know what the expectation is, 

that we are in compliance. 

Mr. ROTH. Yes. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. I have a very important issue. As you know, I 

represent Michigan, Detroit. At the end of September, ICE arrested 

nearly 500 people in 10 different cities and regions across country. 


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It’s evident that many of these immigrants may not be dangerous. 

In fact, sometimes their only supposed crime is crossing the border 

before they work and pay taxes. 

Do you know currently what is ICE criteria for deciding which 

communities to target and deport? How does ICE ensure it’s not 

wasting taxpayers’ dollars in time by targeting non-dangerous immigrants? And did you examine whether ICE is using resources in 

efficiency, and this new criteria of it appears to be rounding people 

up? I really need an answer for that, Mr. Roth. 

Mr. ROTH. We have not done any specific audit work with regard 

to ICE priorities. What we have done is spend a considerable 

amount of resources on misconduct cases where we’ll get reports of 

misconduct. 

For example, we’re doing a series of investigations at the southwest border regarding individuals who have credible fear claims 

who are being turned away without having those credible fear 

claims adjudicated. 

Those are the kinds of things that we’re looking at, but we 

haven’t looked at and commented on specifically ICE’s priorities or 

the Secretary’s priorities and how it is that they are using those 

resources. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Well, it needs to be looked at. And I can tell you 

in a community that’s not on the southwest border that we have 

major issues in large immigrant communities of disparate treatment that when we question, and I as a Member of Congress, there 

seems to be no following of an agenda or priority set by anyone. 

So are we just—renegade across the country. We should all know 

what the criteria and why we are operating the way we are. And 

this is something that is extremely important for our communities, 

for people who are living in our cities. 

I yield back my time. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentlelady from Michigan yields back. 

The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Sure. I’ll give a couple questions. 

The Inspector General Empowerment Act provided an exemption 

to inspectors general from the Computer Matching Act. Has this 

improved your oversight? 

Ms. BULLER. It has the potential to greatly improve our oversight. It will allow IGs to use computer matching more efficiently. 

One of the problems we had with the Computer Matching Act to 

begin with was that our agencies had—were involved in the approval process of us being able to match. 

Since we don’t have to do that anymore, it will allow IGs to more 

effectively take information from one agency and one IG to another 

IG and match it, and ferret out more improper payments and 

fraud. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Good. Could you give me some specific examples? 

Mr. ROTH. I can tell you about what happened when we didn’t 

have it before and the delays that were incurred. We took a look 

at the individuals who have what’s called a SIDA badge, which is 

a secure identification access card to parts of the airport where airplanes are. Obviously, you’re supposed to have a specific security 

clearance for that or certain background check for it. 


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So we took a list of those folks, which is 900,000 people, and we 

bounced it against the list that the intelligence community has, 

what they call their TIDE database, which is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, basically it’s their list of all known or 

suspected terrorists. 

Hopefully, those two subsets of information, there would be no 

individuals who were in both subsets. What we found, in fact, were 

that the 73 individuals who were on this terror list also had access 

to secure parts of the airport, obviously of considerable concern to 

TSA and aviation security. 

It took us 18 months just to get the approval for the computer 

matching. So that is the kind of delay that is now gone as a result 

of the Computer Matching Act. And I know, from our point of view, 

we’re going to be using it on these hurricane relief efforts significantly. 

If I can take the list of people who are FEMA recipients for housing and bounce that against the HUD database of people who are 

receiving those very same benefits, see who falls out, and then we 

know that people are getting duplicate payments. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And let me just add, one of the things that myself 

and Vice Chair Allison Lerner have done in meeting with OMB is 

encourage them to consider a pilot program with several cabinetlevel agencies to look at whether there’s improper benefits going to 

employees of those agencies, or other recipients of those agencies 

that are duplicative of benefits, whether it’s disability or Section 8 

housing or food stamps or any of the other large Federal programs 

out there, to try and use our authority in a way that would find 

these duplicative payments. GAO has reported that number is well in excess of $100 billion 

a year. So it’s an important tool that you’ve given us, and we’re 

using it in several instances. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Thanks. Hopefully all the agencies will take advantage of your findings. We’ll see. 

I’ll give you one more question, Mr. Roth, since you brought it 

up. When you talk about people coming into this country because 

they’re fearful, which countries are people coming here from that 

they’re fearful? 

Mr. ROTH. I don’t have data anecdotally. The agents tell me on 

the southwest border that it’s largely Central American countries, 

but I don’t have the specifics or numbers. I’m sure that you can get 

that from USCIS, for example. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. They’re not adjacent to the country. Are 

we supposed to take in somebody here—or how would they be getting in here from a South/Central American country? 

Mr. ROTH. I mean, typically the immigration patterns are 

through Mexico. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Are they endangered in Mexico or just endangered in—— 

Mr. ROTH. Again, we don’t look at those. All we look at is whether or not the Department is following the policy that has already 

in place rather than the wisdom of the policy itself. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Thanks much, and I’ll yield the remainder 

of my time. 


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Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from Wisconsin yields back. 

The gentleman from Maryland, Professor Raskin is recognized. 

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I’m delighted to be with you guys. Forgive me, I had another hearing, so 

I had to step out. 

But I’m excited to ask a few questions to Mr. Horowitz. And I 

want to ask you about a June 29 letter that the Democrats on this 

Committee in Judiciary sent to you raising concerns that Attorney 

General Sessions may have departed from his decision to recuse 

himself when he participated personally and directly in President 

Trump’s decision to dismiss FBI Director Comey. 

You received that letter, right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. 

Mr. RASKIN. The reason we wrote you is because the Attorney 

General said he was recusing from all matters relating to the 2016 

campaign, both the Trump campaign and the Clinton campaign, 

but then worked directly with President Trump and the Deputy Attorney General to fire Mr. Comey, the FBI Director. 

And it was said they were firing Comey because of the way he 

handled the Clinton investigation. In reality, of course, the President admitted both to a group of visiting Russians in his office and 

on national TV that he fired Director Comey because of his distaste 

for the Russian investigation, and that Comey was becoming a 

problem for him. 

My question is whether your office is investigating the issues we 

raised in our letter, whether the Attorney General violated his decision to recuse when he undertook these actions? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. So we did receive the letter. And one of the 

things that, whenever we get a request like that, in any space is, 

is there an ongoing department investigation? And as you know, 

there was a special counsel appointed. The request from—the letter 

request relates to matters that could touch on that investigation. 

And one of the things that we try and do as IGs is, obviously, 

defer, continue to consider and assess the—a request like that 

when there’s an ongoing Department investigation. So we have not 

made a final decision on that. 

Mr. RASKIN. Gotcha. Did you say, I’m sorry, you have not made 

a—— 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We have not made a decision on that. 

Mr. RASKIN. I gotcha. Okay. Because I understand that as a general policy, but if the subject is—if the subject of the investigation 

is the recusal of the Attorney General or another high official, him 

or herself, one would think that the IG policy would have to adjust 

for that, right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And obviously every situation, it depends on the 

specific facts. I think one of the things we generally try and do is 

hold in abeyance any activity while there is an ongoing FBI or special counsel—in this case, special counsel investigation—— 

Mr. RASKIN. Gotcha. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. —under the FBI. That’s what we’re doing here. 

And—— 

Mr. RASKIN. But it’s still—the ball is still in spin, it sounds like? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The ball is still in my court. 

Mr. RASKIN. It’s in your court, okay. 


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Monday, DOJ sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee saying 

that the Attorney General had been directly involved in decisions 

regarding the appointment of a special counsel to investigate, and 

I quote, ‘‘the sale of Uranium One alleged unlawful dealings related to the Clinton Foundation and other matters.’’ 

The letter says the AG directed senior Federal prosecutors to 

evaluate whether a special counsel should be appointed, and told 

them to report their findings directly to the Attorney General and 

Deputy Attorney General. 

So this letter indicates that the AG is not recusing himself from 

these matters and is still directly involved, and seems to contradict 

what he claimed he had been doing before, which was to recuse 

himself from them. 

Now, I know—I understand your position, that your—as long as 

it appears like something is going on, you’re not going to get involved. But I just want to know whether you agree with me to the 

importance of this matter. 

At the Attorney General’s confirmation hearing on January 10, 

he testified, and I quote, ‘‘I believe the proper thing for me to do 

would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kinds 

of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton and that were 

raised during the campaign or be otherwise connected to it.’’ 

Remember, one of the pervasive chants of the campaign and was, 

‘‘Lock her up,’’ and they were raising all these questions about the 

Clinton Foundation. 

Senator Grassley asked him a follow-up question, and I quote, he 

said, ‘‘To be very clear, you intend to recuse yourself from both the 

Clinton email investigation and any matters involving the Clinton 

Foundation, if there are any?’’ 

And the Attorney General responded, and I quote, ‘‘Yes.’’ 

So he testified under oath, he would have nothing to do with any 

investigations that involved Secretary Clinton that were raised as 

a political football during the campaign or that were otherwise connected to it, and he explicitly referred to the Clinton Foundation. 

But the letter that we saw on Monday from DOJ suggests the opposite, that he’s working directly on these matters when he shouldn’t 

be. 

And I understand it’s complicated because you’re dealing with investigations that might relate to people within the Department of 

Justice. But will you please agree to look into this and report back 

to us as soon as you have an update and a resolution as to what 

you think the proper role of the IG is? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yeah. As I said, I will certainly be in that position with the prior letter and be happy to receive any additional 

information about Monday’s letter or—Monday’s letter to the Congress, or any other matter. We, I’ll just say as a general matter, 

take conflict-of-interest matters and recusal matters. Those are important. 

Obviously, much of it turns on the conflict-of-interest laws and 

the regulations, which, as you know, are somewhat arcane and 

complex. But we’re certainly happy to take under advisement any 

matter that a Member of Congress or the committee wishes us to 

take—to consider and assess. 

Mr. RASKIN. Thank you. 


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And I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman GOWDY. The gentleman from Maryland yields back. 

I want to thank our witnesses. On behalf of Mr. Cummings and 

all the other members and myself, thank all of you for appearing 

before us today. 

The hearing record will remain open for 2 weeks for any member 

to submit a written opening statement or questions for the record. 

There is no further business. Without objection, the committee 

stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:09 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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