sunday, booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors . funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including media,. >> nearly 30 years ago, mediacom was founded to bring underserved communities connection with 850,000 muscle fiber, our team broke speakers, delivered one gig speeds to every customer and lead the way in developing a 10 g platform, and with mediacom mobile, the fastest and most reliable network. decades ahead. >> mediacom with these television companies support c- span2 as a public service . wow, what a great turnout. good evening, everyone and welcome to politics and prose. i'm brad graham, the co-owner of the bookstore along with my wife lissa muscatine.

and it's quite a special treat for us to be hosting glenn fine, who's here to talk about his new book, "watchdogs: inspectors general and the battle for honest and accountable government." it's a special treat because glenn is a longtime friend of mine and of lissa's. so we've known for some time of his distinguished service as the inspector general of, not just one major department, but two, the justice department, for 11 years, and the pentagon for four years. among those familiar with what inspectors general do, glenn is widely considered a leading example of how to do the job but not many are aware of igs, which is why glenn decided to write this book, recounting his experiences and detailing in

very clear instructive terms how igs seek to make government more honest, more efficient and more accountable. and in the book, glenn also puts forward some thoughtful proposals for strengthening oversight. you know, being ig can be a pretty thankless position. and glenn recalls a number of instanceswhich he was obstructed, criticized or worse by those he sought to investigate. but over the years, he earned a reputation for independence and determination, which served him well until he ran afoul ofone donald j. trump. it was april 2020 at the start of the covid pandemic. and glenn had been chosen to lead a committee of other igs charged with monitoring how the administration would be

spending trillions of dollars in pandemic relief. trump, however, had other ideas and had particular issues with igs ,tending to view them as undermining his own authority over the executive branch. he had never even agreed to put glenn up for senate confirmation as dod's ig, keeping him as acting ig, and then, to thwart glenn from heading the pandemic relief monitoring, trump abruptly demoted him, and not long after ,glenn resigned altogether. looking back on on his career choices, glenn could easily have taken other less hassled, more profitable routes in life, as a well paid lawyer in private practice, for instance. in fact, he tried that before his first stint as ig and again between the first and second

stints, but his heart remained set on government service. he also, years ago, had been invited to play professional basketball. yes, even with his measly 5'9" height, as you'll see in a moment, after graduating from harvard where he was co-captain of the basketball team, glenn was picked by the san antonio san -- san antonio spurs in the tenth roundof the 1979 nba draft, but he turned them down to go to oxford as a rhodes scholar and then to harvard law school. now, i still would seriously caution anyone against challenging glenn to a shooting contest from the foul line. my wife lissa did that. she sunk nine out of 10. glenn made all 10.

jim mattis, the retired four star marine corps general who served as a secretary of defense when glenn was ig, describes glenn in the introduction to "watchdogs" as a great example of the quote breed of noble sentinels who watch over our government and help restore trust. we all should feel very fortunate and grateful that glenn chose to wage the battles he did for honest and accountable government and that he has now written about them in this very informative book. inconversation with glenn will be jeff goldberg who also knows a thing or two about investigations. he leads them at the atlantic magazine where he's editor in chief and he's also moderator of the washington week with the atlantic on pbs. jeff as well is the author of prisoners about his years long dialogue and friendship with a

palestinian he first got toknow guarding him at a prison camp in israel. so ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming glenn fine and jeff goldberg. [ applause ] >> thank you. look,welcome to the federal government. glad you all could be here. glenn, thank you for being here. i also have to like, brad admit that i've been friends with glenn for a very long time. we got to know each other when he prosecuted me for corruption in the late 1980s. unsuccessfully. i did acouple of years in allenwood, but it was good for my character and glenn thought it was and we became best friends after that. but i want to thank all of you for coming, first of all. and, and i'm very glad to be

able to do this with my friend. i will try to ask him hard questions even though we are friends, but he knows all the answers, unfortunately. glenn also, by the way, very helpfully provided me with a list of 140 questions that i could, that i could ask him. it starts with what do the letters ig stand for. >> instagram. >> the lastquestion is, can you explain the immutable nature of corruption in the hearts of men? so we're going to, we're going to work our way to that. that might be part two of this book. but glenn, why don't you actually just start by talking about, because it is, i mean, maybe people in this, in this audience know something about what an ig is, but talk about how the institution came about, especially in the post watergate era and then bring us to how you became interested in doing this for a living.

>>i will do that, but first i want to thank brad and lissa and the incomparable politics and pros for hosting this event for the launch of my book, which officially is released tomorrow. thank you, jeffrey for agreeing to interview, interview me and i'm sure he's not going to use any of the questions i gave to him, on principle, obviously. i also want to thank, i see so many colleagues in the ig community here, some friends, family, friends, i see some tennis buddies. thank you all for coming out to support, support me and support this book. so the inspector general act was passed in 1978. that's the year i graduated college. it was one of a series of post watergate reforms. and the idea was to put an internal independent watchdog within each federal agency to inspect, to evaluate, to investigate that agency, to find waste , fraud, and abuse in that agency. and it is an unusual position. it is within the agency, but it reports both to the head of the agency and to congress and it is independent. you get to decide what to audit, what to investigate, what to evaluate and the head

of the agency can't stop you. in fact, i'll tell you a story about that ,when i first, when i became an ig. i decided i was going to brief all the new attorneys general and secretary of defense when they came into office to explain the concept on ig. and not many people understood it, even government officials like them. in fact, i remember one time i briefed the attorney general about the inspector general and we're independent and how we operate ,and i'll never forget this. he looked at me, he scratched his head and he said, so you're telling me i can order everyone else around in this building, the main justice building, tell them what to audit, what to evaluate, what to investigate, but i can't tell you what to do? i said, yes, that is what the inspector general act requires. and he stared at me intently and then he said, ok, if that's the law, we follow the law around here. and he did as did all the other attorneys general five that he worked for in the, in the

department of justice from 2000 to 2011, the secretaries of defense, the four that i worked for. and i was very fortunate to have that happened to me. >> who wasthe best person to work for in terms of independence and understanding that you can actually bring value to the department you work in? >> iappreciated all of them, but i do want to single two of them out one in the department. of justice john ashcroft. john ashcroft was an auditor. he was his first job in public service was as an auditor general of the state of missouri. and when i first met him, he said to me, we had a motto in missouri as the auditor general in god, we trust all else we verify. so he knew about inspectors general and he was very supportive of our role. in fact, he would tell the senior staff of the justice department, you have to cooperate with the ig, the ig

makes this department better. having. he said he would tell them having an ig audit or evaluate or investigate you is like going to the dentist. it's, it's painful while you're in the dentist's chair, but you come out healthier the same way with an ig. and i appreciate that message because the tone at the top matters, people cooperated as a result of his message. the one thing i didn't appreciate when i was walking down the halls of the justice department, i would hear, ok, here comes the dentist. no, but there was, i appreciate that tone at the top of the department of defense. can i? >>no, no, i just want to know i covered the justice department a little bit in the time that you were there and they had other words besides dentist for you. [ laughter ] >> they do have other words for you, you are not the most popularperson as the ig in the halls of the justice department or the pentagon food court. you're accused of being a lap dog or a junkyard dog. you're too hard, you're too soft. it's a witch hunt. it's a whitewash. sometimes you're accused of all that in the same investigation by different sides. so, no, you're not going to be

the most popular person, but that's your job. you know, you have to have a thick skin and it comes with the territory. in terms of the department of defense, i would say there are some good ones,but i really appreciate it. general mattis as the secretary of defense, he was a real professional. i didn't know him, but when i got to know him, he was very interested in fixing problems and he would tell me i want you to bring problems to my attention because that's the only way we can get better. that's the only way we could fix it. and that's the attitude you want, you don't want people to be defensive. you want now you're not going to be close to them. you're not going to be friends, but i want them to take our work seriously. we try to be tough but fair and i want them to respect our work . >> was healso being a little clever though? i mean, get the ig, the ig is going to be there whether you like it or not. so you might as well make the ig think that you're on his side. well, i don't know if he would think that i'm on his side, but i think he wanted to improve the agency and he wanted me to be the ig. he actually tried to get me to

be nominated as the ig and it didn't happen because of president trump. i had been nominated by president obama before. and when it got through to president trump, president trump said, well, he was nominated by president obama, so i'm not going to nominate him. and i asked, well, it's a nonpartisan position. and the secretary said, well, i know that. [ laughter ] he said, i hopeyou remain as the acting ig. and i did for four years. and he actually gave me advice that says you're the acting ig so act and that's what i tried to do. i tried to make the hard decisions to do the job as if i was the permanent ig, even though i knew that, you know, you couldn't rely on being the ig forever. you know, you could lose your job in an instant. and i did. >> let's go rightat the matter of your departure from the pentagon in part. so we can move on to other possibly more interesting things. what do you think happened? you're in the acting role, you're doing your job, you're pissing off the right people,

but in a nonpartisan way, presumably. whatabout the covid investigation or the covid oversight. do you think triggered the white house to finally move against you? >> i think it was partly the time but partly as indicated. i was the acting ig the department of defense. the pandemic hit. thecongress appropriate trillions of dollars in covid relief. there was a create a pandemic response accountability committee of igs to oversee that money. there had to be one ig to chair the committee. i drew the short straw. so i became the ig and within that chair of the committee and within five days he replaced me as the acting ig. he had said that he didn't think we needed this oversight. he had said i will be the oversight. so i think he didn't want independent and aggressive oversight. and i was not the only one who was replaced around this time. >> stay on thatpoint because,

because his, his impulse to say that we don't need igs. that goes, that's of a piece with other attitudes that he's, he's evinced. is there anyone else in government you have ever run into who took that same harsh line about theidea of independent oversight? >> there are a number of people ingovernment who didn't love the ig, didn't like the concept, but they were not in a position to do anything about it and nobody loves the i and i would say this too. all organizations need oversight, most resist it. and in fact, when the ig act was passed. the justice department said we don't need oversight. we're a department of lawyers. i don't think that argent aged that well, because eventually an ig was created in the department of justice and the value of it has been shown , same with the fbi. the fbi said we don't need oversight. we have an internal investigative body and the ig would second guess our decisions. eventually we got jurisdiction of the fbi and that was important and we've shown the

value of that. even the department of defense. i don't know if we'll get to this. but even now, in my view, the judiciary and the supreme court need an inspector general and need an internal investigation. >> let's get to it. what is the argument? and how do you convince the supreme court to accept this idea that every other branch of government has to accept? >> i think you just keep pushing the argument because i think it is a strong argument. the federal judiciary is a big operation. it has an $8 billion budget, it has 30,000 employees. any organization that size needs an internal investigator, a professional, internal investigator to evaluate, to look at processes, to improve the situation. in addition, there are allegations of misconduct, those are not handled in a credible and professional way. we've had recent allegations against supreme court justices and basically we rely on the justices themselves to respond

and to say there's nothing to see here. in my view, thesupreme court would benefit from an inspector general who could investigate the facts, make transparent what happened, would not be able to make a management decision or make decisions, but at least wewould understand what the facts are of the case. and i think that it's in the interest of the judiciary and the supreme court to have one because public trust in the supreme court and the judiciary has diminished dramatically. it's at an all time low. i think part of the reason, controversy about thedecisions. but another part of the reason is unaddressed allegations of ethical misconduct and the fact that there is not an internal oversight body that can credibly investigate those matters. i think the supreme court urgently needs one and the judiciary urgently needs one and would benefit from one, -- >>come back to trump just so we can close it out. did you ever in your time serving in that administration,

although a partfrom it, obviously, did you ever meet him ever talk to senior officials of the white house about the role? >> i never met with president trump. i did talkwith senior officials in the white house when we had matters that affected the white house. so no, i had no direct contact, but that's not unusual because an ig does not have and should not have direct contact with the white house. if i got a call from the white house. any president, i wouldn't take the call. they should go through the justice department, the attorney general and we're independent and i did not want to be dealing with the white house and any pressure that they would, they would try to impose on us. we did our job without contact with them. >> i amgoing to ask you a question that i know sober minded lawyers love a speculative question. if trump won again, would you expect an assault on the ig system? >> i don't want to speculate, i do think that he has made clear that he's not a big fan of igs. i think igs would be tested. and so, you know, we'll have to see, i think igs can stand up to the challenge. i would hope so.

and so, you know, we'll have to see what happens. >> i want you to go back a bit to your college career. i don't want a game by game summaryof your immense victories over yale. >> why not? >> there would not be many. >> it could be princeton. >> thereis a moment, i mean, and you detail this in the book. i want you to give people a little flavor of it. it's a very important moment in your life because it taught you a corrosive lesson about, about corruption. why don't you give us the setting and, and, and described what happened? >> i start the first chapter of the book with this, with this story. so the ig act was passed in 1978 creating igs in 12 cabinet agencies. and i had my first brush with corruption in 1978. and it happened on the parquet floor of the boston garden.

i was a basketball player. i was the captain of the harvard basketball team and our biggest game of the season was against boston college and the boston garden. but it was also the same day that i had my final interview for the rhodes scholarship and there was a problem because the final interview was in baltimore and the game was in boston. so i was torn. but we had a long fromharvard who solved the situation and said, i'm going to send a plane down to pick you up in the baltimore airport, private plane after your interview is over before the selections are made. fly to the boston garden. you can make it in time for the tip off and that's what happened, changed in my uniform on the way there. i got to the garden a few minutes before tip off. boston college was a strong team. they were favored by 12. i had the best game of my college career. i had 19 points, 14 assists and eight steals. they were favored by 12, but it was nip and tuck the whole way. we were up, they were up. finally, they won at the last minute by three points. then i remembered, oh, my goodness. i have to call to find out if i'd won a rhodes scholarship. so in my uniform went to the

pay phone in the concourse of the boston garden and dialed up and said, can you tell me what happened? they said, congratulations, mr. fine. you're a rhodes scholar. wow. what a day, the best game in my college career. and i won a rhodes scholarship. there was only one problem. the game was fixed. two mafia mobsters had briefed bostoncollege players to point shave meaning to win by less any mobsters. by the way, mobsters, henry hill and jimmy burke. did you ever see anybody see the movie goodfellas? they were the two played by ray liotta and robert de niro. they were the mobsters who bribed several boston college players to shave points in the first game. they shaved points against harvard. and when i was at oxford sports illustrated broke the story and they, henry hill explained what happened. a friend of mine sent me the article and wrote on the top, hey, glenn, i guess you played your best game when the other team was in the tank and it

was true. [ laughter ] years later, when i was nominated to be inspector general of the department of justice, senator herb cole supported my nomination and went on the floor of the senate and gave a speech in support of the nomination and said, maybe the reason he wants to weed out corruption in the justice department was because he was involved in the notorious boston college shaving game. so maybe that's true. by the way, there's also another thing, there's everybody know espn 30 for 30. it's like a segment. they did, they did one on the playing, playing for the mob and they had, and they had a clip of the harvard game and they had a clip of me driving down the court shooting a jumpshot, making a jumpshot, and afew years ago i showed this to my two kids, the clip of them of me shooting the jp shot and the only comment they had was, hey, dad, your hair is really long and your shorts are really short. [ laughter ] that was the style

back then. >> how did theycorrupt boston college players? you see where i'm going with this? but how did corrupt people corrupt previously, non corrupt people? >> i think they do it in steps. they dangle something small and then bigger and once they have them on the hook, they can't get off the hook. and so i think they tried to find weaknesses and they knew one of the players, they were from the same city and they just, they just tempted him and he took the bait and then this guy, this one player tried to recruit others. and then once you've taken the bait, they have you, they have their hooks into you. >> i askedthat because one of the most astonishing stories in this book, which has a lot of astonishing stories is, is a case in the navy that you investigated when you were at dod the fat leonard case. it's a well known case. and i was wondering if you could describe that the thing that's astonishing about it, it is not thecorruption is sort of, we hear this kind of corruption. people being bribed or induced to do things that they shouldn't be doing with government money.

but what's astonishing is that it involved, at the end of it, hundreds, if i am notmistaken, hundreds of navy officers who, you know, in their white uniforms and duty and honor and annapolis and pride and all the rest, do notseem superficially, at least to be the sort of people who could easily be swayed by a corrupt contractor, but there you are. >> but they were. that's right. it was the worst corruption scandal in navy history. fat leonard, leonard glenn francis ,owned ship supply company in the southeast asia. he would supply ships with tug boat services and sewage and water and everything, and he gotcontracts by corrupting navy officers. and how did he do it? step-by-step. first time he wouldgive them small gifts, then he would give them dinners then he would dangle the trips and then prostitutes and then cash. and what happened was he would do these dinners and many of the navy officers went and you would think, why are they all

going? because therecaptain went and their superiors went and everybody seemed to be going. and so he was like an intelligence agent. he could have been a great kgb agent because he knew what your weakness was. he tried to exploit that weakness and he would dangle the bait and once he got you on the hook, he would demand things in return. and also tell you, i'm going to, i have, i have the evidence and i'm going to out you if you, if you don't do what i say, ultimately, there were hundreds of navy officers who were involved, about 33 of them pleaded guilty to crimes. others were given censures and other administrative -- >> careers were lost. >> admirals, captains. i have been in the business for 20 years and i shouldn't be surprised by it, but i was surprised at the extent of it and why nobody raised their hand earlier or more vociferously and there were a few but said no. and i think part of the reason, i mean, i tried to think about what the reasons were and i think part of the reason was they saw everybody else doing it. some of them felt entitled to it. they were risking their lives

on behalf of their country. some of them felt when we were out in the pacific and, you know, they're not going to find out, some of them just wanted the benefits. it was shocking how widespread the scandal was. it is the worst corruption scandal in the navy history. >> before the boston college scandal, were you aware of corruption as an issue? did you ever do anything wrong in your life? >> that sounds like aquestion on the polygraph that they'll last year. did you do anything wrong? i'm going to plead the fifth amendment. >> you are not. you have never stolen a pack of gum? >> let's move onto the next question . >> there is another part of the book, astonishing, troubling, it reaches -- the hanson case,

the scary thing as a reader, you cannot believe in the light of day, after a case hasn't wild how someone got away with something so ridiculous for so many years. i want you to give a little bit of the taste, a little bit of a taste of that, of that. what happened and why the fbi was blind essentially for years to a kgb spy in its midst. >>so robert hansen was an fbi agent who was the most damaging spy in fbi history as a result of him spying for the russians and the soviets for over two decades, we lost a number of assets, we lost secrets, we lost sensitive technologies and he evaded detection for 20 years. eventually he was caught in 2001. and when it happened, the fbi said, well, that's because he was an intelligence analyst in the fbi. and he used his intelligence skills to evade detection. and so we were asked to investigate how did it happen and what we found out was that nothing could have been further from the truth. he was a mediocre agent. very unusual individual,

twisted individual with all sorts of red flags and he was very flagrant about what he was doing, but nobody really followed up on it. so he was never given a background investigation for 20 years. he didn't have to take a polygraph. >> he spent money way beyond his means. >> he spentmoney way beyond his means. he would take, he took a stripper with him on an inspection tour and nobody and nobody said anything about it. he deposited money from the russians in a bank, a block from the fbi. he uses his telephone to contact the russians. he hacked to the computer systems of the fbi. and when he found out he said, well, i did this to show how vulnerable the system was. and they said, ok, and they did not collect the derogatory information. and the problem was, but we found out and whatwe said was the fbi did not have an effective internal security strategy. their strategy was based on trust. we trust the employees and trust is not a good internal security strategy. so we made a series of recommendations to improve

their internal security. and that's in my view, that's the value of an ig, you are independent, you come from the outside, you're not afraid to, you know, to criticize the agency. sometimes the agency wants to avoid embarrassment and we were able to do that and point out things that the fbi had missed and were reluctant to do and we followed up on it. in fact, there were hearings before congress and the fbi implemented some of our recommendations but were resistant to others. congress had hearings. one of the things an ig does is testify before congress, i testified 50 times in my career and when congress starts having a hearing about it, it's amazing how quickly sometimes the agency reacts and makes improvements. and that was the case on this one. >> on hansen, did he supervisors like him and therefore cut him slack? and that's the danger of working with people who like you? what was the, what was the, no, what was the explanation for not noticing.

it was the opposite. they thought he was an odd individual. they didn't, they didn't like him. they thought he was, he was weird. and so instead of dealing with it, they sent him off on a detail to the state department where nobody supervised him, they didn't know what he was doing. he didn't have to have to do anything. so he was surfing the internet. they didn't have an audit trail. so he would do audit searches on his own name and on asset's name. if they had an effective security strategy, they would have found that out. but instead they just pushed him off and they just tried to push him off as someone else's headache. and that's not a good strategy. >> tell us how he was caught. >> that is still classified. >> tell us the parts -- you know what i am talking about, the placement of false information files. >> the fbi eventually found out there was a spy in their midst and they focusedattention on him and they didn't mount an effective campaign once that happened, but that was 20 years too late. >> what was the cost of his

spying? >> billions and billions of dollars in lost equipment, but more assets, our assets were executed by russia and we lost our whole range of assets and we lost all sorts of sensitive technologies to the russians because he handed it over, he handed all sorts of information over to them for 20 years. >> there is a famous quote from robert gates. i'm pretty sure you know, this one, he said to president obama, i think in the first week of the obama administration, he said right now, someone in the federal government is screwing up really badly. you'll never know. we don't, it is, we don't know what they're doing, but it will eventually land on your desk. give us a sense ofwhat it's like to go to these kind of jobs every day. and knowing that in such a large organizations with intermittent accountability or accountability issues, tell us -- give us a sense of, after doing this for so many years, how deep corruption cango or how deep sort of not even corruption but just

mismanagement? >> what i will say is this, i think i don't want to over emphasize this, but i think the vast majority of government officials or public servants are doing a good job, are conscientious, are not corrupt. but in any large organization and the department of justice is a huge organization and the department defense -- department of defense is the organization in the world. it has over 3 million people, active duty civilians, the guard. it, you know, it, it has a $800 billion budget. if you compare the department of defense's budget to the gdp of every other country on earth. the department of defense would be the 21st biggest country in the world right behind saudi arabia, right ahead of argentina. so, in an organization that big, you're going to have problems. so, in the ig's office, we had 800 -- 1800employees and contractors to investigate, evaluate audit. that's not enough, but you're going to have problems, you're going to have all sorts of things. and what i would do is i would wake up each morning and i

would see things ,sometimes on the front page of the paper and i know, ok, that's going to be on my desk when i go into the office. and i'm kind of glad i don't have to do that now because i read about it in somebody else's problem. but it is, there are going to be a relentless stream of issues that you have to deal with. and one of the jobs of an ig is to focus attention on the big ones, to triage thingsbecause you don't have the resources to investigate everything. and one of the things you also want to do is find problems before they blow up and make recommendations to avoid issues, to avoid problems. and i think that's one of the key benefits of an ig as well, not simply to find things after the fact, but to make recommendations for processes and procedures to prevent them from happening in the future. >> we are going to goto questions in a minute. so, and we're going to ask people to line up at this microphone here because this is being filmed for c-span. before we getto some questions, talk a little bit about. well, i am curious to know one

thing in particular, you are among thetwo or three or four most experienced igs in washington. is there any way you would ever go back into the service? >> not really, i do not think so. i didit for 20 years. i loved it. i really enjoyed it, but i'm going to a new chapter of my life and i, you know, when one door closes and that door closed, other doors open. and so now i'm a fellow at the brookings institution. i'm an adjunct professor at georgetown law school. i have taught at stanford law school in teaching again and i enjoy talking to students and encouraging students to go into public service, and also write this book. i wrote this book, several reasons, i want toencourage citizens to understand the role of the ig and support it. i want to encourage lawmakers to strengthen the ig. but i also want to encourage universities and law schools to teach about igs and maybe

encourage some students to go into the ig community or public service in general. also, i hope that the book can be useful to the15,000 ig employees in the federal government to be more effective. and there are 15,000 state and local igs employees as well. so, it's a huge community and i think, i hope to have an impact on that community as well. >> what are thepersonality characteristics that someone needs to do this kind of internal affairs work? >> yeah, i guess i would say three things. one, you have to be nonpartisan, that's important. otherwise you won't have credibility. you shouldn't be tied to a political party. two, you have to be tenacious. you really do. you can't just expect one report to solve the situation. you have to keep going back and again and again and again and follow up because people forget about it and you just have to, you just have to keep driving the point home and three, you have to be independent. you're not going to be everybody's friend, you're not going to be popular. you just have to understand

that. look, i know i wasn't the most popular person in the department of justice. i'll tell a story about that. so when i first became the justice ig, i was asked to go brief asenator about a report and i took with me, my longtime deputy terrific guy named paul martin. we went up to the hill. i briefed the senator after the briefing, the senator said to me, ok, good briefing. he said, now let me tell you what i think about inspectors generally, pointed his finger at me and he said you have to be independent. you're going to do things that i don't like. you do things that the congress doesn't like you to do things. the attorney general doesn't like, you can do things that everybody doesn't like. you can't be liked, you won't be liked, don't think you'll be liked. and he kept pointing his finger at me and saying you won't be liked. and finally, i think my deputy paul had heard enough because he interjected. don't worry about that. senator , even i do not like him. [ laughter ] >> thesenator cracked up.

it was the end of the meeting. it was very horous in retrospect, but there's a good point to that story. you're not in it to be liked, you're not going to be popular. i hope you're respected. i hope the work you're viewed is tough but fair. but most important. i hope we had an impact on the agency to improve its operations. >> different igsacross the government have different powers. is that correct? you had a full law enforcement operation and capability at defense especially, but smaller igs don't necessarily have the same powers. >> most of the large igs have lawenforcement powers. we have gun carrying law enforcement agents like fbi agents who make arrests, who investigate criminal conduct, who bring cases to the prosecutor. not everybody actually recognizes that we have law enforcement power. and if i could tell the story about my wife, my wonderful wife. >> it was a sad day when he had to arrest her. >> she was called for juryduty and in the voir dire, the judge asked, well, is anybody a member of a law enforcement organization or has a family member of a law enforcement organization? and somebody raised their hand.

and the judge said, yes, he says, i have a family member who's a member of the law enforcement organization. what's that? and he said, well, i work for the justice department inspector general. and then beth kind of looked around and raised her hand and said, and the judge said, yes. and she said, well, my husband is the justice department inspector general. [ laughter ]so people don't remember, but we do have law enforcement powers. >> that is amazing. let me take some questions. start here. anybody else, please come down. >> i am a retired fed, i'm a lawyer. and after i retired, i worked for a firm that represented whistleblowers, the false claims act. so they were civilian whistleblowers. but what was the role of whistleblowers? and did you defend them against the retaliation that is always present? >> yes . the answer is yesand

yes. the whistleblowers are critically important. they bring very important cases to the ig's office. when i was the ig of justice, we had over 14,000 hotline complaints from whistleblowers and same at the department of defense. not all of them are accurate. many of them are frivolous, but many of them resulted in really important cases. you have to take them very seriously. and even if the whistleblower comes with some baggage, they often have knowledge and a seed of truth. and so i think it is very important to take whistle blower cases seriously. some of the most important cases result from whistle blowers and we also have to protect them from retaliation. retaliation is omnipresent. you know, when somebody gets a complaint against them, the initial reaction is very defensive who made this complaint? it's not true. i'm going to go after that person and you can't do that. so we would investigate retaliation complaints and sometimes i would actually explain to the officials of the department of justice and defense, you're going to get complaints against you. let us do our work, do not retaliate against anybody who you think may have made the complaint. and i saw cases where high level general thought that

somebody had made a complaint against him and therefore said, i'm going to cut the head off of the snake and went after this person for doing for making this complaint. it turned out the complaint wasn't accurate but he was severely punished because he retaliated against this person. and in fact, this person wasn't even the one who made the complaint. >>the complaint was groundless, >> but the retaliation was real and he lost his career as a result. and so what i would tell the generals, i would speak to all the new admirals in general in the capstone class. and i would say, let us do our work, do not retaliate against anybody because that will get you in trouble. even if the underlying complaint is not true. >> can i ask a quickfollow up to that? the, the whistleblowers you deal with? it's very, very hard to discern the nature of many whistleblowers is that they can the scratchy people,independent minded, people may be a little bit eccentric. how hard is it to discern who is coming with a legitimate complaint and who is retaliating themselves through the mechanism of an ig or just

having a delusion that they're being -- that they found something wrong? >> yes, that doeshappen. sometimes people don't understand the full story. sometimes whistleblowers want to get back at their supervisor, but that's what an ig does has to separate the wheat from the chaff,, look at the evidence, not look at the person who is bringing it. you have to understand the motivation, but you have to look at what they say because sometimes people with significant baggage or may have done something wrong themselves. they still have an accurate complaint and know what has happened and bring and brings to the ig something that's very important and needs to be investigated. >> you were asked a few moments ago, how does a corrupt person corrupt other people and i want to ask you how, and so i want ask, how does a corrupt person corrupt a political party? >> i don't know. jeffrey? do you want to answer

that? [ laughter ] i don't know. i could speculate but that is not what the ig does . >> i amlooking forward to reading your book. i'm actually going to be starting an assignment soon as a ig office at a government agency and i'm an attorney, one of the attorneys working there. i'm curious what advice you to have somebody kind of as a legal adviser coming into an ig's office? >> good question. you should read my book. [ laughter ] there are other books about igs as well read the ig act, but you have to just be independent, you have to recognize that you're going to have to give independent advice and, and i would, i would, what i would tell people that would come in, you know, we are a different office. you're not going to be friends with, you know, people in the department, you're going to be, you know, in a unique position and you have to just understand that and do the best you can to be independent and give that the important advice that you -- >> do you tell your employees

not to be friends with people in the department? >> actually igs have gotten in trouble for being too close to agency officials. i mean, to go golfing with them, to doing other things, you know. no, you should not be friends, friends, but you should be friendly with them. you should be personal. i mean, the relationship between the agency head and the ig is fraught. you are working with the agency leaders, you're both trying to improve the agency and so you need to work with them very closely, but you're not part of the management team. i wouldn't go to the management meetings and you were separate. i think it was very important to maintain that distance. i mean, i'll tell the story you and also you might have to investigate that person, you no dumb it down the road,there was one leader in the department of defense, a really strong leader with a great sense of hor, chairman of the joint chiefs, mark milley. and he would, when he would see me in the halls of the justice department, he would say, hi glenn, i'm sorry. halls of the department of defense. hi ,glenn, how are you doing? i would say fine. and then he would say to me,

hey glenn, am i under investigation yet? and i would say not yet, but the day is not over and he would laugh and i would laugh and, it was humorous. you know, but there's a point to that you've got to maintain your distance because you may be called upon and we were called upon to investigate agency leaders. >> i aminterested in the relationship and the relations between the executive branch, igs and the congressional branch, gao or general accounting office. is there friction? how often is there friction between the two or is that not something that generally happens? >> that is areally good question. the government account to hear the question. is there friction between the gao and other congressional branches or congressional committees even, i suppose? and the igs which work in the executive. yeah. so the government accountability office is an arm of the congress. it can investigate an audit and evaluate government programs. it works for congress. so if the congress asks them to

do something, they are pretty much sure they'll do it. we try and work with the gao and coordinate with the go -- gaobecause we don't want to do duplicative investigations or audits. it's a bad thing if we're both doing the same thing or similar things within the agency. so we would try to coordinate with them and it worked when i was there, it worked well and they were amenable to discussing it with us. now, sometimes they had to do a review because the member of congress required it but we would ask them to ask the member of congress, why don't you wait until the ig's investigation over? and sometimes the member of congress would agree to that. ifthey didn't, the gao, pretty much would go forward. but we try and scope it in a way that it's not completely duplicative. so the gao is another very important oversight entity in the government. i think it does very good work and it is important that igs and the gao coordinate and they certainly did when i was there. >> thanks. to add on to that,is it fair to say that the gao at the beginning of the ig post watergate, the beginning of the

ig formulation process, the gao was opposed to the creation of igs? >> yes. this wasin 1978. the gao said, well, we already, we, we have, you know, authority here and it would just be duplicative and unneeded. and in fact, you know, pretty much the entire government, other than the congress,was opposed to the creation of igs. justices were opposed to it. the carteradministration was opposed to it. but eventually they agreed that well, when congress passed it, they should sign it into law because it was in accord with president carter's view of good government. and there was --not too long ago, there was a celebration and i think it was honor of the 40th anniversary of the ig act and a bunch of igs went down to the carter center and he said to one of the igs who happens to be here , terrific ig , president carter said that one of his biggestmistakes was opposing the creation of the ig act and the creation of igs. and they have done tremendous work in the interim.

so he recognized the value of the ig, but at the time, everybody was opposed to it. >> i am curious about the audience, how many peoplehere are currently igs? they'll never raise their hand. there's one brave ig. go ahead, sir. i want to take you back to the month. you were fired. you were fired on day one and day six, your famous jedi report came out and in the report, you talked about how the white house directed pentagon officials not to talk to you. in retrospect, their knowledge ofthat report coming out and maybe their anger at you have anything to do with you being fired. >> i don't know. >> can you explain with a little bit of context? >> we had reports that , you know, were very sensitiveand you know, some of them affected white house equities and there were a bunch of things that, you know, people speculated why i was fired and it was speculation. i was never given a reason. i don't know for sure.

i mean, there's no one from the white house ever communicated this to you. it was communicated in paper, but it wasn't communicated, it was communicated by another ig who told me about it. and then i had to go and say to our general counsel, could you verify this? and he went and verified it and he got the paper with president trump's signature that i had been replaced. so no, and i was never given a reason. i could speculate why, i mean a year before and i talk about this in the book, the president was very upset about us issuing reports, what are called lead inspector general reports about the wars in iraq and afghanistan. and in fact, we were required to do that by the inspector general act and the president said we should not issue these reports. so i was called into a meeting with the deputy after this televised cabinet meeting where the president said you need to lock up these reports to the acting secretary of defense. so i was called into a meeting actually explain this and i explained, look, the ig act requires it --this issue quarterly reports. we've been doing it for several years.

we get the information from the department of defense. ,we vet the information with the department of defense to make sure there's nothing too sensitive for public release. and so, you know, unless and until the laws change, i'm going to keep issuing these reports. >> donald trump's argumentwas that this was helping the enemy. >> yes, he said the enemyreads these reports, but we made sure that any classified or sensitive information was in the classified appendix, the report not publicly released. and the department of defense, by the way, could have under the ig act prevented the release of any information that would damage national security and they never prevented the release of these reports. so we had issues that have been issuing these reports for years. we continued to issue these reports. they're still being issued. i know that for a fact we have, we have maybe not an ig in the audience but somebody who works for an ig officer who works on those reports and we follow the law . that is what we continue to do. >> hello. i am interestedin learning something about women

in this world that you are describing to us. how many igs or how many of them areinvolved with the corruption? who are they is more like the department of education or more, you know, other places. so what can you tell us about how women are in this world that you live? >> in the igworld, there are many women law enforcement agents who work for us in the justice department, some of the best agents, auditors, evaluators, we had a significant percentage of women and some of the best igs now. and when i was there are women, maybe not as many as there should be, but you know, there are some very effective igs women, some who are not so effective. that's true with men, you know, men as well. so one of actually one of the, speaking of that, one of the recommendations in my, in my book and at the back of the book, i have 12 recommendations to improve and strengthen igs, including that there should be

an ig for the supreme court. but one of them is we need a better answer to the question of who's watching the watchdogs? how are we holding igs accountable? and we have an integrity committee of the council of inspectors general who does, which does investigations of igs. but they're slow, inconsistent and they're not doing a good job. and my view is they ought to beef that up. they ought to have a professional staff on the integrity committee. they need a budget for that and so that we could have a better answer to the question of who is watching the watchdogs. so that's incredibly one asses that the appropriate congressional committees would have oversight over ig activities, right? or investigative power over ig activities they thought were errant? >> yes. the congressdoes scrutinize ig activities. the senate government affairs committee, the house government affairs committee, they have jurisdiction has to do many other committees and yes, they do scrutinize igs, but they haven't given igs the adequate budget in my view and they also

haven't given the council of inspectors general an adequate budget so they can do all the important things that they need to do to improve the operation of the ig system . >> i have twomore quick questions for you before you can sign books or do you have a question? go ahead. >> yes, i did. just going back to the, i don't know how long the ic has been in existence, but i heard that last year there were over 7000 complaints to the integrity committee of covered either igs or covered individuals. and they opened two cases. i think back in the day before the integrity committee existed, those were investigated by the fbi. do you think there's ever going to be a point where the integrity committee is funded enough and staffed enough that it would be effective or would it be better to go back to the fbi? >> well, so when the fbi was on the integrity committee, but they weren't really

investigating, it was the same system where they would have to send it to the integrity committee. and the fbi was a member and they would decide which ones to investigate. and if they had to get an investigation, they would ask another ig on a volunteer basis to the investigation and each ig was different . theydidn't give it adequate attention and it was not a priority. so i don't think it's a good idea to have the integrity committee farm out the investigations on a volunteer basis to other igs i believe the integrity committee ought to have a professional staff so they can review thesecomplaints in a comprehensive way. and if they are an investigation that needs to be done, the integrity committee staff with the experience and knowledge and, and resources would do that investigation and do it in a more timely way. having said that, it needs a budget and congress has not provided a budget to the council of inspectors general. the council needs a budget for many other things as well. in my view, be money well spent . itwouldn't be lots of money. it would be several million dollars in the department of defense. we call that budget dust. it's not a lot and it would

have a tremendous impact. so that's one of the recommendations in my book. >> thank you. the question,a serious question. then a not so serious question. the serious question is and we've talked about this in the past. you did a lot of work in afghanistan and iraq, obviously hundreds of billions of dollars spent among other things. good reason to have a dod ig in afghanistan. but anybody in this room who's been a reporter or a soldier in afghanistan or iraq knows that frequently americans would go out on behalf of their government and hand huge wads of money to tribal sheikhs warlords, et cetera to buy, to buy loyalty or to fund anti insurrection, anti-insurgency activities. and it always struck me. american soldiers driving around with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, handing it out sort of randomly. it was in the interest of the pentagon to do this, but it's,

it's participating in the corruption of another country. and i'm wondering how we never actually closed that conversation. i was wondering how you parse that. like, how do you, how do you, how do you oversee a government , u.s. governmentoperation in a country that has different understandings of what corruption is? >> it is a challenge. it's a problem. it's a problem for many, in many ways. you don't have the same internal controls, you don't have the same guard rails, you don't have the same understanding of what's acceptable and what's not. and then to even police this money,

i believe that corruption undermines trust in government asthma as anything else. that is by oversight and effective internal controls are important and also why i think our system is an important model for others. when i was vig i would have officials come to talk to me and marveled at our system. i do not think anyone has the same level of resources can stop everything, but it's a pretty powerful tool to fight

corruption. >> my last question has to do with the 1978 nba draft. there were two players of note. up for the draft. the first was magic johnson. many of you know what happened with him. the second was the harvard point guard. the question is and for those of you that do not know he was drafted. you were drafted first but you want last. you may have been drafted technically last. >> pretty close. >> did you ever have the temptation to skip the road and try it? >> i was drafted in the tampa ground. they only have two rounds now. back then they had 10. pretty close to to the bottom.

that is the first thing you want to talk about. were you drafted by the nba? yes i was. they said you were too short. i said i was drafted in the tampa around. by the san antonio spurs. five foot 9 inches tall. so i actually had to prove that i was drafted. in the article it lists everybody who was drafted in order. in big, bold letters at the top it does say irving johnson, michigan state. los angeles lakers. and tiny little letters at the bottom it says glenn fine. harvard. san antonio spurs. at least i am in the same article as magic johnson. what an honor. so you asked if i ever consider

trying out. i considered but realize the chances of it. 5'9 i had a better chance as a lawyer. i did not go to the tryout camp. i don't regret that, but sometimes i regret that i could have played with an all time and be a great at tryout camp. the all-time leading scorer. maybe i would have gotten an authentic san antonio spurs jersey. is? maybe the san antonio coach greg popovich watches c-span. maybe i can get an authentic san antonio jersey. one can always hope. >> the regional politics grows we hope. thank you all for coming. and no

introduce no it is my pleasure to introduce cheryl. she has written extensively about the role of music