to members of the liberal democrats' party of the autumn conference. then the confirmation hearing to ambassador to japan nominee caroline kennedy. >> this week on q&a, phyllis fong, and the chair of the objectivity and efficiency. >> phyllis fong, what's an inspector general? >> an inspector general is a public official whose responsibility it is to review the operations of that inspector general's agency, to make sure that programs are delivered

effectively and with integrity. >> what does your background have to be? >> well, the statute that created inspectors general stetz that ieg's need to have generated expertise in a number of professions, any one of them, auditing, investigations, law enforcement, public management, and above all, be people of the integrity. >> how long have you been the inspector general for the agriculture department. >> since december of 2002. >> how would you drip this specific job at agriculture? >> at agriculture, my job is to oversee the operations of all of usd a's programs to make sure that they are being delivered as effectively as possible. and so what that means on a day-to-day basis is that we in the iag's office conduct audits to make sure that programs are running effectively, that improper payments are not going out the door.

and we also conduct investigations. when ever there are allegations of wrongdoing in a program, either by a department employee or by a person who's receiving benefits, it's our jurts dictions to run investigations of those kinds of activities. >> how long have you been there? >> since 2002. >> who appointed you? >> the president. the president -- i believe it was president george bush appointed me to the agriculture position. >> what kind of autonomy do you have? >> iag's as you know by statute are considered to be officials who must operate independently. what that means is that although we are located within our own agencies and departments, we are under the general supervision of agriculture. we have professional independence to exercise our judgment as to what issues no ed to be looked at, how we're going

go about looking at them, and ultimately what we report to congress, the president, and the secretary. >> how many people work for you? >> currently we have 530 employees at usaig. >> where are they locate? >> our staff is located around the country. we have a large presence for washington, d.c. we have a large presence in the major federal cities around the country, chicago, atlanta, california, san francisco bay area, texas, and kansas city. >> what's the most obvious thing that you do that the public might not know about? >> in terms of what we do, my sense is that the public has a good grasp of what it means to do an investigation of potential wrongdoing. people understand that you have

somebody who may be accused of engaging in fraud that the ig will have the jurisdiction to pursue that. i think what the public may not be as informed on or may not be as aware of is the kinds of audits we do vis-a-vis our department programs in terms of the responsibility to go in, to look at how the department is delivering. are the programs delivering as effectively as they can. we say how do you deliver the programs, can you do them better? >> the president appoints you? >> yes. >> did the senate have to approve you? >> yes, in my current position, yes. they confirmed me. >> how many are in the federal government? >> we have 73 federal inspectors

general. five or six are legislative branch attorneys general. they're appointed by the agency head. of the executive branch aigs, half are apointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. the other half are confirmed by the agency heads. >> who do you answer to? >> that's a good question. under the statute that created us, we answered to both our agency head and to congress. we have a duel responsibility. >> what happens if you do something your agency doesn't lik

like. program officials may say we don't agree with the premise or the proposed collective action. there's lots of room for reasonable minds to disagree as to what the best way forward is. and the inspector general act provides that there is a way to have those discussions about disagreements, to elevate those discussions to the head of the agency. and to resolve them. if they can be resolved. if the agency head decides that the path forward is better, congress has oversight and can ask other questions. >> the congress chairman of the committee have your fired? >> let me answer that in terms of removal of igs, in terms of what the ig act provides.

the act provides that the person who appoints the ig has the authority to remove the ig. from the case of the presently appointed igs, for example, i'm one of those, the president has the authority to remove me. in order to do that, he must give congress 30 days' notice prior to removal being effective. and the purpose of that provision is to give congress an opportunity to be aware of that proposed action and to engage in whatever dialogue it deems appropriate. >> a couple of years ago, neil barowski, the special inspector general for t.a.r.p. was here. here's what he had to say about the process of i.g.s and i want you to put it in perspective from your experience. >> when glenn fein was the d.o.j., he helped to use his office to help lead the investigation into the politically motivated firings of

u.s. attorneys. that's an example of an extremely aggressive i.g. often you don't hear about them, know about them. i was once asked the question about why a particular agency didn't have an ig doing what they were doing. it turned out they did. you never heard of them because they're so not out there. they're so not aggressive. i was told by an ig point blank that he wished he could do what i was doing. he was afraid for his job in keeping college. he couldn't afford to lose his job. that's one of the problems, they live in fear of being fired if they're too aggressive in carrying out their duties. >> what do you think? >> well, let me offer a number of comments on that tape. when an ig agrees to take the job of inspector general, we know that in the case of the appointed inspectors general

that we serve at the pleasure of the president. that's what the act provides. all of us understood that the pleasure of the president means precisely that. we believe that if we do a good job, that we should be able to continue to serve. my sense based on my knowledge of my colleagues and my experience in the community is that inspectors general, people who take the jobs of inspectors general, who accept that responsibility, are committed to public service. they are committed to making their agencies work well. and they will not be taking these job ifs they did not believe they could make a difference. >> okay, go back to your own situation. you were appointed by george bush, but if you have any political connection to george bush. >> not at all. >> where did you come to to this job? >> prior to my position in agriculture, i was serving as

the inspector general of the small business administration, it's another federal agency. i was appointed by president clinton to that position. and i had been in that job for about three years. >> how did you get that job originally? >> well, prior to that appointment, i had been a career executive in the ig's office at sba. and had worked my way up the ranks of -- got to know how an i.g. office works and from a number of perspectives. as you know, my training is as a lawyer. >> where did you get your law degree? >> vanderbilt university in tennessee. >> i understand you originally studied asian studies when you began your education. where was that. how do you get from asian studies to the law. >> you're correct. i majored in asian studies when i was an underground at pomona college in california. and i found that to be a very interesting course of study.

i have a tremendous and still do a tremendous interest in international affairs, how the global community works, and i think i attribute that to my growing up in honolulu which is as many people say a melting pot. honolulu tends to and does, the state of hawaii has a very diverse population of people from all around the globe. and so, that -- that was kind of a natural development for me. >> where did your family come from origin naaoriginally? >> from china in the mid 1800s. >> why did they come to hawaii. did they come to hawaii? >> they did -- they came from china to hawaii. my grandparents, great grand parts, came on my father's side to work in the pineapple and sugar cane fields on the plantations and on my mother's side, my ancestors were shopkeepers, small shopkeepers.

>> what did your father do? >> he's a physician. by training and profession. >> mom? >> a homemaker. >> you have a lawyer brother and a doctor. >> we have a family of four kids as you mentioned. it's very interesting that my brother who is currently a practicing rheumatologist in san francisco went into medicine following my father's footsteps. the daughters of the family, all of us went to law school, and we like to joke that dad invested in our law degrees so he would have adequate representation if he ever needed it. >> what do your sisters do? >> they are both lawyers. my youngest sister is a lawyer with the federal government. and my middle sister is in private practice doing medical

malpractice work. >> so where does this come from in the family? where is the impetus to be that well educated, all four kids? >> i have to attribute that to my parents. since day way, they were extremely encouraging of us to pursue our education as far as it would take us to develop a professional approach to life. and they instilled in us a value that in addition to being educated, we have a responsibility to help people to get engaged. to do what we can in our own spheres to move society forward to help individuals as well. >> your husband works for the government? >> he did, for a full career. he recently retired. >> he's with the irs.

>> he is. >> he's a lawyer? >> that's correct. >> we often see politicians but don't see government servants very often. what's the motivation to be in government service? >> first of all, throw into that cynics who say government servants have a great life, great -- you know, great health care, great retirement, make good money, all that. and put it in context. >> we talked about our choice to go to government service as a career. and i will say from the beginning of my career, i have been in government service and i have always felt that very strongly that the public practice, the private practice of law is a wonderful reaction. i did clerking while i was a law student and had a chance to interact with clients and see

what private practice was all about. in addition, i had a chance to do internships in the city and state government of honolulu to see how that profession would work. i found it personally much more satisfying to be in a situation where i could work on issues that had broad impact or i could bring my talent such as they are to bear on issues that really affect the well being of many people. 500 and some people who work for you. >> how much money does agriculture spend in a zbleer. >> $500 billion roughly. currently, three quarters of that is invested in the snap prach.

-- program. >> and how often are you worried about the waste, fraud, and abuse. we heard those three words so often in the snap program and how big of a deal is it? >> the snap program is the biggest in agriculture. we have it on our radar screen on a daily basis. let me take a step back in terms of how i.g.'s plan, how we plan our work. we have as i mentioned responsibilities to test programs and investigate the allegations of wrongdoing. you can imagine in a program as big as snap which touches one out of seven americans, there's always the potential for people to try and take advantage of that to engage in fraud, to perhaps try not obtain payments

they might not be entitled to. we have alsos of fraud at all levels of that program. in terms of our oversight responsibility, we plan our audit work, i think anyone will tell you this, the key in how we plan our work is to take a look at the portfolio of our program as our agency as a whole and say where is the greatest risk to the taxpayer dollar. clearly if a program comprisings 75% of the agency's portfolio, you've got to take a look at that to see if the dollars are going where they should be going. >> i have a press release from the usda, may 24, 2012. kevin concannon is still there.

announced new measures to further introduce fraud and supplemental assistance program, snap, as part of the campaign to cut waste. what's the campaign to cut waste. are you a part of that? >> we do not have the monopoly to ensure that government programs work as effectively as they can. the agency program official who has responsibility for that program, in this case, undersecretary concannon is a very knowledgeable and experienced official in these areas of nutrition programs. and he sees as well as we do the potential for fraud on one hand and the need to make the program run as effectively as possible on the other.

so he has as you note rolled out a number of initiative, some of them in response to i.g. audits. some of them on his own, to address vulnerabilities in the program. we certainly welcome that -- we work very closely with him and his staff to partner on some of these initiatives. and we are constantly engaged in conversation with them as to things that we are seeing, vulnerabilities that we're identifying, and ways that the program people can move forward to address the issues. >> not much evidence on the independence on the part of the 73 i.g.s from his perspective. >> my comment -- i have a number of thoughts on that quote. much of the work that we do as

igs is sensitive from a number of perspectives. it can involve personal privacy concerns when we're conducting investigations. it can involve recommendations and findings that we are seeing that we want to make sure that we understand before we go public. one of the key things as inspector general as we do our oversight work and we uncover evidence, we want to continuously test and question that evidence to make sure we have the whole story. we have the context. we have a all of the information that relates to it. we're not missing anything. and we understand what the agency's perspective is. an analogy i would draw is you go the pond and see a duck or a swan on the water, they appear

to be gliding along, but underneath there's a lot of paddling. as ia fwrkss we frequently do not speak publicly about our work until it's at the point that we are confident that we have the right fact ms. that we have a perspective and we have recommendations. >> okay, go to the independence thing again. you're sitting in your desk at the office of the agriculture department, you look around, you have a secretary offing ary can you chur, the president of the united states, the white house group, you have the congress, the press, how much independence do you have? how about the money you get every year to function. who decides how much money you're going to get. >> to answer the last question first, the person -- the person -- the entity that decides how inspectors general are funded to have the bottom line decision is ultimately the congress. and i'm talking from the perspective at usda, we are an

appropriated entity and we put together a budget request every year. we go through the normal budget process, through the department, through omb, the president makes a request on our behalf, but ultimately, it's the congress who decides how much to fund us and for what. as part of that process, there are hearings, congress obtains perspectives from many sources as they would always do. and ultimately congress makes that decision as to what level resources is appropriate. >> how much money for the next fiscal year beginning october 1 have you asked for and i know that we're in the middle of the budgets and all that, how much are you going to get. >> well, talking about the fy-14 cycle at this point. president has set forward his request for our office which would provide for a slight increase, fy-13 levels, of

course, in fy-13, we had sequestration. that's a complicating factor. >> did it hit you at all? >> yes. inspectors general have not been held harmless from sequestration. it applied across the board. in terms of what we are going to receive in our fy-14 appropriation, at this stage of the game, i honestly don't know. both of the appropriations committees have held hearings on the usda request. and i've had a chance to testify before the house and the senate of the committees and we will see what they decide. >> how often have you testified before congress? >> a number of times. i have the opportunity to testify every year, the appropriations cycle. in addition, i would say on average,er testify between four and eight times a year on various issues. snap, there have been a number of hearings on the snap program,

hearings on broadband. hearings in my role as the iag council chair on issues that affect the iag community. >> speaking of council chair. back in 2008, the government authorized the council of the inspectors general on integrity and efficiency. first, why did you need this? i would assume that's what you're doing anyway. and what does it mean? whip are you first chair on this? >> okay, well, as you point out in 2008, congress statutorily created the council. prior to that time, there was no statutorily established entity. over the years as the ig community evolved, various presidents had created councils -- one counsel for the presidential appointed igs and one for the agency heads.

over the years we came together as a community to work on issues of common interest. at the time of 2008 legislation, there was a view that it would make sense first to merge the two councils together so we'd have all igs together in one council. secondly to deal with the issue of providing training to our staff, which was an ongoing and open issue. and third to encourage us to work properly with iags on issues that span agency lines. and in addition, the legislation very importantly put aside a mechanism for dealing with allegations against us as igs. a very important safeguard. >> what does that mean? >> you can imagine, people have said to us over the years, igs, you're here to deal with allegations of wrongdoing against department employees or against members of the public.

what happens when we have a concern that you personally may not have done the right thing? where do we take those allegations? and so one of the roles of the counsel of igs is we have an integrity committee chartered to look at the allegations, to evaluate them, and to do whatever action is appropriate to investigate and to make recommendations. that committee is headed by the fbi and has done a very fine job of running that program. >> why have there been vacancies at the defense department and the state department for so long for an inspector general? >> the va cap sis at defense and state have existed for a number of years and i think all of us would agree that in an ideal world, iag vacancies should be filled as quickly as possible. i think as you think about the

presidential appointment process, there are a number of steps along the way to -- to actually successfully appoint someone. under the statute, if the ig reform act, the ig counsel is responsible for identifying qualifying candidates. with ethen provide those names to the white house. the presidential personnel office, which is responsible for identifying and nominating a candidate and ultimately the candidate goes through the confirmation process. for inspectors general, that confirmation process involve both the oversight committee as well as the government affairs oversight committee. so it's a dual committee process. so there are numerous points along the way where people need to have input, the process needs to run, and things, you know, can derail a nomination.

>> have you read the inspector general handbook by joseph schmitz who used to be the inspector general at the department of defense? >> i'm familiar with its existence but i have not read it. >> i -- the act of 78 is in here. and i just want to read a paragraph talking about this independence thing. complaints by employers, disclose euroof identity and reprisals. it's paragraph b -- section 7. there's a lot in here that the layman can't understand. but this seems to be something that you could give us an answer on. the inspector general shall not at the receipt of a complaint or information of an employee, i assume that's the whistleblower, disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee.

unless the inspector general determines such disclose eurois unavoidable in the course of the investigation. how much comfort does that give somebody who wants to complain about waste, fraud, and abuse that if the inspector general decides he or she wants to out somebody who's a whistleblower, they can? >> the subject of whistleblowers is a very important and sensitive subject. we as igs depend on whistleblowers. we value their information. it's very important that they feel comfortable coming forward and saying, i have information that you need to have. and my identity, i'm concerned about potential reprisal. you need to protect my identity. we understand that statute requires us to extend protections. in practice, what we as igs will do is to advise whistleblowers

of these protections to say to the extent that you can give us specific information, that is much more helpful to us than general information. and sometimes in the course of providing specific information and details, it may be that an educated and informed person may be able to guess as to the identity of the whistleblower. you need to be aware of that risk. secondly, if we move forward based on your information, and we find that in fact there is cause to perhaps take this to prosecution or to administrative action, we need to tell you that at some point your identity may need to be disclosed. we want to be up front with our whistleblowers so they understand that as they get involve in the process, what protections are available to them and at what stage those protections kick in. >> later on in paragraph 8, this

is another facet of this business.

when congress wrote that

language, it was an attempt to balance the need and importance of an ig being able to initiate and run investigations against the need of the administration to manage the activities. i think in practice -- i don't want to speak for the defense ig or any other igs, but my understanding in practice is that the ivgs g believes that it's critical to believe a -- to manage a -- to run a job, to do an audit, to do an investigation that they have a very interswaysive argument to go ahead and neshate that keeping in mind the statutory lack wanting. >> has there been a day that you sat at your desk and said i don't have enough independence? personally no. i have been fortunate as an ig to have worked with agency heads

who really understood the value of an independent voice within the agency. it may not always have been comfortable and the message that perhaps we bring have not always been completely agreed with by the administration but i have never personally experienced interference. >> i want to show some video of congresswoman jackie spear from california, a democrat, a little bit in the committee talking about the i.g. >> i don't know what we can do as a committee. it's a waste of taxpayer funds if all of the recommendations being made as potential savings in the $87 billion range, if we can't force these departments to take the actions that the inspector general suggests -- >> yes -- what do you think?

>> that comment, i believe, came from a hearing recently within the last year or so. and it encapsulates, i think, another perhaps perception on the part of the public that inspectors general, when we -- when we do abaudit or investigation that once we have a finding or a recommendation that we then are authorized to go in and take that action. that we can make the program change. we can take a personnel action. we can prosecute. and, in fact, the inspector general act does not give us that authority. we have what i call the power of the pen, persuasion, logic. we can surface issues and ma recommendations. but we do not have the authority to run program, to implement

recommendations. so, as the congresswoman points out, congress plays a very critical role in terms of providing overstigt p sight to agencies. in terms of asking agencies what are you doing in respect to -- with respect to the recommendations that the inspector general has made. do you agree with them? are you moving ahead with them? what are your thoughts on that? that's a very critical role. >> would we know about the irs selective decision on who gets tax free foundations without this man who is the inspector general of the irs and treasury for -- and outed all of this? >> our report included three key findings. first, that the internal revenue service used inappropriate criteria that identified for review the tax victim status

based upon their names or policy positions rather than on tax exempt lor and treasury regulations. second, that the cases that the irs referred for review as potential political cases experiencing delays, third, the irs made unnecessary and burdensome requests for information. >> did you watch -- do you know the man and is he a part of your group? >> yes, the inspector general who's testifying is russell george. he's the inspector general for the irs. it's known as tikta. he's one of the 72 -- 73 federal igs. he's part of the ig council. >> appointed by the president? >> he was appointed by the president, yes. and confirmed by the senate. >> and so what -- how important was he in this process would we have known what was going on at the irs if he hasn't been in the mix? >> my understanding of this situation based on just reading

newspaper reports and watching film is that -- and i could be wrong on this. my understanding is that his office was requested to do this audit by a member of congress. his office has been engaged in that work for a period of time. he was testifying on the findings of his report. obviously very -- his findings are of great interest to all of us. as a taxpayer, not sure i would be aware of that or the issues without the igs report. >> let me show you on the screen only of the vacancies so the public can know. state department at the time we're recording this, 2,051 days, someone has been nominated for that job but not confirmed? >> yes. recently my understanding is that -- and the white house has

nominat nominated candidates for the state department, the labor department, in addition, the defense department has a nominee. and aid -- the agency for international development has an aid. >> look at the number of days it's been. should the public be suspicious of what's going on here? why in the world would you have an operation like the state department or the defense attorney and you have all of the money going out. fraud, waste, and abuse, nobody is there in inspector general. >> you know, the chart you just put up shows that these positions have been vacant for some years. in the best of all possible worlds, we have a confirmed iag as soon as possible in those jobs. i will say in the actions of the

confirmed iag, the public should take comfort in knowing that the work of the office does continue. career executives in those offices, very accomplished audit executives, investigative executives and managers and the ongoing work of audit and day-to-day investigation continues even though there may not be a confirmed ig. >> what's the advantage of the public on the website? can they learn snig? >> we are still -- we have developed this website and the purpose of it is to provide the public with information about the council itself and what when he do and also provide links to the websites of our individual 73 ig members so that, for example, you are curious about

what the hhs is doing in the area of medicare or the social security ig is doing with respect to social security fraud, you can log on to our website, find a lik to those individual ig websites, go there, read their latest audit and investigative reports, look at their management challenges. list and get a real sense of what the major challenges are facing those agencies and those igs. >> have you ever totalled up the total number of people who work for igs in the 73 different offices and how much money the federal government pays a year or taxpayers pay a year to have this investigating units. >> you raise a very good point. on ig net as well, is the report of the ig council. which would put together every year. and it accumulates those kinds of statistics so that if you're a member of the public want to know as a taxpayer how much am i

investing in this, how many people are involved in ig work? what's the return on investment, we do have that information available. my recollection for fy-2012 is that there are about, oh, 12,000 employees governmentwide doing ig work. 73 ig offices, return on investment of about $17 for every dollar that's invested. >> what does that mean? >> what that means is that for every dollar the congress appropriates to igs, to fund staff, travel, investigations, audits, and oversight, we as igs make recommendations with respect to improper payments, recoveries, criminal finds, all about $1 for every dollar invested. >> there's a site on wikipedia that is headed up.

it's not your personal responsibility. but help us understand this. it's under the heading iraq war misappropriations. the first paragraph -- iraq war misappropriations refers to allegations that billions of dollars have not been properly accounted for or misappropriate in the iraq war from funds released in the united states congress for programs including the reconstruction and rebuilding of iraq after the war. and we've covered stewart for years here in committee as the special inspector general for iraq and afghanistan. here's the line i want you to explain. gag oraleders, this is wikipedia, gag oraleders from the united states of justice/white house are preventing further inquiry to the allegations? how much -- if you're in the public again watching the billions of dollars reported lost in the war over there, but nobody knows, they just

vanished. you see gag orders, is that accurate, to you think? i know this is not your personal responsibility. >> without commenting on the source of the comments, i have not heard that particular comment or characterization. i can talk generally about ig work. you mentioned the department of justice is quoted as -- as implementing those gag orders. just as context, as an ig, when i do work in funds or embezz embezzlement or any kind of fraud in a program, and if we find in the course of that investigation that there's evidence that supports that kind of finding of fraud, the first thing that we do is we consult with the justice department. the u.s. attorneys around the country, the prosecutors, and we say this is the evidence we're

finding. do you think this is a prosecuted interest. is there a way to move it forward? do you have an interest in it? do you think it will succeed? once a prosecutor determines they want to take that on, the justice department then has the normal protocols for working those cases. and because of the criminal justice system which can involve grand juries, can involve indictments, can involve confidential informants, i'm just talking very generally here, involve the use of sensitive investigative techniques that perhaps are not things that the investigative or law enforcement or prosecutive communities thinks can be appropriate for the general knowledge at a preliminary stage, there may well be a request from a prosecutor to work very carefully until such time as is appropriate for public information. an indictment stage where things

become public. now, i don't know the specifics of the situation, but i'm just offering some comments on context. >> this is a leading question. would we be better off as a country and as a taxpayer be better off if the igs in the government have the same kind of independence that the supreme court does. >> that's a very interesting question. >> where you really have independence. your department head can't work to get rid of you if congress is on the same side as the department head. the president can't work to get rid of you that you can't be sandbagged inside. whistleblowers have a real independence, you know, with $17 trillion debt, and the so-called waste, fraud, and abuse week. everybody in congress says everybody in the ig office said waste, fraud, and abuse. getting rild of that, billions that will be lost.

>> the whole issue has certainly been the crux of the -- of the debate. there will be some who say they have too much independence. there will be some who say we don't have enough. my experience within the community is that on occasion, there are situations where an ig is perhaps not granted access to documents in a way that they should be. there may be situations where an agency had -- doesn't fully understand the independence of an ig. so that relationship doesn't work as well as it should. there have been headlines in the past about situations like that. so clearly there are on occasion situations that need to be dealt with. but by in large, i think we need to continue to work on those issues. by in large, i think most igs

would say most of the time, we have to have the ability to do the work that needs to be done, to make the recommendations that we believe needs to be made. at the end of the day, we believe we are fulfilling our mission in the taxpayer interest. >> i want to go back to the interview with neil barowski. he talks about as he started the office inside the treasury department, that he hired a woman from sigir, from the office, the pr person, to come over and be the pr person. 45 seconds of watching him explain that. see -- tell us how important that could be for someone like you. >> the first thing she said to me was i'm not going to lie for you. i never asked you to lie for me. i asked her what she was talking about. she explained how the press works and how she believed it was very important for this agency, a new agency, to be completely up front with the media. never spin, never do a lot of

the tactics that a lot of agencies do, which is off of the record or on background which means telling the press something but not putting your name behind i want. which is one of the great tactics in this town is that people would say -- you could say anything if your name isn't attached to it. you can lie, make things up, and exaggerate. she was saying we're not going play -- if i were to hire her, we're not going to play any of those games. >> do you have a press person? >> let me offer some comments on that. i have one in our office that handles the work with the congress and with media. we get a lot of inquiries from the press about the audits we issued. so we have someone who handles those issues for us. >> what did you think of what he said? >> well, i'll talk about my experience at usda. we run what i consider to be a

very transparent operation. it is our view that we fulfill our role most responsibly when we keep congress informed of what when he ear doing. when we respond with accurate information to the media, and then we -- we keep in mind our responsibilities to both the administration and to congress. e with understand that credibility is our biggest asset. once we lose our credibility, the credit goes down the tubes. that's based on quality in our reports and accuracy in the communicatio communications. so we do our very best to provide complete accurate nonmisleading information. >> neil barovsky earlier in the program through a valentine to glen fine who is no longer a justice at aig and reported by

bill clinton, i believe, and came in in the bush administration. but he was the one responsible for creating that huge controversy over u.s. attorneys around the country. that was fought by the white house. karl rove was one of the most outspoken critics of what he was doing. what glenn fein said about what an ig does. >> we don't look at what happened wrong but we try to use that as a mechanism for improving the operation ms. i find it to be a satisfying and challenging job. i believe that we can have a positive impact on the way our government works. >> would we be better off when it comes to politics if a democrat was the ig and republican administration and vice versa. >> that's an interesting question.

you know we're appointed without affiliation. that's one of the requirements. we like to do our work without regard to the political consequences or the political interest involved. that's not to say we're not aware different perspectives. many of us have worked in situations where we have worked both for republican and democratic administrations. we may have been appointed by a republican or democratic president. and our oversight committees can be controlled at any given time by republicans or democrats. that can change. so we -- comfortable may not be the right word. we're experienced in dealing with political perspectives in terms of how people react to our work. the bottom line is that what we do has to be based on facts,

evidence, and objectivity. and the users of our products can then take it and make whatever policy decisions they need to make. >> the operation called the project on government oversight investigation on the state department ig position. here's jake williams. this is 30 seconds. we talked a about this. but let's put this in perspective. >> the state department ig has been vacant for 1,5076 days, four years, the position became vacant when the recent a ch ig resigned amid allegations he'd been blocking criminal investigations since 2 uprising in iraq. the initiation created an opportunity to fill that position with a highly qualified and well respected permanent ig to restore credibility to the ig office. that opportunity has not been realized as the position has remained vacant without a nominee since the last year of the bush administration.

>> what recommendation would you have to take the appointment of igs out of politics? is it possible. >> it's a very good question of appointment of igs. half are appointed by the agency heads. those of the -- the smaller -- not all of them are smaller, some are quite large. >> good or bad? >> i think -- well, i think you can look at that from both perspectives. from the good side, so to speak, it avoids the confirmation process. the lengthy process that it takes for the presidential appointment and confirmation. on the other hand, agency heads who have the authority to appoint the igs have the authority to remove their igs so it's a much more direct relationship. that can be both good and bad. >> in terms of the appointment of ig, i think greater legal

minds than mine have suggested that we take a look at the constitution and how that might have an impact. since igs are considered officers of the executive branch, that probably needs to be factored in. >> one of the things on the website, the council's website, is training program descriptions. i gather the 12,000 employees can take the training programs. i want to ask you about one. we're almost out of time. there's a whole list of them. this cost $495 tuition. who does that tuition go to? where does that go? if you're taking a course that you're -- your training programs. >> the tuition goes to the ig academy, the training institute. >> is that independent of the government? >> it's part of the ig council. it's a -- it's under the ig council, you know we have two

major missions. one is to do cross cutting studies and the other is to train our staff. we have a training institute that very well run institute that offers courses in auditing investigations and inspection of evaluation. the tuition is designed to pay for if cost of instructors. and any facilities rental that we may have to do. >> what's the budget for the council. >> $7 million. >> how many people work there? >> currently we have in washington about eight employees. we have a few more employees down in glenco, a law enforcement training institute to run the investigative academy. >> i want to read you this one. critical thinking skills. the three-day training program introduces concepts such as the elements of reasoning, socratic questioning, and identifying logical fallacies.

socratic questioning. where did that come from? >> it takes me back to my days in law school. the socratic method, the law schools, those who have seen movies. the way the professor imparts learning is to question and question and question again a student's answers to get to the nub of the issue. >> there's another course by the way, $150. a one-day training course under something called cigie. i assume that's "ciggy." the importance of independence, what it means in practice and challenges and opportunities. oig, the office of inspector general dual reporting role in oversight. can you break that down? we only have 60 seconds. >> the support is in response to great interest in the ig

community and a need to provide a common understanding among the staff about the kinds of issues you and i have talked about today. how does that actually work in practice? what does it mean when it talks about responsibilities to congress as well as the administration. how do we carry that out? and we found that kpours is a very useful course for auditors, investigators, attorneys, everyone in the community as well as new igs. >> i have to end by asking you how it is that you've been in government for all of this time and never done a television interview? >> i was waiting for the right opportunity. so thank you for that -- for providing this to me. >> phyllis fong is the inspector general at the united states agriculture department and the chair of the council of inspectors general on integrity and efficiency, time's up. we thank you.

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