On Tuesday, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone issued a now-infamous eight-page letter to House Democratic leadership announcing that President Donald Trump would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. While the letter set out a host of perceived grievances, perhaps none is as concerning—and misleading—as the complaint that the impeachment inquiry is “constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process.”
We are not naive enough to think that this letter was actually meant as a serious attempt to persuade the House to pull back the impeachment inquiry. But its contents have been cited and circulated widely enough that we think it’s important to take a closer look.
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Meeting the Challenges of Today
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Over the past 38 years, the Project On Government Oversight has worked to stymie corruption in our government so the American people could be confident that decisions being made in Washington are aimed at benefiting them. Over those almost four decades of work, the fight has gotten more difficult as the country has faced new and growing challenges. Read about POGO's accomplishments and impact in 2018.
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This Week at POGO
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Funny how a silver bullet, when designed and built by the U.S. military-industrial complex, costs its weight in gold. And when you’re trying to hit a silver bullet with another silver bullet—the goal of the Pentagon’s national missile shield since 1983—it turns out to be far more costly than that.
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A new service branch would put more bureaucracy between critical capabilities and the troops who need them.
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POGO & Whistleblowers
POGO has a long history of working with whistleblowers and protecting their rights. We believe that whistleblowers are our first line of defense against corruption and abuse by the federal government. We’ve spent years protecting these truth-tellers and the mechanisms to hold government accountable, and today we’re seeing why all of that work matters.
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It’s not new to see the motivations of whistleblowers and inspectors general questioned when their disclosures are politically inconvenient.
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Intelligence community whistleblowers shouldn’t have to go through intermediaries before they can inform Congress of matters that can impact the nation’s security.
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Whistleblowing is not a crime—in many cases, it is a legally-protected right. This interactive quiz can help you learn more about your whistleblower rights and protections as a federal sector employee.
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It is possible to fight wrongdoing from within without sacrificing your career. This survival guide, intended to help and empower conscientious government employees when they encounter wrongdoing in the workplace, covers what federal sector employees should know before blowing the whistle.
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We distilled our survival guide into this e-course, delivering key lessons and tips to your inbox each week.
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Federal employees should never have to risk their careers when doing what's right for our country.
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We need the official channels for disclosing wrongdoing in the government—that’s why POGO continues to fight for increased whistleblower protections. Without increased whistleblower protections, honest citizens trying to protect the integrity of our system could be intimidated into silence while the legal fabric of the country unravels.
Give now to support POGO’s work protecting whistleblowers.
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POGO in the News
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Trump stands to earn between $100,000 and $1 million per year from Trump Tower Istanbul, according to a U.S. Office of Government Ethics report from earlier this year.
“This is exactly why it is super important for a president not to have foreign entanglements in the business world,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.
[...] Watchdog groups say conflicts of interests, and the perception of conflicts, in Washington politics is hardly new.
“There is this implicit access or proximity to power with having the last name of a Biden, or a Clinton or a Bush or a Trump,” said Hedtler-Gaudette.
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Critics also worry that people aren’t being trained adequately in how to use the technology and interpret its results. Researchers say that law enforcement agencies don’t always disclose how its analysts are taught to use the systems, or who is conducting the training. And they worry that even if a department claims a strong training protocol, people will inevitably let biases about gender and race creep into how they assess a match.
“There’s a huge amount of reliance that this is going to be accurate if it spits out a match, or a candidate list of five people,” said Jake Laperruque, senior counsel at The Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight. “And that’s just not the case.”
[...] Beyond the software itself, critics worry that users will put too much faith in facial recognition, even as they acknowledge the software’s pitfalls. Laperruque pointed to the “CSI Effect” — when people come to believe in the technology’s infallibility because of how they see it used in a crime shows on TV.
“Training in general is seen as a pretty essential feature of getting this to work," Laperruque said. “There’s an expectation when law enforcement and the public see a new sci-fi-looking tool to say, ‘This is a magical, futuristic technology,’ when in reality, facial recognition is a lot more akin to outsourcing policing to glitchy computers."
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NAYLOR: In the more than two and a half years of the Trump administration, inspectors general have been busy. They've investigated former interior secretary Ryan Zinke's business dealings, the travels of former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and the office redecorating of housing secretary Ben Carson. The Department of Justice IG Michael Horowitz was in charge of the probe into whether former FBI Director James Comey mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails and other related issues. Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight, gives Horowitz high marks for calming the storm.
POGO'S DANIELLE BRIAN: There was almost sort of a fevered pitch in Washington on both sides sort of accusing the other side of wrongdoing, and when Michael came out with his thorough but well-documented report - and he came into it with, you know, really a level of credibility - it helped to sort of reduce the anxiety around Washington. It was credible, it was taken seriously, it was authoritative, and it sort of put the matter to rest.
NAYLOR: Brian also praises the IG of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, for the way he dealt with the whistleblower's report, even though he's come under fire by some on the right for his handling of the matter. Ervin was one of eight former intelligence community IGs who signed a letter in his support. One troubling issue for Brian is the number of vacant IG positions in the federal government - 11 by her count, many filled by acting IGs.
BRIAN: Sometimes those actings are actually trying to try to get that permanent position, and so they're not going to be - they don't have the incentive to be tough and do serious investigations that might be politically complicated if they think, well, but then, I'm less likely to get the job.
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The subsequent changes now require the FBI to explain why searching Americans’ data is necessary to find foreign-spying information or potential evidence of criminal activity, as well as to distinguish between its searches involving Americans and its searches involving foreigners. Civil libertarians questioned the ability of those changes to adequately protect American privacy.
“The FBI’s conduct clearly shows that giving the government warrantless access to Americans’ communications will lead to fishing expeditions and abuse,” said Jake Laperruque, senior counsel with the Project on Government Oversight’s Constitution Project.
“But the new FISA Court rules don’t do enough to prevent more misconduct. The only way to do that is for Congress to pass a law closing the backdoor search loophole.”
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Development of the SM-3 Block IIA was delayed by two test failures in 2017 and 2018 before a successful intercept in October 2018 put the program back on track.
“Technically, hitting a bullet with a smaller bullet is a real challenge,” said Dan Grazier, a fellow at the nonprofit watchdog agency the Project on Government Oversight.
Citing the roughly 50% success rate of the ground-based system since 1999, Grazier said that won’t cut it if one nuclear-tipped missile gets through.
“The more of these systems that we try and that don’t work and are eventually canceled kind of bolster the argument that this might be a bridge too far, technologically speaking, because we’ve been working on this for decades now and we still can’t crack that nut.”
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“Pretty much any time you’re talking about anyone with a lot of power and money, one of the only ways we can effectively check them and know what’s going on tends to be because whistleblowers came forward,” Mandy Smithberger, Director of the Center for Defense Information, told The Globe Post. “They do so at great personal risk.”
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Esper’s in good company in Washington’s military-industrial swamp. Recent reports by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO)—a vital organization that hardly any American has heard of—identified “645 instances in the past 10 years in which a retired senior official, member of Congress or senior legislative staff member became employed as a registered lobbyist, board member or business executive at a major government contractor.” POGO also noted that “those walking through the revolving door included 25 generals, nine admirals, 43 lieutenant generals and 23 vice admirals.”
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The WPIA is backed enthusiastically be a wide range of good government advocates including the National Whistleblower Center, the Project on Government Oversight and Public Citizen.
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Not only is the PCAOB getting called out by us pundits circling the profession like hungry vultures waiting to pick the last rotten piece of muscle off a rapidly-decaying corpse (no offense, Francine, you know I love you), the normies are starting to pay attention, too.
In September, the Project on Government Oversight wrote a scathing hit piece on the PCAOB titled How an Agency You’ve Never Heard of Is Leaving the Economy at Risk that I absolutely recommend reading in its entirety.
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