WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley is seeking answers on why an investigative report of serious misconduct by a Department of Veterans Affairs deputy inspector general – who at one time served as acting inspector general -- never became public.
“I’m concerned that agencies are fighting each other over the release of reports like this and that they’re cherry-picking legal advice to avoid releasing investigative reports,” Grassley said. “The agencies need to remember their legal obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. They need to keep in mind the accountability that comes from coming clean about misconduct. I’m looking for answers not just in this one case but for public benefit in all such cases. When misconduct is swept under the rug, it makes it a lot easier to get away with misconduct again.”
Grassley is concerned that an investigative report from 2008 on sexual misconduct involving a top Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (OIG) official never became public. The same employee had been disciplined for having unauthorized sexually explicit material on his work computer in 2003 but nevertheless was promoted to be the department’s acting inspector general. The report of investigation of the 2008 misconduct has not been produced under the Freedom of Information Act, despite a pending 2013 request to the Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General, which conducted the investigation, and requests directly to the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General in 2012.
“DOI-OIG officials believe that the report their office authored should be produced pursuant to FOIA; however, the recipient of the report, the VA-OIG, reportedly, does not,” Grassley wrote to the chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), a governing and oversight organization for inspectors general. The CIGIE process is what led to one inspector general’s office reviewing the conduct of a high level official in another agency’s inspector general’s office.
Grassley asked a series of questions to understand CIGIE’s important role in processing FOIA requests.
Separately, Grassley wrote to the director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice. He said that office gave conflicting advice on whether the investigative report in question should be released per FOIA, according to the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General. Grassley added that the “basis for shielding this document is dubious.” The Justice Department’s own guidance and the President himself have emphasized that serious misconduct by high level officials is of sufficient public interest to outweigh almost any individual privacy concerns. Grassley asked about the Justice Department’s controls to ensure that it gives sound advice on FOIA fulfillment.
In a third letter, Grassley asked the acting inspector general at the Department of Veterans Affairs for the number of requests it has received for the investigative report and how each request was resolved. He asked the office if it will reconsider the report’s release. He asked how many misconduct investigations of VA inspector general office officials have been conducted by outside entities.
Grassley is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the committee of jurisdiction for the Freedom of Information Act.
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