The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

An Interview with Rolling Stone Reporter Michael Hastings

By DANA LIEBELSON

Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings never thought he was going to get the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan fired.

But in June 2010, one of the hottest D.C. summers on record, the Rolling Stone reporter—who was then only 30-years-old—penned a piece that sent shockwaves through Washington and left high-ranking military brass scrambling for their jobs. All it took was for Hastings to write about what he heard and saw while traveling with U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. 

Hastings’ story, “The Runaway General” in Rolling Stone was the result of a month spent with McChrystal and his closest advisors. Hastings got unusual access thanks to the Icelandic volcano, which thwarted the team’s travel plans and extended the reporting trip. The resulting story included quotes from McChrystal’s camp that publicly criticized the Obama Administration. Shortly after the piece came out, President Obama ousted McChrystal.

But the story wasn’t over yet for Hastings—he decided to dig deeper and expand the piece into a book. The result, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan, was published in January. We caught up with Hastings and spoke about his new book, corruption in Afghanistan and how to write about those in power.

POGO: How did the consequences of your Rolling Stone piece affect your decision to write a book?

Michael Hastings: When I was reporting for the article, I immediately knew I wanted to write a book about it—on day two or three of my trip. So I thought the story would come out, and I’d write a book about it a year later, and it would be about the general who was still running the war. So [the firing of General McChrystal] was obviously a surprise. It made it a much bigger story, and it made Rolling Stone a part of that story in a way it wasn’t before.

POGO: Do you think there is ever a time when a journalist shouldn’t report what he or she hears on record? Particularly about people in power?

Interview: Who is Winslow Wheeler? Pentagon Reformer, Softie

By DANA LIEBELSON

If you've been following POGO’s blog, you know that defense expert Winslow Wheeler has recently joined our staff. Wheeler, who has decades of experience shedding light on Pentagon waste, is a breath of fresh air in a world that constantly claims more money equals more defense. We chatted with Wheeler about reform, his bipartisan political experience, and how—despite the fact that his investigations make war-mongers quake in their boots—he’s still a “big softie.” Be sure to stay tuned for our podcast discussing more of his experiences!

POGO: Why do you think your work is a good fit with POGO's?

Winslow Wheeler: I have been closely watching POGO’s extraordinary work for years and years. Even back in the 1980s I worked closely with Dina Rasor’s Project on Military Procurement [the first incarnation of POGO]. POGO is unique in the Washington, DC scene for its directness and willingness to call the shots as they lay, rather than to shave down the data to fit the weekly twists and turns of what sounds “reasonable” to the political apparatchiks that dominate Congress and think tanks. I am flattered that such a super organization would welcome me and the Center for Defense Information and the Straus Military Reform Project.

The subject area that I have been working on for the last four decades is military reform. Sadly, in the past era, we have gone significantly backwards: more money has bought less defense; the wars have been a catastrophe for the nation and the military services, and Congress has sharpened its talent for incremental steps that appear to go forward but in truth are steps backward. We all have lots of work to do.

POGO: You were the first and last professional to work on the personal staffs of a Democrat and a Republican at the same time—what (if any) difference did you see in the two parties handle defense?

Interview: David Kotz, Former SEC Inspector General

By JAKE WIENS

As the General Services Administration (GSA) conference scandal continues to unfold, with new and shameful evidence of government waste and misconduct emerging seemingly every day, the spotlight has once again turned to the important work of Inspectors General (IGs), the federal government's independent watchdogs.

The scandal, which was first uncovered by the GSA IG, has led to the resignation of GSA’s top official, the firing of several more GSA employees, and continued criminal and congressional investigations into the matter. That the GSA IG published a report with such obvious political implications highlights the significance of IG independence and credibility, two qualities POGO has argued become diminished when an IG is led by a temporary, rather than a permanent official.

But unfortunately, IG leadership positions at many key agencies have been vacant for years. One of the current vacancies is at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which failed to prevent many of the abuses involved with the financial crisis. The SEC IG position became vacant when David Kotz resigned in January following a tenure marked by hard-hitting investigations, including an evaluation of how the SEC missed the $50 billion Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Kotz’s leadership earned the admiration of Congress and groups like POGO, but caused tension with some current and former SEC officials who had grown accustomed to operating without scrutiny.

POGO put five questions to Kotz on his tenure as SEC IG and the impact on oversight caused by IG vacancies.

New Video: Danielle Brian Talking Government Oversight on C-SPAN

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

On Sunday, POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal to talk about the costs and complexities of government oversight, especially in light of the recent conference scandal at the General Services Administration (GSA). She took some interesting questions from callers about President Obama, Rep. Darrell Issa (D-CA), Inspectors General, and the problems holding up oversight in government. Check out the video!

Andre Francisco is POGO's Online Producer

Follow @andrefrancisco

Interview: Eyal Press, Journalist and Author of Whistleblower Book, "Beautiful Souls"

By DANA LIEBELSON

POGO spends a lot of time with whistleblowers: protecting them, reporting on them, and helping them get their voices heard by the powers that be. But one thing we don't meditate on often is America's culture of whistleblowing. What makes an employee go against the grain, and blow the whistle in this country? Is it something in the water, or something in the blood?

These are the kinds of philosophical questions that Eyal Press, journalist and former Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, has sought to answer in his new book: Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times. According to The New York Times, Press “splices his case studies with brief accounts of other dissenters, along with insights drawn from sociology, political theory, history, neuroscience, psychology, fiction and philosophy.”

Each of those topics deserves their own college course. So POGO caught up with Press and asked him instead about whistleblower traits, protections, and the recent effort by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) to hang financial whistleblowers out to dry. 

POGO: You have said that Americans’ relationship with whistleblowers is “schizophrenic”—on one hand the idea is romanticized, on the other we’re not likely to support real-life whistleblowers. Can you talk about this?

Eyal Press: Instead of schizophrenic, I would say that deeply ambivalent is a better description. On one hand, there is a kind of lore surrounding whistleblowers in American culture—we see it in Hollywood movies, and in the fact that Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience is taught in high schools. The idea of an individual standing up to institutional corruption really resonates with a lot of Americans.

On the other hand, when it comes to actually paying attention to whistleblowers and protecting their rights, the U.S. record is not so great. I think one way that can be changed is to increase awareness and knowledge of what whistleblowers do to make our democracy healthier. Healthy institutions and government agencies require the airing of alternative views, and the capacity for people on the inside who witness corruption and fraud to speak out about it. We can’t acquaint ourselves with the benefits if we don’t know the stories. The first part of is educational. The second part is political—we need better laws.

POGO: In demonstrating how whistleblowers are vital to saving U.S. taxpayer dollars and lives, is there a case in your book that particularly stands out?

SUNSHINE WEEK INTERVIEW: Michael Lemov Talks Presidents and FOIA

By DANA LIEBELSON

It would be difficult to have Sunshine Week without the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Journalists and the public rely so heavily on FOIA to gain insight into government doings; it is easy to forget that up until 1966, the Act didn't even exist. Thankfully, it does—and one of the men we have to thank for that is former Democratic congressman John Moss from California, a good government champion who passed away in 1997. (Moss is in POGO's Good Government Hall of Fame.)

Michael R. Lemov, an attorney in Bethesda, Maryland who specializes in federal regulatory issues, worked closely with Moss to tell the story of his hard-fought struggle to get FOIA passed. The result is the book, People’s Warrior, published in June, 2011. POGO spoke with Lemov about Moss, FOIA improvements, and Obama’s crackdown on leakers.  

POGO: How has the FOIA process improved since it was enacted?

Michael R. Lemov: FOIA was John Moss’s great vision, and a breakthrough. The law implemented an American right that is implied in the First Amendment, but not explicitly stated: Americans can’t speak freely if they don’t have access to adequate information. FOIA has improved since 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law—specifically with the 1974 amendments, which played a major role in giving federal courts power over the executive branch. Overall though, it’s just like what Moss said to me before he passed: “If you ask me, we are doing better than we were in 1966. But as to whether we are where we should be—absolutely not.”

POGO: How could the process be improved?

MRL: One big thing is reducing the time it takes for investigators—like POGO and the press—to get responses. When too much time elapses, a story becomes useless. President Obama’s focus on open government issues from the top has definitely helped. 

POGO: How would you rate President Obama’s dealings with FOIA?

Interview: William Hartung, Defense Contractor Expert and "Prophets of War" Author

BOOK RECEPTION POGO is co-sponsoring a book reception on March 8 for the paperback release of Prophets of War. Get the details on our Facebook event page!

By DANA LIEBELSON

The largest defense contractor in the U.S., Lockheed Martin, is also a heavyweight in POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, having paid $590 million since 1995 in fines, penalties, and settlements for cases of misconduct. Perhaps no one knows more about the problems associated with this defense contracting giant than William D. Hartung, whose book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, is being released in paperback on March 6. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program, and is an expert on weapons proliferation, the politics and economics of military, and national security.

In anticipation of the new edition of Hartung’s book (it was first published in hardback in December 2010), POGO spoke with him about contracting costs, Obama’s defense budget, and the revolving door.

POGO: What made you decide to write Prophets of War?

William Hartung: I’ve worked on military spending issues for a long time, and Lockheed Martin just kept turning up. The company is a big arms exporter, was a player in the Strategic Defense Initiative under Reagan, and was on the cutting edge of the merger movement in the 90s. In terms of looking at how the defense industry works, [Lockheed Martin] just seemed like the obvious place to start.

POGO: What do you think President Dwight D. Eisenhower—who famously warned about the dangers of the military industrial complex—would have had to say about Lockheed Martin?

WH: I don’t think Eisenhower could have imagined it. In absolute military terms, the U.S. defense budget is a lot larger than it was, and the idea that a company could get $36 billion in government contracts in one year and be involved in almost every area of defense—from weapons production to working with the IRS and Homeland Security—would have been unbelievable. 

Interview: Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren on Reconstruction Failures in Iraq

By DANA LIEBELSON

The U.S. wasted billions upon billions of dollars in Iraq on poor contracting practices, but very few insiders are willing to talk about it. Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren is an exception.

Van Buren served with the Foreign Service for over two decades and worked as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) leader in Iraq. In September 2011, he released a book about his experiences, titled: We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. After the book’s publication, the State Department suspended Van Buren’s security clearance indefinitely.

POGO interviewed Van Buren about the contracting waste he witnessed in Iraq, the mistakes the U.S. is still making in Afghanistan, and of course, whistleblower protections.

POGO: Can you give me some examples of the kind of waste and incompetence you witnessed?

PVB: I had one contractor…who  hadn’t had a performance review in five years, but had stayed on, because there was no one else. I’m not just going to sit down and accept things when they are not right. So I decided to write a realistic evaluation. But the contract was renewed anyway against my advice, the reason being, he only had one negative evaluation—mine. 

Another good example is our interpreters, who were largely employees of a subcontractor, an Alaskan Native-owned company. Most of the ‘terps’ were Iraqi-Americans recruited from the Detroit or Chicago areas. They tended to fall in two groups—they were so Americanized, they could speak only childhood Arabic, or they had very little English capability. They were fraudulently presented to the U.S. as skilled, but they weren’t.

Finally, there was the general problem that I wasn’t adequately contacted to see how projects were going. Take, for example, a meat factory the U.S.  was supposed to be operating in Iraq. When we stopped by the factory, we found out that the contractor who’d taken ownership of it had sold it off almost immediately. The second guy who was supposed to run it couldn’t make any money, so he moved to Dubai. When we arrived, there were six Sunni families squatting in the factory. And we were still paying the security guard for the plant. He wasn’t there either. 

On Corruption: 5 Questions with Lawrence Lessig

POGO Senior Writer Beth Schulman recently caught up with Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig to talk about the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements, campaign finance, and the nature of corruption. Lessig is the author of Republic, Lost, one of the books on our list of 10 books that matter for 2011. 

POGO: It seems like Occupy and Tea Party demonstrators confirm your sense that there is trans-partisan outrage the influence of money in politics. Can these movements find common ground in this issue?

Lessig: I do think they will get it, if it is pressed in the right way. Not sure yet what way is that right way, but I am struggling with working it out. 

POGO: Between the influx of campaign cash to Super Committee members and renewed focus on the revolving door issue, a lot of people may have become cynical about the role of money in politics. Can we suspend this cynicism enough to actually solve the problem?

Lessig: Only if it mixes MORE with LESS. We need limits on independent expenditures to be sure. But we also need public funding. If we got both (in the right form), the revolving door would not be as big of an issue. 

POGO: Do you believe that campaign finance reform could address the problem of contractors being “too big too fail”? It often seems like contractors—particularly those under the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security—can count on a steady stream of government deals no matter how much misconduct surrounds their work.

Interview: Improving Lobbying Transparency Encourages Competition and Democracy

By DANA LIEBELSON

Publishing lobbying activity online would promote competition and a vibrant democratic process, according to a paper released last month by two researchers at the Academic Center of Law and Business, an international institute of higher education located in Israel.

In the paper, authors Moshe Cohen-Eliya and Yoav Hammer outline a proposal to expand the scope of transparency requirements in U.S. law, requiring lobbyists to publish online all written materials transmitted to politicians and to list all areas of lobbying activity. 

POGO interviewed one of the authors about improving transparency in the lobbying process, the problems with the “revolving door” phenomenon, and why they believe their proposal would serve the public interest better than the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

POGO has long advocated for increased lobbying transparency. While we don’t take a particular position on the authors’ proposal, we thought it’d be worth highlighting the issue to spark discussion, especially considering all the money pouring into politics and contracting. Find the interview below the jump.

Interview: Kathryn Bolkovac of "The Whistleblower" on Human Trafficking Scandal, New Film

Kathryn Bolkovac

By DANA LIEBELSON

In "The Whistleblower," which airs this weekend at POGO's Whistleblower Film Series in Silver Spring, Maryland, Rachel Weisz plays a U.N. peacekeeper who exposes a sex trafficking ring among her colleagues in Bosnia.

The movie is based on Kathryn Bolkovac (find the trailer below the jump), the real-life whistleblower who served as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia in 1999. She was fired by her employer, DynCorp, after alleging that her fellow U.N. peacekeepers were complicit in the rape and trafficking of underage girls. In 2002, a British employment tribunal ruled that she was unfairly dismissed.

DynCorp continues to do billions of dollars of business abroad with the U.S. government. POGO interviewed Bolkovac over email about whistleblower protections, the untold side of the scandal and the Hollywood portrayal of the story.

POGO: We've heard a lot about your role in sparking investigations into DynCorp and U.N. officers for sex trafficking. What's the one aspect of this story that people are missing?

Interview: $1 Of Lobbying Money Made Banks $500 in Bailout Funds

By DANA LIEBELSON

The 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)— the Bush Administration's $700 billion response to the mortgage crisis—was designed to provide capital injections to banks that needed it. But according to a study published last week, banks that lobbied or had other types of political connections were far more likely to see TARP cash than those that didn’t.

Benjamin Blau

Benjamin Blau, Tyler Brough and Diana Thomas, three professors from Utah State University, authored the report. Corporate Lobbying, Political Connections, and the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program takes a comprehensive look at the lobbying expenditures and political connections of banks that were recipients of TARP funds. The researchers found that for every dollar firms spent on lobbying during the five years prior to the TARP bailout, they received between $486 and $586 in TARP money. Firms that lobbied also had a 42 percent higher chance of receiving TARP support than those that didn’t.

Diana Thomas

POGO interviewed one of the researchers, Diana Thomas by email about the findings, political investments and what the Super Committee can take away from this kind of research (but probably won’t).

POGO: Why did you decide to conduct a study on the Troubled Asset Relief Program?

Diana Thomas: During lunch about a year ago, a colleague mentioned that the biggest criticism of the bailout was the randomness of the distribution of the funds. We quickly agreed that it would be interesting to see what factors contributed to the distribution of bailout money. Additionally, since one of us is a political economist, we decided that it might be worth looking at potential political determinants of bailout funds.

Tyler Brough

POGO: Do you think there are problems associated with the fact that firms that engage in political lobbying receive more bail money?

DT: From an economist’s perspective, lobbying is just another form of investment and there are a number of studies that show that it is a surprisingly profitable investment. Our study does not address the question of whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Given the current set of political institutions, it is to be expected that corporations will seek to influence political decision making processes. What is surprising is that some firms chose to stay out of the political game given that it is such a profitable investment.