Trump Forcing Out Defense Inspector General Glenn Fine Leaves Defense At Risk For Waste And Abuse

Glenn Fine resigned May 26 as former acting Defense Inspector General, clearly forced out by Trump blocking him from vital role for stimulus funding.

Trump has replaced or otherwise neutralized many inspectors general recently. The IGs are independent of politics, and have served Presidents of both parties. Trump shows he does not want independent watchdogs finding waste, fraud and abuse in his administration.

Fine had a stellar record for many years. His fellow IGs had picked him to the new, and vitally important, post of IG for two trillion dollars of stimulus funding.

Trump is again moving in a crude but clever way in replacing the IGs. Some he replaces with an out-and-out political supporter. For example, he put a White House counsel in as the stimulus IG in place of Fine. 

Others he replaces with a gumshoe like the current replacement for IG, Sean O’Donnell. O’Donnell does have a record of enforcements. However, he is likely to devote the vital resources of the Defense IG just to finding small faults or minor violations. He may not take on high-level policy criticisms. 

I became familiar with the Defense Inspector General’s office when I was Commissioner on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008-2011. At the time, I saw the tug of war over the Defense Inspector General choosing to go in two opposite directions – to high-profile investigations and reports that exposed major operations involving enormous waste, or just to go after small fry with minimal implications.

The post of Defense IG will be of vital importance in times to come. For current examples, the Trump Administrator showed astonishing incompetence – or worse — in dealing with the coronavirus epidemic on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt. The press covered the scandal from the outside, but did not have the inside investigation power of the Defense IG. If that IG steps up to the plate, he could determine the role in the scandal of the top level of the Defense Department, and beyond that, the White House. Trump at one point personally addressed the scandal to the press, making inane public remarks. It remains to be investigated where he got his information and what he said internally. 

For another example, Trump has plunged ahead, spending billions of dollars on his much-ballyhooed creation of a Space Force, intended to be a new military force like the Army and the Navy. Trump faced so much resistance on Capital Hill, on a bipartisan basis, to this public relations damp squib, that he accepted downgrading the operation basically to a much lower level.

A vigorous Inspector General would look into the new Space Force to see what, if anything, it accomplishes. If he found, consistent with critics, that it is a waste of taxpayer funding, a well-documented report might hold down the waste in the force.

Alas, Glenn Fine’s replacement is unlikely to look at matters of the high importance of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt and the Space Force. Trump likely picked him from confidence that he would restrict his work to the little and noncontroversial pursuit of small fry. Let us hope that the confirmation hearings for Fine’s successor pin down that he will be worthy of the post.