WASHINGTON - The top watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security altered and delayed investigations at the request of senior administration officials, compromising his independent role as an inspector general, according to a new report from a Senate oversight panel.
Charles Edwards, who served as the department’s acting inspector general from 2011 through 2013, routinely shared drinks and dinner with department leaders and gave them inside information about the timing and findings of investigations, according to the report from an oversight panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee.
A year-long bipartisan investigation by the panel also found that Edwards improperly relied on the advice of top political advisers to then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and acquiesced to their suggestions about the wording and timing of three separate reports.
The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the document, which is to be released to the public today.
Edwards’ actions occurred while he was seeking President Barack Obama’s nomination to be the permanent inspector general overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, the third-largest government agency, with a $39 billion budget and more than 225,000 employees.
“We found that Mr. Edwards was a compromised inspector general … who was not exercising real oversight,”said Sen. Ronald Johnson of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the financial and contracting oversight subcommittee, which led the investigation of Edwards’ tenure. “Any report generated out of his office would be suspect.”
Edwards declined to comment through a department spokesman.
Edwards, a 20-year federal career employee with expertise in computer engineering, resigned his office in December, three days before he was scheduled to appear at a Senate hearing to answer questions. The Department of Homeland Security granted his request to be transferred into its science and technology office, and the hearing was canceled.
Johnson and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the subcommittee’s chairman, opened the investigation while looking into the hiring of prostitutes by Secret Service agents ahead of a 2012 presidential trip to Cartagena, Colombia. Whistle-blowers said Edwards had ordered them to remove derogatory information about the service and evidence implicating a White House staff member. More staff members stepped forward to allege deletions and delays in other reports.
Several staff members said Edwards told colleagues that he was the White House’s pick for the permanent job.
Investigators said they confirmed improper deletions and delays in several reports but did not reach a conclusion on the Secret Service-related allegations because the department declined to provide Edwards’ emails about the Secret Service report. The Secret Service is an agency of the Homeland Security Department.
Napolitano, now president of the University of California system, said in a statement issued by her office several weeks ago that no changes were ordered in inspector-general reports related to the Secret Service.
“Neither Secretary Napolitano nor her staff ordered that anything be deleted in the Inspector General’s investigative report. Any suggestion to the contrary is false,” the statement read.
Napolitano said Wednesday that she would not comment on the Senate panel’s findings without reading the report.
One senior aide said Edwards ordered changes to a March 2012 report about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency at the request of senior Homeland Security Department officials, according to the Senate inquiry.
The report dealt with complaints that senior department officials intentionally misled Congress and the public about a new program to identify illegal aliens called Secure Communities, and whether local law enforcement was required to participate.
Edwards agreed to delay the release of the same report at the request of a department official, Senate investigators said. The report was on Edwards’ desk on March 1 of that year, but he agreed to a request from John Sandweg, then the department’s general counsel, not to release it until March 27.
The timing meant the report was not issued until after the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified at a House hearing that month.
In another instance, the Senate report said, Edwards followed the suggestion of a top Homeland Security Department official by adding information to a report questioning the effectiveness of advanced imaging screening by the Transportation Security Administration.
Edwards agreed with the official’s suggestion to classify the Transportation Security Administration report as “Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information” - the highest level of classification - rather than the looser restriction of “Secret.” The label meant members of Congress could read the document only if they had a reason to do so, made arrangements and reviewed it in a specially secured room.
Edwards’ chief investigator complained that the move was an effort to “derail our report and minimize our findings,” according to the Senate report.
The Senate panel’s investigators said they could not confirm Edwards’ role in a report on Secret Service culture because - unlike in the other cases - his office declined to provide any related emails or correspondence. Edwards’ investigation concluded that the agency did not have a broad leadership or cultural problem in the wake of the Cartagena scandal.
The Senate investigation found that Edwards placed on administrative leave three people who questioned the Secret Service report deletions, including the office’s general counsel, who was on paid leave for eight months before getting another job.
The federal office that reviews whistle-blower complaints sided with the counsel’s argument that Edwards was retaliating against him for complaints the counsel made about Edwards’ conduct.
Edwards was particularly close to members of Napolitano’s inner staff and often communicated more with them than with his own senior leadership team, the Senate inquiry found. Before scheduled testimony in front of a House committee in March 2012, Edwards asked Sandweg, Napolitano’s top political adviser and the acting general counsel, how to respond to questions from Congress about the best way to improve a department program, the report said.
Edwards also asked Sandweg to edit a memorandum of understanding that involved Edwards and to provide ongoing legal advice at work, investigators said. “I really need some legal help,” Edwards wrote in one email to Sandweg. “Please help me for the next four months.”
Federal law requires inspectors general to remain independent of the agencies they oversee and to seek legal advice only from their own counsel or another inspector general’s counsel. Edwards told Senate investigators he didn’t trust his staff counsel.
The Senate report said Edwards conferred regularly with both Sandweg and Noah Kroloff, Napolitano’s chief of staff, at the same time he was purportedly pushing to delete information from the Secret Service report. Kroloff has close ties to Mark Sullivan, the Secret Service director at the time of the inquiry, and left the department to co-found a private consulting company with him.
Kroloff declined to comment through a spokesman, saying he had not seen the report. Sandweg, who resigned in February as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also said he could not comment without seeing the report.
Senior officials in the inspector general’s office said they were not aware of Edwards’ private communications to the Homeland Security Department. Edwards told the Senate there was nothing improper about such updates.
A new department inspector general, former federal prosecutor John Roth, was confirmed by the Senate last month.
Department spokesman Peter Boogaard said in a Wednesday statement that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson “believes in and values the critical role the IG plays in this department” and that he is confident in Roth’s new leadership of the office.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/24/2014