sibility in each case, and because of our lack of authority to make arrests, it is formal Department of Defense policy, and sound investigative practice, that we obtain the assistance of another Federal, or local law enforcement organization with full arrest authority whenever a search warrant is executed. It is time consuming and inefficient to request the assistance of another department or agency. Because of the attendant delay, subjects may flee or evidence may be destroyed. Assistant United States Attorneys have expressed their frustration and concern with using agents from another agency not involved in the investigation in executing a search warrant. This is because knowledge of the details of a case is frequently essential to the proper execution of the warrant. Searches of contractor production facilities and warehouses must be carefully planned and often take days to complete. The DCIS agents are available and trained for such searches. Other Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are understandably hesitant to provide personnel for lengthy searches when the only reason for their presence is to provide arrest authority. Since employees of these agencies are unfamiliar with DOD operations or are unavailable, the narrow window of opportunity in which to conduct a search or make an arrest may be lost. We have sought to reduce the problem caused by our lack of arrest authority by having some of our agents appointed Special Deputy United States Marshals. We have found this process is not responsive to our needs. Fewer than fifteen of our 330 DCIS agents are so deputized. Our experience is that the deputation process may take more than four months. Even when deputation occurs, it is for one agent at a time, one case at a time. We have had instances where an agent deputized on one case was needed to assist other agents in the same office on the execution of a search warrant on a different case. Because the agent was lacking Special Deputy Marshal status on the second case, we were forced to obtain the assistance of another Federal agency with full arrest authority. In a recent case conducted jointly with the FBI and one of the military criminal investigative organizations, one of our agents was granted Deputy Marshal status. Numerous arrests were made, including some involving armed suspects. Based upon the fact that additional agents were needed on the case, we obtained the support of the local United States Attorney and United States Marshal to have an additional agent given Deputy Marshal status. After a three month delay, the request was denied by the Department of Justice. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that this has occurred since we provided you the information that went into making up this chart-a committee exhibit-which reflects that none of our requests have been denied. I would amend that by saying we have since had a request denied. We have been informed all of the Office of Inspector General investigators at the Department of Interior are deputized, as well as twenty or more Inspector General investigators at the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Transportation. It should also be noted that the Department of Justice has recently provided blanket deputy U.S. Marshal status to all the investiga tors assigned to the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General. We have recently commenced negotiations with the Department of the Interior regarding the enforcement of certain environmental laws relating to DOD property. The Department of the Interior has proposed delegating its arrest authority to DOD personnel regarding the enforcement of fish and wildlife laws on DOD installations. If this proposal comes to fruition, DOD officials will have the full statutory arrest authority over poachers but will not be able to arrest individuals who endanger national security and engage in fraud by providing the Department of Defense with defective weap ons. For the above reasons, we request legislation be enacted to provide our investigators with full arrest authority, which is needed to accomplish their assigned responsibility. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify regarding our need for these additional authorities. I would like to express our appreciation to the Committee for its continued support of our Inspector General operations. I urge your favorable consideration of the additional tools that I have discussed and I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions. Thank you. Chairman GLENN. Good. Thank you very much. Before we go on to our next witness I have asked to be passed out at the press table the little press clip I read into the record earlier, and if anyone in the press wants to read that full report that the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency put out, we don't have copies for everyone but we do have a couple of copies across the hall you could look at, or if there is enough demand for it, we could probably request enough copies for everyone, if you want to come over there and read the full report. Our next witness, Bill Colvin, IG at NASA. Bill, welcome to our hearing. TESTIMONY OF BILL D. COLVIN, INSPECTOR GENERAL, Mr. COLVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. I am pleased to have this opportunity to discuss with you my concerns regarding the absence of full law enforcement authority for criminal investigators of the Offices of Inspector General and also for the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to wish you a happy birthday. Chairman GLENN. I am trying to forget them at this point. Thank you. Mr. COLVIN. I have submitted a written statement for the record and would like to take a few minutes of your valuable time to present some oral remarks. The views I will express are my own and are based on my experiences as a former Special Agent of the FBI and now as the Inspector General of NASA. It is my opinion that these views are equally applicable to other Offices of Inspector General. 1 See p. 89 for Mr. Colvin's prepared statement. Had I been asked to comment on this issue in 1983 when I first joined the NASA Office of Inspector General, my response would have been quite different from today. At that time our criminal investigations were few, and administrative investigations involving employee misconduct, such as time and attendance abuse, misuse of Government property, and violations of promotion policy were many. Today that simply is not the environment. The ratio of criminal to non-criminal investigations has increased from 2-to-1 in 1982, to almost 6-to-1 today, and my small staff of 34 field agents is presently pursuing over 630 investigative matters, of which 85 percent, or over 535 matters, are criminal in nature. When 85 percent of my investigative effort is in traditional law enforcement, it just doesn't stand to reason to limit my powers to the other 15 percent. In the last 21⁄2 fiscal years, our investigations have resulted in recoveries of over $15 million, 40 indictments, and 38 convictions. Now, what is the genesis of this dramatic change? I believe it evolved from the IG Act, which consolidated the audit and the investigative functions under a single individual able to see agencywide. The Offices of Inspector General have matured in their ef forts to accomplish effectively their statutory mission of detecting and investigating fraud and other related criminal conduct aimed at our agencies' programs and operations. Our agencies rely on us as their fraud investigative experts, and indeed, the expectations of Congress and the taxpayers are for us to pursue these criminal actions vigorously. We have met, and I think exceeded, these expectations. However, we have done so at great risk to our investigators, our auditors and our witnesses. Our agents receive the finest training available at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. There they sit side by side in the same class, using the same syllabus as agents from traditional law enforcement organizations. Even though our agents are fully trained, fully qualified, have a strong mandate, and meet the professional expectations of their agencies, the Congress, and the taxpayers, they lack some of the basic tools of law enforcement to carry out their missions more effectively. To me the issues are simple. Paramount, and the overriding theme of my remarks, is concern for the safety and well-being of our special agents, our investigator/auditor teams, and our witnesses. Second is the issue of economy and efficiency in being able to pursue our investigations. Last is the issue of professionalism. Currently our criminal investigators lack sufficient personal protection when subjected to unsafe and potentially dangerous situations while performing their assigned duties without the minimal protection a firearm provides. It is unconscionable to continue to send unarmed men and women, frequently alone, to conduct criminal investigations in today's society. When confronted with the choice of terminating an investigation or subjecting my agents and their witnesses to physical danger, I will opt to walk away from that investigation, and indeed, we have done just that. Just as our criminal investigations have increased in numbers, so has the potential for danger. Certainly the thrust of our criminal investigations is in the white collar crime area, typically viewed as nonviolent crime. I can agree that the crime itself is typically non violent, but I cannot agree that it is not a dangerous investigation. Often we are dealing with the pillars of the community, men and women who are highly motivated, well respected, highly successful, and family oriented. We represent a threat to their status, and no one knows what the reaction of that person will be when confronted with the possibility of losing their livelihood and stature. At least one of our subjects used a firearm to commit suicide. Next time that weapon may be pointed in a different direction. More and more often the white collar crimes are leading us into areas of criminal activity generally associated with violence, such as drugs in the workplace. Certainly the criminal investigators that we expect so much of must be afforded the basic tools of their profession and the right to personal protection. I am keenly aware of, and indeed share, the concern of a few for the proliferation of firearms within the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, that is a management concern and one for which I am fully prepared to accept the responsibility. The options available to us are varied and we need the flexibility to manage to our individual needs. We receive allegations from Government employees, contractor employees, concerned citizens, and particularly from our OIG auditors as a result of their work. There is growing Congressional and public concern over the vulnerability of tax dollars to the danger of criminal predation on the programs and operations of our agencies. The agencies are highly sensitive to a desire for quick action to remedy any wrongdoing. From this comes an inherent right to expect economy and efficiency. The frustration level is high when time and again I observe investigations being prolonged as we wait for a benevolent sister agency with the basic tools we are lacking to find the time, when they are already over-burdened, to assist us. In one investigation there was an urgent necessity to execute a search warrant, a basic tool we do not have. There were no Federal agents sufficiently near to provide assistance. We then issued an OIG subpoena, enforcement of which required 9 months and several hundred staff hours of effort to litigate. This is neither timely nor efficient. Our agents need the basic tools of full law enforcement authority in order to be able to execute search warrants in a timely and safe manner. Our special agents currently develop the probable cause for affidavits in support of search warrants, but then must obtain assistance from a full law enforcement empowered agency to obtain and execute the warrant. This arrangement is cumbersome, it is costly, and it is fraught with coordination difficulties. Not only are our agents trained in obtaining search warrants, many are experienced in their execution, having done so in previous employment with full law enforcement empowered agencies. For years I have attempted to work within the existing system, as cumbersome as it is. It does not work. Neither is the special deputation process a substitute for full law enforcement authority. That process discounts the time factor for submission and approval and implies that hazardous conditions encountered during the course of a criminal investigation are known days, and in fact weeks, in advance. That is not the case. Certainly this lack of full law enforcement authority impacts the perception of professionalism of our criminal investigators and is a morale, recruitment and retention factor. Just as important is its impact on our ability to conduct our investigations. The states are passing more stringent privacy laws. As a result, we are being denied access to necessary state and local criminal records because we do not possess arrest authority and are therefore not recognized as traditional law enforcement officers. Despite these hindrances, OIG special agents continue to pursue complex white collar and drug-related investigations successfully. I attribute their continued success to their maturity and their professionalism. The granting of full law enforcement authority, including the authority to obtain and execute search and arrest warrants, along with authority to carry and utilize firearms to Inspector General personnel, is essential for the effective pursuit of our mission. It is an inefficient and ineffective use of scarce investigative resources and wasteful of the taxpayers' dollars to require two agencies to obtain and execute search and arrest warrants when one can do these things alone if it possesses full law enforcement authority. My written testimony contains real life examples of the present unsafe, inefficient, and unprofessional environment caused by the absence of full law enforcement authority for the Inspector General investigators. I will not take your precious time here to reiterate these examples. I am also aware that this Committee is in receipt of the March 1989 document entitled "The Need for Full Law Enforcement Authorities," submitted by the Offices of Investigations of the Statutory Offices of Inspector Generals in Federal Government. This publication provides literally hundreds of examples of the need for this authority. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I strongly support full law enforcement authority for OIG criminal investigators. I stand ready in any way that I can to assist the Committee in its deliberations regarding full law enforcement authority. Thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. Chairman GLENN. Thank you, Mr. Colvin. First we have the last witness, Herb Beckington, Inspector General, USAID, Agency for International Development. Mr. Beckington. TESTIMONY OF HERBERT L. BECKINGTON, INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 1 Mr. BECKINGTON. Well, Mr. Chairman, I associate myself strongly with the points made by my colleagues at the witness table in support of the need and requirement for law enforcement authorities for the criminal investigators of the Inspectors General offices. I don't believe that I need to be repetitive on any of those points. I would draw and offer two conclusions, Mr. Chairman, that I believe in very strongly. I think from my experience in watching this situation over a period of time, that I have the strong view that the full criminal investigative potential of the offices of investigation of the several statutory Inspectors General is simply not now being realized. At a time when limited Federal resources in the law enforcement field face ever more crushingly heavy workloads, the 1 See p. 100 for Mr. Beckington's prepared statement. |