Ms. CRAWFORD. Yes, or legislation. [Laughter.] Chairman GLENN. I will take that as a not-so-broad hint. I have three questions from Senator Sasser, who was not able to be here today. He is involved with some of the budget summit matters on basically a 24 hour basis these days. He asked me to get your response to the following questions; One, has the current deputation system actually caused anything worse than annoying hassles or frustrating time delays, as outlined in your statements? Number 2, how often has the existing deputation process actually caused undue delays or other problems that clearly resulted in foiled criminal investigations by your office, or physical harm to any agents? Mr. Colvin. Mr. COLVIN. Well, as I testified, Senator, I have closed one investigation down due to the lack of that authority and the inability of fully empowered law enforcement agencies to provide me the assistance that is required in that. The deputation process, because of the timeliness of it, would not have assisted me. Chairman GLENN. Mr. Beckington. Mr. BECKINGTON. As I noted earlier, Mr. Chairman, we have made no effort whatsoever to use the deputation process, so that in general I think answers his questions. Chairman GLENN. And your cases are mostly criminal also, and yet you have not needed the deputation process to go ahead and develop the whole case? Mr. BECKINGTON. What we have done, sir, is to choose the other method. Rather than seek deputation of some of our own people, we have chosen the method of going to another law enforcement agency and asking for their cooperation and assistance. Chairman GLENN. A third question, can you envision any scenario under which the deputation process was significantly reformed and streamlined to adequately meet your needs? That would apply only to Mr. Colvin I guess. Mr. COLVIN. No, I don't see it as a substitute for full law enforcement authority. Chairman GLENN. But the question was, can you envision any scenario under which the deputation process was significantly reformed and streamlined. Well, I guess you have answered that also in previous testimony. We appreciate this very much. I don't know where this leads us with regard to your broad hint, or not-so-broad hint. Senator Boschwitz has a statement which I will insert into the record. 1 We thank all of you for being here this morning and for your time and effort, and keep up the good work. I am one of the biggest boosters of the IG's around here, as I think most of you are aware. I think it is one of the better things we have done. It receives little enough notice, but just the summary report that I read into the record earlier indicates the job that you are doing. It was put in, quite frankly, back in 1978 as an experiment. I didn't know whether it would work or not. I supported it. It worked well enough over 1 See p. 107. the first approximate decade that last year, or about 11⁄2 years ago, of course, we expanded it, covered eight agencies with it. That caused a lot of heartburn in some of those places because nobody wants new people looking over their shoulder. But that looking over the shoulder I think has had such a beneficial effect, and even dollars and cents effect straight head on, that I think it is a very valuable service you are performing and one that I hope will come more to the fore as far as recognition for your efforts go. Thank you all very much for being here. The Committee will stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair. [Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the Committee was adjourned subject to the call of the Chair.] Thank you for the opportunity to express the Department of Justice's views on a number of issues involving the law enforcement powers of the Inspectors General. Legislation Conferring Criminal Law Enforcement Powers First, let me address proposals to confer broad criminal law enforcement powers on all Inspectors General. Generally, the Department of Justice has opposed legislation that would have this effect. As discussed at length in our letter of March 22, 1990, we believe the proliferation of statutory law enforcement authorities throughout the government is unnecessary and would hamper the effective administration of the criminal justice system. We therefore have opposed legislative proposals that do not take into account the specific needs of particular IGs, or the varied law enforcement missions of their respective offices. As the agency solely responsible for federal criminal prosecutions, the Department of Justice must be in a position to assure that criminal investigative priorities are consistent with prosecutive priorities both nationally and locally, and that cases have prosecutive merit. The Department of Justice has in a few cases supported legislation giving law enforcement authorities to criminal investigators in particular executive agencies, upon a showing of specific need. For example, just a few years ago we supported legislation that gave law enforcment powers to criminal |