The FRONTLINE Interviews
Paul K. Martin
Former USAID Inspector General
Paul K. Martin is a former inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a position he was removed from in February 2025. He served as inspector general for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 2009 to 2024.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group's Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 25, 2025. It has been annotated and edited for accuracy and clarity as part of an editorial and legal review. See a more complete description of our process here.
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USAID Inspector General
So let’s just start with you, at the beginning, your background, what brought you to be an inspector general at USAID.
I’ve been in the inspector general community for over 25 years.Spent 12 years at the Department of Justice at the Office of Inspector General there, rising to be the deputy inspector general.Then I had the opportunity to be an inspector general and served for 14 years at NASA, and then my final 14 months I was the presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed inspector general at USAID.
So what do the inspector generals [sic] do in general?What’s their role?
The role, really, is to sort of be an in-house resource both to the agency head and to Congress.We look for waste, fraud and abuse.… We look at the agency’s specific programs to look for effectiveness and ways to tweak efficiencies.We’re sort of the in-house auditor and investigator for each agency.
Do they like you inside the agencies, the inspector general?What is it like when you come down the hallway?
Yeah, I wouldn’t use the word “like.” My goal has never been to be liked at any of the agencies, the three agencies I’ve worked at.It was always to be respected for the quality of our work, our findings—evidence-based, fact-based findings—and then helpful recommendations.The goal of inspector generals [sic] is to improve the agency, not tear it down, and so if an agency head meets us halfway with that understanding of what our role is, our independent role—and that’s the key: We are independent of the agency head.We have the authority and the ability to investigate anything or audit any program in the agency without asking for prior approval.
So is there tensions over those years between the head of the agency?
Absolutely.No agency head on their watch is excited when an audit report by the inspector general is released to say that your program that your staff has poured their lives into is either over budget or is ineffective or is riddled with fraud or waste.Nobody likes that, but this is the kind of thing that is important to uncover, to fix it.That’s the whole idea, is to improve the agencies, make them more effective, make them more responsive to what their mission is.
Over those years you’ve been doing it, over all of that time, were there moments where you felt like you were being pressured by the White House, by political appointees to not do something you felt like you had to do?
I’ve never felt pressured by the White House or by the agency head not to do something.… I’m not unaware.I’m not naive of the potential impact of our findings on an agency head or on the agency itself, but I’ve never not undertaken a review or issued a report because of perceived pressure or that folks on the receiving end might not like the message that we’re sending.
Why does there have to be an IG [inspector general]?When Congress has oversight, they hold hearings.There’s the press.What does the IG do?
Yeah, the IG—again, 74 IGs at agencies large and small.There’ll be a handful of folks at the smaller agencies in the IG shop, up to over 1,800 members of an inspector general shop at the largest IGs, like the Department of Defense or VA [Veterans Affairs].We know the programs.We’re embedded in the agency.We are employees of the agency that we help oversee.And so we spend years understanding the programs and these very complicated processes so that we can go in and evaluate them or investigate them and come up with concrete recommendations for improvement.
Who are the people who work as an IG?
In the IG’s office, we have auditors; we have IT specialists; we have attorneys; we have criminal investigators, weapons-carrying criminal investigators.The IGs themselves, about half of them are presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed, and they have a variety of backgrounds.Some come from an auditing or a consulting background.Many of us are lawyers by training, and a few have a law enforcement background.
But the main criteria for being an inspector general is to be apolitical, nonpartisan and independent.
And so when you were there, as an IG, do you identify as a Democrat or Republican?
Absolutely not.… I’ve stressed this in each of the offices that I’ve worked at.We are apolitical; we are nonpartisan.Administrations come and go; the inspector general is a constant.
USAID’s Role in American Foreign Policy
So tell me, help me understand what USAID is, because a lot of people had not even heard of this agency before the Trump administration came in.
Right.It’s the U.S.Agency for International Development.It was formed over 60 years ago by Congress to assist in coordination with the Department of State to further U.S.diplomacy and U.S.diplomatic ends in sort of a civilian-based approach, both for humanitarian assistance and aid—that could be food after a disaster—and also development assistance.
What’s the purpose of it?Why have an agency like that?What was the mission of it?
The mission of USAID, I think, was to work in tandem with the State Department and the president and the Congress to better effectuate U.S.foreign policy and U.S.diplomatic agenda.
So what kind of things were you doing before the Trump administration came in at the IG’s office?
Right.We were reviewing over $36 billion in USAID spending in over 110 countries around the world.Again, they had hundreds if not thousands of programs ongoing in these countries at any one time.Many were sort of disaster-assistance-related, food assistance in Ethiopia and in Sudan.It could be governance, building up democratic governance in some countries that had a concern about autocratic rule.There’s just a wide variety of programs that were initiated by USAID, most of the time with partners, either in NGOs, non-government organizations, charities or some U.N.agencies that would be what we call implementers, the folks on the ground doing the actual work that USAID was funding.We would review these programs and see if they were achieving their stated objectives.
The phrase that the administration uses, that is not new to them, was “waste, fraud and abuse.” How much did you see in the time that you were there at USAID?
It’s interesting.Waste, fraud and abuse is from the IG’s hymnal.That’s a direct quote from the Inspector General Act.It’s what we do.We look for waste, fraud, abuse, economy and efficiency in our agency’s programs, so when I heard those words being parroted about, I thought, they’re singing our song.
How much fraud and abuse that I see?There’s always fraud.You have a $36 billion annual agency, there is going to be misuse of some amount.1But to be honest, what we saw—and we had the law enforcement capability inside USAID to investigate and, working with Justice Department, prosecute these cases—we saw a relatively small amount of true criminal fraud.
1
ForeignAssistance: U.S. Foreign Assistance
DOGE Cuts to USAID
So let’s go to the moment, to the transition, to that period when there’s talk about a Department of Government Efficiency, talk about dealing with waste, fraud and abuse.What was it like inside the agency, inside your office?
Well, I’ll speak inside the agency.I think there was a great bit of apprehension because—there is at any transition, any presidential transition.I think there’s a great deal of apprehension and expectancy and just “I wonder what’s next,” because each agency, whether it’s Department of Justice, whether it’s NASA, or whether it’s USAID that I’ve been involved with, the new administration has different priorities and different focus.
Within the Inspector General’s Office, though, because of our independent, apolitical nature, there’s no change.Again, we have been, for the last 45 years, understood to be apolitical and nonpartisan, and we would not, as a presidential appointee—we’re one of the few presidential appointees who was not expected to submit their resignations when a different party would take the White House.We were that constant, independent, apolitical watchdog within the agency, irrespective of whether R’s were in charge or D’s were in charge or whatever.
Did you have any discussion with the transition teams or the landing teams?
We did.We had a very substantive hour-and-a-half-long conversation with the landing team, the transition team, to talk about what priorities the Office of Inspector General had and where we were using our resources for oversight.We had no interaction whatsoever with any DOGE team members who were at USAID.
What did you think when you first heard the discussion of DOGE?I guess the concept of what it was changed over time from being, it sounded like, a committee to something that was inside the executive branch and the White House.But what did you think when you heard discussion about what they were going to do?Because it sounds a little similar to what you said your mission was.
Exactly.That’s what we first thought of, is the fact that when they were bandying words like “waste,” “fraud,” “abuse,” “efficiency,” “effectiveness”—again, that is from the inspector general handbook.Those are our mission.Those are our guiding goals in any reviews that we do inside our agencies, and so, frankly, we were hoping that we would have a partner in trying to make government run more efficiently.
What did you see when the president does come in, and one of the first executive orders he does is to transform part of the White House into DOGE and to place Elon Musk at this key position?What were you seeing or thinking as it becomes more real?
Yeah.Again, in the Office of Inspector General, we had no contact whatsoever with DOGE representatives.We were certainly open and willing to meet with them, to inform them about what we had done over the past 45 years at USAID and the kind of oversight and the type of work, audit work and investigative work we had ongoing, but they never asked.
Did that surprise you?
Did it surprise me?Not particularly.I’ve been in government close to 40 years, so it didn’t surprise me.I think it was a missed opportunity.I think it could have been helpful if the group was serious about finding out what works, what doesn’t work, and what areas within the agency might be most fruitful for a deep dive.I think that would have been helpful, but again, we’ve been on the ground for decades with this oversight experience.I think we could have been quite helpful, but they never asked.
I understand you weren’t talking to them, but you were seeing what they were saying, and you knew that Elon Musk was coming from outside government with a reputation as a successful businessman, an outspoken sort of political operator in the last couple of months, and that he was recruiting people from outside of government who had backgrounds in IT and things like that.Did you have a thought on the effectiveness of that kind of approach, having been inside the government for all of those years?
Well, again, given what we do for a living in the Office of Inspector General, we do evidence-based, fact-based audits and inspections and reviews of different agency programs.So to come into any organization, be it USAID or the Veterans Administration or Social Security, these are complex organizations with complex missions and complex infrastructure IT systems.There’s no way, no matter how intelligent you are, to pick up the importance and the complexity of these organizations in a matter of days, let alone a matter of weeks.
When we would conduct an audit of a program at any government agency, it generally would take nine to 12 months, to do a program on it to assess the effectiveness of any single program.To think that you can have that level of understanding and thoroughness in a matter of days if not weeks is just unrealistic.
I guess we don’t really know what they have been doing, but it sounds like what they were doing, unbeknownst to you and USAID, was running through databases, was looking for keywords, was possibly using artificial intelligence to make decisions about this idea of waste, fraud and abuse.Was that an approach you had used, or were you open to that kind of examination?
The type of reviews that an inspector general does generally are much deeper, much [more] thorough and focus on the evidence, focus on fieldwork that we do, to be on the ground, to see how programs are working or how they’re not working.This idea that, again, that you can come in in a matter of days or weeks—or by looking at a singular database—string together conclusions, evidence-based conclusions about the efficacy of an agency’s programs, I don’t think that’s possible.
One of the things that happened early in the administration was that Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio put a 90-day freeze on U.S.funding for foreign assistance, which had dramatic ramifications within USAID, and the purpose of that, supposedly, was to conduct this thoughtful review of USAID’s programs during that 90-day period.2To be honest, I never saw any evidence of a thoughtful, careful, engaging approach with agency officials who were managing these programs to assess their effectiveness and to help decide whether or not they should be continued.
Did you see anything of what they were doing?Or are you saying they were making those decisions without engaging at all?
It was completely unclear how they were making the decisions, but I know firsthand that they were not engaging in a thoughtful manner with people at the agency who were running these programs.Now, whether they were doing word searches, looking for “climate change” or “women’s empowerment” or words like “democracy,” I don’t know, and canceling those contracts or those agreements with those types of organizations.
But that’s their prerogative in a sense that, when a new administration comes in, to choose different policy priorities.At Office of Inspector General, we are not management.We don’t opine about whether focusing on democratic governance or climate change is appropriate or inappropriate.Whatever policy focus that an administration has, and they set up criterias [sic] for the success of that program, that’s when the inspector general then, we might go in and assess how well, after a year or two, how well that program is being operated, and is it having the desired results?Again, at Office of Inspector General, our role is not to opine on “This is a good policy,” or “That’s not a good program or use of your money.”
USAID Funding Freeze
So you don’t have an opinion on those things, on those policies.But for the agency, was that funding freeze sort of the first shock wave or warning that things were going to be different for the agency’s management?
Absolutely.That complete cessation of funding.And it was very unclear.There were exceptions made the next day or two days later for emergency food assistance, emergency humanitarian assistance.3At the same time that the funding freeze happened, large chunks of USAID employees were placed on administrative leave and cut off from agency email systems and other databases, and that was having a significant impact on USAID’s ability to work with its partners around the globe.4We had hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in play around the world in ongoing programs.All came to a dead stop.
3
U.S. Department of State: Emergency Humanitarian Waiver to Foreign Assistance Pause
What was it like for people who worked at USAID as you saw it, for people who were in the field getting those notices or for people who worked in the building?
I can only speak to the people in the Office of Inspector General, because we have 12 international field offices as well with agents, with auditors and investigators posted there.When they got the notice of "Stand down," and/or "You’re going to be recalled to U.S., and your overseas mission is going to be ended within the next several weeks," there was shock.There was absolute shock.People have dedicated their lives to serving in the foreign service overseas, trying to make a difference at USAID, and to sort of overnight, without any engagement, without any warning, it was a massive shock to the system.
They’ve got to be concerned about their careers, but there’s the other aspect of it, too, which is the programs that were in progress.What was the effect of that freeze?
Well, again, we’re the oversight entity, so you’d almost have to ask the program people for the specifics.But again, there was such lack of clarity in the early days of the stop-work order, and then there was different exceptions made for vital food assistance and humanitarian assistance or health-related care.
But the agency, we found, the agency officials managing these programs were in fear of communicating both with the NGOs or the U.N.agencies on the ground who had been implementing the programs to check in on them, or even their colleagues at the State Department.There was such a lockdown of communication and concern within USAID employees.People were frightened for their jobs.
What was the fear?Because that’s a word that comes up not just in this aspect of the story.Why was there a fear?What was the fear of?
Well, I think the fear of was individuals losing their jobs, stepping outside whatever perceived lane, communicating something, that whoever was calling the shots—and that’s one of the points is, it was unclear who was calling the shots.Ostensibly, Secretary Rubio was named as the acting USAID administrator, but this was early in the early days of his being secretary of state.He was flying around the world on diplomatic missions.He clearly was not on a day-to-day basis running USAID.
So it was unclear where these orders were coming from.People were afraid of speaking, again, with their colleagues at the State Department or at the U.N.for fear of being called out, being placed on administrative leave, being cut off from USAID systems.They eventually closed, quite quickly actually, the USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., locked people out of that building, locked them out of their IT systems.
It was a time of significant concern and upheaval.
You said that the IG office, that you are nonpartisan.What about the employees of USAID?Were they sort of a resistance?Did they have a political allegiance?Because some of them must have been through other administration changes.
Yeah.I personally have been through seven or eight different presidential administration changes, from Democrats to Republicans or vice versa.Again, the message from the top has always been, “We are independent; we are apolitical; we are nonpartisan.We are the entity within the agency that does not change from administration to administration.”
If you’re asking, did I see an overt political bent to USAID employees, it never came up in our work.When we would audit a program—it could be the President’s Malaria Initiative in sub-Saharan Africa—that’s not a political issue.This is, is the medicine and the money going to the right places to have the desired outcome?
Is there a reason to believe that if the policy changes, that these were people who wouldn’t salute and do what the administration says?Because I think the White House believes that they wouldn’t, that the sort of bureaucracy is against them.
Yeah.Again, people may have their personal preferences or their personal opinions about what the best policy is in their area of expertise, particularly if they’ve devoted decades of their lives to that issue area.They may have opinions, and I would hope we work in a government, we work in a nation where those opinions are heard.But then someone in the supervisory chain makes a decision—we’re going to continue with this program; we’re going to curtail this program—and once the decision is made, hopefully, after free and full discussion, you move forward.And I have no reason to believe that USAID employees would not have complied with those directives.But I have no idea.
Do you have any insight into the moment when representatives from DOGE tried to enter the building, tried to access information?
No.We did not have any firsthand contact with that.… We were aware that there were several disagreements about access to space or systems with the security folks at main USAID, but we were not involved in those discussions.
Was that the kind of thing that the inspector general might have gotten involved in?
I think if there were allegations of improper access to either space, classified space or classified systems, that’s absolutely the type of case that an IG’s office would open on.
But it wasn’t one where you got involved or you know the details of who’s right, because there’s definitely two versions.
Two narratives, yeah.No, we did not.We did not investigate that issue.
So what were you hearing in that time?Because there’s public statements starting, and the confrontation between the White House or between DOGE and USAID is becoming more public.
Again, we need to keep this in context.From my tenure at USAID Office of Inspector General, I was the inspector general under this administration for all of about less than four weeks, so my firsthand knowledge of what was happening and how it was rolling out is limited to those early weeks in the new administration.
But during those weeks, did you see it escalating?
Absolutely.There’d be a new missive coming out from someone who was deemed to be the acting administrator for USAID—and that person changed every couple days—about people being placed on administrative leave, large chunks of the employee workforce being sidelined, access to systems being cut off.There was a great deal of apprehension.
And then again, quite early into this administration’s tenure, the headquarters building being physically shut itself and access denied to all USAID employees.Again, USAID Office of Inspector General for a while there—and I was fighting for this—was treated differently and separately because of our independent nature.
USAID HQ Building Shut Down
Help me understand what that’s like when the building shuts down, just what it looks like.You’re going through the door, I gather, and other people are not.Tell me what you were seeing on the ground.
Yeah.In the lobby there, it was quite sad on occasion.There was an individual from main USAID who was trying to get into the building.The security guards had been instructed not to allow employees in the building, and she was saying, “I need to work, telework from home, but my agency laptop is upstairs.I can’t fulfill my obligations to work from home because I can’t get into the agency.” And they went round and round.At the same time, the Office of Inspector General, at least for a few days, we were allowed access into the building.I felt bad for her.I felt bad for the agency.
The building itself … is the Ronald Reagan Building at 14th and Pennsylvania in Washington, D.C.It’s a very large building.Its primary tenants was USAID, the Border Patrol and EPA [Environmental Protection Agency].Within the first, I would say, two to three weeks of the new administration, dozens and dozens of beautiful color photographs of the recipients of USAID and the American taxpayers’ humanitarian assistance or development assistance, these visual representations which had been in the hallways and the breakrooms—completely removed.The entire building was denuded of any photographs or any—and these weren’t the former administrator, Samantha Power, hugging children.This was not a representation of the previous administration themselves.These were children playing soccer in the dirt in Sudan, just these wonderful images of the impact of U.S.taxpayer foreign aid assistance—completely gone.
I think that’s—when they started taking those kind of photographs and pictures down, I think that was when the light bulb went on to many of the employees, the few days they were allowed at the headquarters building, there’s a change a’comin’.
So that was before the building was locked down.
That was shortly before the building was locked down.And again, I’d only been there 14 months, but that’s—we were part of the headquarters building.There’s the singular building in the United States for USAID, and that is what was in the Ronald Reagan Building.… To see a worker pry the name “USAID” off the outside of the building and then have those letters on the ground in front of the building as they were closing the agency was a real, I think, powerful visual metaphor of the actual closure, and the swiftness of the closure of the USAID physical building, and then USAID as an agency.
You have to think, too, about the other people going to the other offices around there, to see that happen to a congressionally created agency.It must have spread fear not just in the agency but the whole town.
I think throughout government.I do think that USAID was the canary in the coal mine.This was what happened in the first weeks of the new administration.The speed with which they undertook to dismantle this organization, end funding, end decades-long relationships with U.N.agencies, charities, NGOs across the world.Again, in the Office of Inspector General, we’re not policy people.We don’t say you should fund this type of program or this country or this issue, and you shouldn’t.Those are policy decisions for whoever’s in charge, but the speed and the rapidity at which this occurred was pretty breathtaking.
And it seems like something that nobody would have thought possible, especially because it was congressionally funded, it was congressionally created.Am I right that it would have seemed impossible a few months before?
I think it was “shock and awe.” I think it was at a speed and with a level of definitiveness that I don’t think anyone expected.I think, clearly, people expected a different programmatic focus in this administration’s USAID and their humanitarian and developmental assistance around the world than the previous administration.Absolutely.But I don’t think people envisioned a dismantling of the organization.
You were charged with investigating these things, waste, fraud, abuse, you said efficiency and some other things.From your perspective, as the inspector general, the waste, from acting in this way for this agency, what did you think generally?And I know you did a report as well.But just generally the approach first.
Again, each of these terms has a significant definitional meaning—waste, fraud and abuse.Fraud, in particular, has been bandied around.Fraud is a criminal term.There has to be an intentional misrepresentation ongoing in a fraud case to make it a criminal act, and I think that word has been bandied about far too loosely.
We did investigations of fraud, actual criminal fraud, where we worked with the Department of Justice and prosecuted contractors, charities, NGOs.That’s what we do.During this early week, the several-week period in this new administration, when I read in the newspaper, like other folks read in the newspaper, about the level of fraud at USAID, we received no referrals from anybody at DOGE or State Department regarding true fraud, criminal-based, prosecutable fraud at USAID.Again, that’s what we do for a living.It’s what we investigate ourselves, so I think the word “fraud” was being used in a very, very loose manner.
Is there waste?Was there waste at USAID?Absolutely.Absolutely.In any large organization, there’s going to be waste.There’s going to be ways that you become more efficient, OK?But again, that’s what an Office of Inspector General does, is we look for ways for the agency to become more effective and more efficient using its program dollars.
Some of the things they were saying were very specific.… $50 million for condoms to Gaza.5Was there truth to that?
I have no independent knowledge of the $50 million in condoms for Hamas, and in fact, I believe that Elon Musk, in a White House press gaggle, agreed that that was inaccurate.6But it’s out there.It’s out there as an example of what’s deemed to be waste and fraud in USAID’s programming.People can’t unhear that.
Some of the other allegations that were made were general.Do you think you would have known?It was described, of course, as a “criminal organization,” which is to characterize the whole thing.What do you think of that assessment of USAID as a criminal organization?
Yeah, again, as the independent watchdog at the agency, our Office of Inspector General, USAID is not and was not a criminal organization.I don’t even know what that term means.
Another allegation, people were making tens of millions of dollars working at USAID.7…
I would have loved to have heard that allegation because we would pursue that aggressively.I’ve never heard an allegation like that in my 25 years in the inspector general community, that an individual employee was making tens of millions of dollars off the agency.If that was true, obviously, there’s probably a dozen criminal offenses that the individual would have violated.But I’ve never heard any of that.
Were there companies, for-profit companies, making money off USAID programs?Absolutely.One of the implementers is these large companies who do development work or assist with humanitarian aid.Were they making money?Of course they are, but they’re just one of the many recipients of USAID funding, and these companies have received funding going back decades.
… The last one that I saw was, there was an allegation that there was money-laundering for left-wing organizations, that that was essentially what USAID was, and that was part of the justification for shutting it down.8
Again, I wish someone would have brought that allegation to us, because we would have investigated it.And again, we don’t have to wait for an allegation to be brought to us.If we have evidence or concerns, we investigate a matter.But as a money-laundering organization, again, that strikes me more as hyperbole uttered by someone who disagrees with a particular focus of a program that USAID’s funding, and if that’s the case and you’re in a position of authority, change the focus; drop that program.But to deem the entire organization a money-laundering organization, I think that’s beyond hyperbole.
How efficient was the way that the administration handled the shutdown of the agency and the way the notices were sent?Either from what you’ve investigated or what you saw.
How efficient?I think they were brutally efficient.
They were very efficient in getting what they wanted done.How efficient were they in the use of taxpayer funds that were in progress and programs that were in progress from that perspective?
That’s a different issue.That’s a different issue.When Secretary Rubio issued the 90-day stop-work, stop/cease-aid order, we had, again, thousands if not tens of thousands of agreements and contracts in over 100 countries around the world that were ongoing, that needed to be stopped.And it’s everything from—I think it was very inefficient in the sense of there are penalties for disrupting a contract in many countries around the world.There’s several months, I’ve been told, several months of salaries that need to be paid if you’re going to back out of a contract.The U.S.just can’t walk away because it’s decided halfway through a contract or an agreement to cease funding, so if you call inefficiencies the extra expense of shutting down programs, yes, there is that inefficiency.But the program’s being shut down, and so the money flow is going to stop.
But we have real concerns in the Office of Inspector General—again, given our oversight authorities—about what about some of the infrastructure and the assets out there that U.S.taxpayers have paid for, and if the contract, the agreement’s going to be ended, what is going to happen to that either humanitarian aid—it’s in a warehouse somewhere—or medical supplies or energy equipment?The U.S.taxpayers funded over $1 billion of energy sector improvements in Ukraine as a result of the full-scale invasion by Russia.And so what happens if you cease that contract halfway through its ongoing nature?What happens to the equipment, the transformers and the money that the U.S.taxpayer has invested in that program?…
… Let me ask you one other question, which is bringing everybody back, and it sounds like you’re saying even people from your office were brought back from overseas.
No, because they were held in abeyance, so the federal judges have sort of put the kibosh, at least in the short term, about that.But again, the programs that these hundreds if not thousands of USAID employees overseas are managing, if the programs themselves are ended, then there’s frankly little reason for them to be overseas.
You kept doing your work.Tell me about that.Tell me about what you were doing in that time when you were there, when you were going into the office when others weren’t.
Again, at any one point in time, our office had over 30 audits, inspections ongoing.We had over 250 investigations, administrative investigations, criminal investigations ongoing.We were doing what an Office of Inspector General does—multifaceted oversight, looking out for the taxpayers’ dollar and also trying to make the agency more effective and more efficient.
Firing of Inspectors General
So many IGs had been fired before you.What were you thinking?
Four days into the administration, on a Friday evening, 17 presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed inspector generals [sic] received a two-sentence email from the Office of Presidential Personnel thanking them for their service but letting them know that they’d been dismissed as inspector general at their agency.9And these were agencies large and small, everything from … the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs—massive organizations.
And so they received this two-sentence email from the White House informing them that they had been dismissed.Now that, as an aside, violates the statute, the inspector general statute, because a president certainly has the authority to dismiss an inspector general, but before doing so, the statute requires two things: one, a 30-day notice to Congress; and two, specific and articulable reasons about why the inspector general needs to be replaced.10Neither of those conditions, preconditions, were met in this case.
So we had this I’ll say massacre of inspector generals [sic], never anything like it in the 50-year history of inspector generals [sic], 17 taken out four days into the administration.Shockingly, I was not one of them, and people have asked me, “Why weren’t you part of that first group?” And I have no response for that.I have no idea.It could be something as simple as they missed me.
So we continued to do our oversight work—again, our apolitical, independent oversight work.Two weeks later, on Monday, Feb.10, we issued an alert, and the alert raised the concern that the half-a-billion dollars in humanitarian aid, primarily food, that was either at ports or in transit around the world, was in danger of spoilage or diversion or unnecessary warehousing costs because so many employees at USAID had been placed on administrative leave, they couldn’t manage the humanitarian programs.11So we issued what we called an alert on Monday, Feb.10.On Tuesday, I, too, was fired.
11
Let’s go back one second.What are you thinking?You don’t know why you were not in that initial round.
Right.
Because you’ve spent much of your career in the world of the inspector generals [sic].What was your reaction, your feeling, your thought when you heard about this massacre of the IGs?
My first thought was just a deep sadness.The inspector general community, again, has been a concept created by Congress over the last 48 years to help Congress and the administration, but really primarily Congress, conduct meaningful, effective oversight of federal taxpayer spending in executive branch agencies.And the sadness came from the fact that when you dismiss 17 inspector generals [sic] in a fell swoop, you’ve turned the system on its head.
Again, for the past 45 years, we have been recognized by Democrats and Republicans as separate, as different from other political appointees.We were that one part of an agency that didn’t change, that had nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with programming.We were sort of the institutional memory.We were the institutional oversight.
And to see that, in one fell swoop, the nature and character of our mission and our oversight change with the dismissal of 17 inspector generals [sic], I had sorrow, and I had deep concerns about the impact that dismissal has had on independent oversight and the real checks and balances, I think, that’s so important in the inspector general community.
Before that moment in your career, had you ever, before you hit “send” or “publish” on an alert, on a report ever thought, “If I do this, this could be the end of my career”?
Not the end of my career.I did on this one, at USAID.But prior to this situation, no.And again, I’ve been doing this for over 25 years.You should have a sense of the issues and general awareness of the politics.It shouldn’t influence what you do, but you have to understand the impact and the import of the report that you’re issuing.
So I had awareness that the agency had, or members of Congress may not be completely enthralled with our findings, or—if we were speaking back in [my] NASA days, I had a contractor who had a vicious cost overrun or schedule lapse, they weren’t going to be thrilled with our report.But these are things that the public, the taxpayer needed to know.
So I had awareness that this might not be well received in certain quarters, and I’ve seen, over the years, our reports used as a weapon by some and a shield by others.And that’s not for folks, the consumer of our reports, to use and to interpret as they see fit.We’re issuing fact-based, evidence-based reports with the goal of improving our agencies with discrete recommendations.
And in fact, USAID has over 350 open recommendations with financial impact of over $50 million.12These are the kind of reports and hopefully helpful suggestions that an Office of Inspector General has.
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Office of Inspector General: Recommendation Dashboard
But back to your question: Have I ever had a case where I thought if I send, hit “send” on this report, my job is in jeopardy?No, I did not.
So at that moment, when you hear all of these inspector generals [sic] let go with two sentences, do you realize you’re in a different world, that you don’t have that feeling of protection from the system that you once did?
Absolutely. To me, at that point, it was really a question of when, not if.And the when came two weeks later, when we issued the alert on a Monday, and on Tuesday, I, too, received the two-sentence email thanking me for my service but dismissing me as inspector general with no explanation, no 30-day notice, no reasons.
So just take me to that decision, whether it was a decision, what you knew the consequences would be.
It wasn’t a difficult decision.And I’m not pretending to be Joan of Arc or anything, but I did know the import, or the potential import, of issuing that report.But it was incredibly important.It’s right in the wheelhouse of what an inspector general and an office of inspector general was.… We’re dealing with over a half billion dollars of U.S.-based food and humanitarian assistance that was at significant risk of spoilage or diversion because of the limitations placed on USAID staff given the stop-work order.It was imperative for the inspector general to raise the red flag and caution, “This is the impact of your decision to put so many USAID employees in administrative leave status.” We weren’t suggesting that that was an improper move to place the employees on administrative leave, but here was the potential impact that you may not have thought through: A half a billion dollars in U.S.-paid-for humanitarian aid was at risk.I would do it again.
Did you say anything to your staff?Because they must have been also scared at that moment, and you knew what the consequences would be for yourself.What did you say to them?
Again, being apolitical and independent and nonpartisan, we don’t make these calculations sitting around a table.We focus on risk.We focus on what are the issues involving accountability or transparency that the taxpayers and the agency head need to hear and deserve to hear.That’s what we focus on.
Many of my folks are experienced in the Office of Inspector General.They probably came to the same conclusion that this may ruffle a few feathers, but again, we don’t have that calculation and that conversation.I think it’s inappropriate for us to do that given our independent, apolitical role.
Did you tell them, “Keep doing what you’ve been doing in an apolitical way”?
We issued the report on Monday.Tuesday at approximately 5:30 p.m., I received the two-sentence email, terminating me as inspector general.13I had about 20 minutes on the USAID IT systems before my access was completely cut off, so in those 20 minutes, I was able to pull together my senior staff to tell them what had happened and to encourage them to keep doing what we had been doing—that is, on the taxpayers’ behalf, our independent, apolitical oversight—and to thank them for the time we had together.And then I was cut off from the system.
Were you in the office at that point?
No, we were all cut off from the building itself.The lettering had been pried off the doors of USAID, and so we were all working from home.So I was sitting in my upstairs study at home when I received the email, and then when I had those 20 minutes of sort of active bandwidth to connect with a few members, a few employees, again, to thank them and to encourage them to keep doing what they need to do.
Role of Congress
One of the things we’re interested in about the USAID story is that it was congressionally created; it was funded by Congress.The inspector generals’ [sic] offices were also funded and created by Congress.Were you surprised that Congress as an institution didn’t respond?Let’s start with the firing of the IGs.
Yeah.I was more than surprised.I was saddened.I was deeply saddened.But again, inspector generals [sic] were set up to serve both the agency as the in-house watchdog, but in many respects, we are Congress’ eyes and ears.They conduct oversight hearings.I would say the vast majority of those oversight hearings are fueled by Office of Inspector General reports and findings, and without that aggressive, independent oversight, I don’t think Congress can properly do its oversight mission.
So I was deeply saddened by the lack of pushback by Congress and in particular by champions of the inspector general concept and the Inspector General Act over the years, who in past administrations have very zealously protected the independence of inspector generals [sic] and have advocated on behalf of inspector generals [sic] in the past, to past administrations.
There was a deafening silence on the Hill by the people who mattered, who might have been able to have an impact on what was happening in the inspector general community, and that saddened me.
At that moment, a lot of people were saying [Sen.] Chuck Grassley had been an advocate, and would he step up?Was he one of the people you were expecting?
I was very disappointed in Sen.Grassley’s lack of support to the inspector general community on this issue of the dismissal of the 17—plus myself, 18 inspector generals [sic].14He has been a fierce advocate for whistleblowers and for inspector generals [sic] over the past 30 or 40 years of his tenure in Congress, and I was deeply saddened by his lack of aggressive response in this case, because I think he in particular, as well as many of his colleagues on both parties, have relied on the independent, apolitical, fact-based reports of inspector generals [sic] to do the oversight that they did and to hold different administrations accountable for taxpayers’ spending and to see sort of this disturbing lack of pushback, because I think the dismissal, coupled with the lack of pushback from Congress—Congress has ceded such a significant portion of its authority and its involvement with inspector generals [sic] that I fear that we’re beyond a tipping point here, that the concept and the model that Congress has benefited from, but more importantly taxpayers have benefited from, of an independent, apolitical inspector general over the last 45 years is gone.
14
With the dismissal of the 18 inspector generals [sic] and the lack of aggressive pushback by Congress, I think we’ve entered into an era of a new norm where it will be acceptable, where every new administration wipes out the presidentially appointed inspector generals [sic], so every secretary of treasury or every attorney general gets to bring his or her own inspector general into the administration, and that is antithetical to the independence and the checks and balances envisioned by the framers of the Inspector General Act.
Why?What would that allow?
I think it puts undue pressure—the inspector general who had been chosen by the secretary of treasury or the VA administrator would be beholden to their position to that head of the agency or to that administration and I think would have a very different calculation about the types of investigations or audits that they would undertake and the language that they would use if they found something improper or inefficient.In essence, they would pull their punches.If they would open the review that would be not well-received by the head of their agency—and that’s a big if—would they even undertake that investigation?
But if they even did, I think they would pull their punches.It’s human nature.It’s human nature because their job would be in jeopardy, and I think the mindset would be, “I need to please the head of my agency.” And pleasing the head of the agency is just not in the IG rule book.
You worked at NASA, and one of the most powerful figures in the administration now is Elon Musk, somebody who’s got a lot of contracts with the federal government.What do you make of that, of the combination of the IGs being sidelined, of the checks that they offer being marginalized and seeing that kind of involvement?
Yeah.And again, I can’t speak to any concerns folks have raised about ethical issues.SpaceX was one of the key contractors that NASA worked with when I was inspector general there, as were Boeing and Lockheed [Martin], Northrop Grumman.It didn’t matter to us who owned that company.NASA had contracted with that company to develop the next-generation rocket or to develop the new capsule, to take astronauts to the moon.We would investigate that program to look at the contracts, to look at the spending, to look at the timetable, irrespective of who owned the company.
But if you’re factoring that item into your calculus of whether or not you’re going to aggressively undertake oversight because of the potential blowback or concern or displeasure of the owner of that company, again, you’re thwarting the idea behind independent, aggressive oversight.
I guess we don’t know necessarily what they were thinking when they did this purge.They have said the IGs were not part of the “Make America Great” agenda and that they wanted people who were part of the president’s agenda on board.What do you make of that argument, that everybody who’s part of the government should be on the same page, should be pursuing the president’s agenda?
Again, I think that mentality or that litmus test would dramatically and irreparably and, I think, negatively change the concept of an inspector general.We are supposed to be chosen for our expertise in law, accounting, management or law enforcement.We’re not supposed to be chosen as inspector generals [sic] because we adhere to any administration’s policies or programs or philosophies.
And I think if that’s going to be the litmus test, then it is going to turn the independent inspector general system on its head, to its detriment.
… You spoke very eloquently about the perspective of the inspector general and Congress letting you down, but all of these things are happening at the same time.
Yeah.And again, narrowly speaking about inspector general, presidents have a right to remove an inspector general, but Congress has put these two conditions—30-day notice and specific and articulable reasons why the IG should be—and I think Congress put those, if you will, speed bumps in the way of a president because of the independent and the special nature of an inspector general not to politicize this position, where they’re a sort of constant, ongoing in-house expert.
And I think, again, the removal of a significant number of inspectors general at one fell swoop, supposedly because they don’t espouse the administration’s philosophy, does grave harm to that concept.
And I guess that message is not lost on people because you got that message immediately.That message must have been—whoever they’re going to appoint will have gotten that message.
I think so.I think so.And I think what it’s done as well is it sent a chilling effect across the inspector general community.Hey, I’m one person.I was the inspector general at USAID.I have a staff of over—had a staff of over 275.They’re still there.They’re still conducting audits, inspections and oversight of the agency.I hope they’re doing it as robustly and forcefully as they did when I was there, but they’re humans, as [are] the other 17 inspector generals’ [sic] offices who lost their leaders, as well as the other 50 or so, who either don’t have a leader and/or may not have a leader soon.
This removal, coupled with the lack of pushback from Congress, has sent a decided chilling message across the inspector general community: “Be careful.” And again, I think that erodes the independence and the whole purpose of having this aggressive, independent advocate for the taxpayer.They’re going to hesitate.Offices of Inspector General—it’s human nature—are going to hesitate about what work they start and how they phrase every report because of the perceived lack of receptivity, certainly of their agency head but also of Congress—the lack of support in Congress for these aggressive, perceived by some as negative, findings of the operation of these agencies.And that’s a sad, sad place to be.
It’s reached the point, as you’re describing, where just going to work and doing your job is an act of bravery that it wasn’t before.
Well, there’s a different concept.Again, this chilling effect, which I think has not existed in the 25 years that I’ve been part of three different Offices of Inspector General in three major government agencies.There was always an understanding that somebody is not going to like the results of our report—the agency, the contractor running the program, some folks on the Hill.That was always the case.But I don’t think in the 25 years that I’ve been part of the community that people feared for their jobs, feared they may be fired, removed; they’re downsized because of a fact-based audit report that they issued.It’s a sad place to be.
Role of The Courts and Public Opinion
There’s a lot of lawsuits that come out of this around the inspector generals [sic], around USAID.Do you think that the courts can fix this problem?
… I’ll stick to the lawsuit that was filed by eight fired inspector generals [sic].15I do hope the courts intervene, because Congress, two years ago, amended the inspector general statute to require these specific and articulable reasons for an IG to be removed—the 30-day notice and the specific reasons.Two years ago, Congress amended the statute to require that level of specificity.People like Sen.Grassley were tired of hearing if an inspector general’s removed that they weren’t doing a good job—that sort of amorphous-type explanation—and they wanted to have concrete reasons why these independent watchdogs were being removed.
15
The New York Times: 8 Inspectors General Fired by Trump File Lawsuit Seeking Reinstatement
But would that be enough?30 days, coming up with something, is that enough?If they get at that kind of enforcement, is it enough to undo the damage that was done?
I don’t think so. Again, I am concerned that we’re beyond the tipping point.I was concerned weeks ago that we were at a tipping point, but with the removal of these independent inspector generals [sic] coupled with the lack of pushback by Congress, who has for the last 45 years relied on the fact-based, independent findings of inspector generals [sic] to conduct meaningful oversight of executive branch agencies, I’m afraid we’ve gone beyond the tipping point, and the system will never be the same.
This is a cataclysmic moment for the inspector generals’ [sic] offices and for yourself.It’s under the context of a lot of other things that are happening in Washington.Are you sort of surprised by the general reaction of the public?The media pays a lot of attention to it at one moment, and then there’s another crisis.
Most folks don’t know what an inspector general is or does.Inspector generals [sic] go back to the Revolutionary War, where Gen.George Washington had an inspector general whose job was to ensure the readiness of the troops and the proper care of the munitions.People don’t have that understanding.People are worried about different things.People do care that their agencies, their government agencies, are providing the services that they’re supposed to provide and are doing so as effectively and efficiently as possible.And inspector generals [sic] were integral to making that happen.
Do you think we might start to see the consequences of this as time goes on, of scandals that might have been nipped in the bud earlier?
I think that’s a distinct possibility.Again, we have 18 vacancies, newly created vacancies for inspector general.I think folks need to assess the qualifications and the independence and the nonpartisan nature, hopefully, of any candidates who are offered by this administration for the position of inspector general, and folks can judge their qualifications and their independence as time goes on.
DOGE Cuts
[Director Michael Kirk] … You talked about how “brutally efficient” DOGE was when they came in.You used the phrase "brutally efficient." What did you mean by that?Can you describe, tell us the story of that brutal efficiency?
I think I was referring to the mandates that came out from this mythical acting administrator for USAID either putting significant chunks of the workforce on administrative leave, cutting them off from agency systems, effectively benching—at one point, they were hoping for over 90% of USAID’s 10,000 employees, and they were doing so in a matter of days without explanation, without conversation.16Again, they were brutally efficient.
How do you figure they arrived at what to do?Or were they just chopping it all off to an even number?
I have no insight into that, but again, given the efficiency and the brutality of the execution, this struck me as something that had been planned long before day one.This was not “make it up as you go along.”
Did you see, visually see or interact with any of these people?
Again, we had no contact.I had no contact with anyone from DOGE, who represented themselves as DOGE.I had conversations with the various acting USAID administrators in this interim period before Secretary Rubio was named as the acting USAID administrator.Again, I can’t speak firsthand to how much involvement Secretary Rubio had on these decisions here, but again, he was traveling around the world at this time when these various edicts were going out, dismantling USAID programs at a very, very rapid clip.
Let me ask you one other question.We’re also looking at what the administration is doing with targeting sometimes individual lawyers who have come up against them and the president has named them, pulled security clearances, has sanctioned them.When you issued your report, and you said that was part of your job, but you have also spoken out about it to us and since, do you think about the consequence of that or the potential consequence of it?Do you have a fear that you might attract the attention of the administration or supporters?
I have an awareness that that is a possibility, but again, I’ve been apolitical and nonpartisan for the past 40 years of my federal government service.I’ve worked over 25 of those years in this community, in the independent oversight community, and I see its destruction, and that’s—I just feel a need to raise the red flag and say to, particularly Congress, “This is an institution and a capacity that you have relied on to conduct effective oversight across the panoply of federal agencies over the last 45 years, and it is changing, irrevocably changing, for the worse.” And nothing’s happening.There’s no pushback, and after putting 25 years of my life into this, I feel someone needs to say it.
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