Saturday, December 11, 2004

The War on Competence

Via POGO, there seems to be a good deal of evidence that Clark Kent Ervin, inspector general of Homeland Security, is losing his job because he's good at it. According to Government Computer News,

Ervin’s office has issued highly critical reports on several programs at DHS. In October, for instance, one criticized the department for failing to take charge of the effort to combine the federal government’s numerous terrorist watch lists.

Erwin's damning reports on the nation's ongoing security problems can be found here.

1 comment:

Thers said...

I found out he was being sacked, oddly enough, after driving home and listening to NPR reporting a followup on a story about detainee abuse by US guards. The story was shocking, the "evildoers" (ours, this time) were punished, and when they spoke to Ervin, he was straight up in promising more investigation and basically stating flat out that he would not tolerate this sort of barbarity. I'd been expecting the usual weaseling, but there was none. In particular he wanted his reports made directly available to Congress, without the intermediate step of having his stuff combed over for "national security reasons" first. Nearly drove off the road. It's just not what I've been hearing for 4 years, from the administration, or sad to say, NPR.

Should have known he was a dead man walking.