Amtrak inspector railroaded?
Watchdogs are an endangered species in the Age of Obama. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak inspector general Fred Weiderhold. The longtime veteran employee was abruptly “retired” last month –just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes.
Question the timing? Hell, yes.
On June 18, Weiderhold met with Amtrak officials to discuss the results of an independent report by the Washington, D.C. law firm, Willkie, Farr & Gallagher. The 94-page report has been made publicly available through the office of whistleblower advocate Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). It concluded that the “independence and effectiveness” of the Amtrak inspector general’s office “are being substantially impaired” by the agency’s Law Department. Amtrak bosses have effectively gagged their budgetary watchdogs from communicating with Congress without preapproval; required that all Amtrak documents be “pre-screened” (and in some cases redacted) before being turned over to the inspector general’s office; and taken control over the IG’s $5 million portion of federal stimulus dollars.
Michael Scherer at Swampland:
A couple weeks back, I wrote about the turmoil in the office of the Inspector General for Amtrak. More details have since come out. The head of that office for 35 years, Fred Weiderhold, Jr., it turns out, retired just one day after a independent report he had commissioned was released, documenting a number of actions by Amtrak management that interfered with his authority as the Congressionally appointed watchdog. (You can read the whole report by clicking the link at the end of this letter here from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.)
Rick Moran at American Thinker:
It must be pointed out that there is nothing to connect these incidents to the White House – at the moment, although Walpin was given an hour to resign by a White House lawyer, itself a violation of the law the prescribes a 30 day notice to Congress in order to terminate an IG. But the real problem here appears to be a culture created by the White House that not only is nervous about IG’s investigating fraud and abuse, but that the IG’s themselves have to go to make room for Obama’s people.
The case of the special watchdog at the Treasury Department who is assigned to ferret out corruption in the TARP bailout scheme is different still. Here, there is a dispute between Obama political appointees at Treasury and the Inspector General Neil Barofsky regarding just how much power the IG is granted to stick his nose into Geithner’s folly. With Barofsky saying there is “massive fraud” in the program and the FBI already opening 20 separate investigations into criminality connected to the program, this, I believe, is the story most worth watching.
