Letter: OPM IG's investigation of Bloch a disgrace

Regarding “OPM IG: Did Special Counsel Bloch improperly delete files?”, the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general's investigation of the Office of Special Counsel is a case of one fully corrupted federal office investigating another. What a disgrace.  

OSC is a miniscule agency with a staff size and budget barely larger than the IG's own. The OPM IG has been "investigating" the OSC for two and a half years. In that time, the IG has been incapable of generating a single conclusion or recommendation.

Now, after learning from a tip and a news story that the OSC director erased a few computer files a year ago, the IG has decided those erased files might be of interest. Never mind that they were erased under the IG's very own investigative nose. 

Are you kidding me?  Is this the government or Bozo's Happy Hour? Actually, I can answer that. 

It's just more of the same: gross misfeasance by an invisible IG in a nondescript and near useless agency. 

I had to grapple with this, along with a fundamental lack of integrity in IG office operations, as an OPM assistant inspector general. Succeeding administrations have suffered fools lightly since the early '90s. OPM, its IG and OSC should have been under investigation by the FBI and Congress 15 years ago.

Ken Huffman
Retired assistant inspector general
Office of Personnel Management

What do you think? Paste a comment in the box below (registration required), or send your comment to letters@fcw.com (subject line: Blog comment) and we'll post it.