[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 147 (Thursday, December 4, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6331-S6341]



                    ``Zero Dark Thirty'' IG Reports

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
``Zero Dark Thirty''--not the movie but a report on the movie. The 
report was supposed to tell us how the movie's producers obtained top-
secret information from the Federal Government, but the report never 
took us there.
  The Department of Defense inspector general stumbled and fell and 
lost sight of the goal and the need for independence. People were 
exposed to harm, the taxpayers' money got wasted, and alleged 
misconduct by top officials was shielded by a policy that may have been 
abused. Bureaucratic bungling caused confusion, turmoil, and dissent. 
For certain, the whole thing was a fiasco.
  The ``Zero Dark Thirty'' report was driven by the hemorrhage of leaks 
of highly classified information by senior administration officials 
after the Osama bin Laden raid. It was requested by the chairman of the 
House oversight committee, Congressman Peter King--a very good 
Congressman, very good on oversight.
  He read a column in the New York Times which indicated that Hollywood 
filmmakers ``received top-level access to the most classified mission 
in history.'' Congressman King was concerned that those disclosures 
could undermine our ability to successfully conduct covert operations 
in the future, so in August 2011 Congressman King asked the inspectors 
general of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of 
Defense to answer five simple questions. My focus during these remarks 
will be on the Department of Defense IG's investigation.
  I became involved, as you might expect, after whistleblowers 
contacted my office in December 2012 alleging that Acting and Deputy 
Inspector General Lynne Halbrooks was sitting on Congressman King's 
report. They alleged that she--Ms. Halbrooks--was suppressing the 
report to, No. 1, protect her boss, Secretary of Defense Panetta, and 
other senior officials from disciplinary action or prosecution, and No. 
2, to further her candidacy to be the next inspector general.
  Her nomination was vetted while the investigation was in progress. 
The convergence of those potential conflicts of interest grabbed my 
attention. They needed scrutiny. The independence of the Office of 
Inspector General could have been jeopardized. So my staff started 
digging. They interviewed key witnesses and examined documents provided 
by whistleblowers and official sources. Here is what we have found:
  On December 16, 2011, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector 
General announced that its investigation would begin immediately and 
that it was to be coordinated with the CIA inspector general. It would 
be conducted by the Office of Intelligence and Special Program 
Assessments headed by a Mr. James Ives. That investigation took a year.
  A draft report was submitted for classification review on October 24, 
2012. The allegations were substantiated. No. 1, senior officials, 
including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, his chief of staff Jeremy 
Bash, and Under Secretary of Intelligence Michael Vickers, allegedly 
made unauthorized disclosures of highly classified information on that 
raid. No. 2, these alleged disclosures may have placed special 
operations personnel and their families in harm's way.
  One month later the draft report containing those allegations was 
declared unclassified. A coordination package was then developed. It 
included a publicly releasable version, talking points for reporters, 
and transmittal memos to the Defense Secretary and Chairman King.
  This package was circulated internally for review and clearance. The

[[Page S6335]]

next and final step was submission to Deputy IG Halbrooks as a request 
for release. Now, by normal standards, the report was ready for issue. 
However, there was a major foul-up--a real show stopper. The review 
process was bungled from start to finish.
  All references to unauthorized disclosures of highly classified 
information by senior officials had to be stripped from the report 
before it could be published. This draconian measure, which gutted the 
report and made it unfit for publication, was mandated by a 
longstanding department policy. This long standing department policy 
was known only to the two leaders of the investigation, Deputies 
Halbrooks and Ives. It was their responsibility to execute it at the 
front end of the review.
  I want to make one point crystal clear. I don't support the policy of 
censoring reports. It is a bad policy that needs to be changed. My 
beef, though, is if that is the policy, then it should have been 
followed, but it wasn't followed until the last possible moment.
  To make matters far worse, both Ives and Halbrooks failed to 
communicate the policy mandate to those who needed the information to 
ready the report for publication. Halbrooks and Ives kept the 
investigative team in the dark--like a bunch of mushrooms. So they had 
the mistaken notion the uncensored report was final and ready to go. 
This caused a great deal of turmoil.
  Two factors set the stage for the bungled review process. First, the 
official assigned to lead the project, Mr. Ives, lacked relevant 
professional experience, and top management failed to actively 
supervise his day-to-day progress on the report to ensure that he 
followed established protocols. He needed guidance navigating his way 
through an unfamiliar process but received no guidance. Plus, his 
appointment was limited to 4 months on a project that took 2 years.
  This was a recipe for disaster.
  Second, the problem was compounded by a failure to coordinate with 
the CIA inspector general before the investigation got rolling. 
Effective coordination was essential. Congressman King's request 
crossed jurisdictional lines between two powerful agencies, the CIA and 
the Department of Defense.
  The CIA's inspector general was ultimately responsible for the 
alleged misconduct because it occurred while Panetta and his Chief of 
Staff, Jeremy Bash, were CIA employees. The fact that they had moved to 
the Pentagon after the investigation started was irrelevant.
  This was a no-brainer, but for inexplicable reasons the Department of 
Defense IG tackled the Panetta-Bash allegations. This was an 
irresponsible and wasteful action. It took over a year of groping down 
blind alleys for the reality to finally sink in. By then it was way too 
late.
  The failure of the two agencies to coordinate effectively right up 
front had disastrous consequence. Just as the report was reaching 
critical mass in late 2012, the Panetta case had to be referred back to 
the CIA IG for investigation. Panetta's alleged misconduct was the 
heart and soul of the report.
  It was suddenly gone, leaving the report hollow and empty. How could 
all this senseless blundering happen unless it was part of a plan to 
slow-roll or even torpedo the report. The blundering was coupled with 
unexplained delays.
  Between mid-December and early January, Deputy Ives finally completed 
the mandated substantial review, which gutted the report. However, it 
did not regain forward motion until after Secretary Panetta retired 
February 27, 2013.
  Halbrooks claims she did not receive or see a draft until March 25, 
2013. Aside from a few minor edits, there is no record of significant 
edits between Mr. Ives' review and publication of the report. The 3-
month delay in reaching her desk and subsequent delays until June 
remain unexplained and unaccounted for.
  These facts create the perception that the review process was slowed 
by Halbrooks and others at her direction to shield Department of 
Defense officials from scrutiny. She claims her nomination was dead at 
that point and no longer a potential conflict, but she offers no 
evidence to back it up.
  Moreover, this timeline fits with other relevant information. 
According to a whistleblower, she stated repeatedly that the report 
would not be issued until Panetta stepped down--and that is exactly 
what happened.
  Finally, the bungled review process may have triggered 
whistleblowing. Whistleblowers thought the report was about to be 
issued in late 2012 when media talking points were circulated. When 
that didn't happen, they perceived a coverup. They contacted my office 
and then they leaked the report to the Project on Government Oversight, 
which is normally referred to around this town as POGO.

  The uncensored version of the report appeared on POGO's Web site on 
June 4, 2013. Ten days later, the IG's office reacted by finally 
issuing a censured version of the report. If POGO had not acted, the 
report might never have seen the light of day. It might have been 
pigeonholed for good.
  Immediately after the initial report was issued, Halbrooks launched a 
hunt for the mole. She wanted to know who leaked the reports to POGO. 
Extensive interviews were conducted and 33,269 emails were examined, 
but the leaker was not found.
  However, during questioning, Mr. Dan Meyer, the DOD OIG Director of 
Whistleblowing and Transparency, admitted to giving a copy of the 
report to Congress. He was one of the many OIG employees who mistakenly 
believed the uncensored version of the report circulated in late 2012 
for final review and clearance was, indeed, final.
  He thought it was ready to go out the door. As the Director of 
Whistleblowing and Transparency, maybe he just thought he was doing his 
job and being--as every government official ought to be--very 
transparent because the public's business ought to be public. Around 
this town, however, that is not always the case.
  Mr. Meyer's admission triggered swift and decisive action. He was 
accused of making false statements, placing his security clearance in 
jeopardy. This action had the potential of destroying his career. Now, 
fortunately--and this doesn't happen very often around this town--the 
new inspector general at the Department of Defense, Jon Rymer, 
intervened in Mr. Meyer's behalf and blocked those efforts.
  The case against Mr. Meyer was very flimsy, though his clearance is 
still hanging fire. In the end, Mr. Meyer bore the brunt of blame for 
the POGO leak. The principal targets of the investigation--Panetta, 
Vickers, and Bash--skated. Mr. Meyer exposed their alleged misconduct, 
and yet he got hammered. Justice was turned upside down.
  What happened during the 22 months between Chairman King's request 
and June 2013, when the report was finally issued, is a tangled 
bureaucratic mess. Despite exhaustive questioning, a satisfactory 
explanation hasn't been given. What I have presented today is just a 
brief summary of the facts and analysis laid out in greater detail in a 
staff report that I released today.
  In that report my staff identified potential red flags pertaining to 
the way the Office of the Inspector General handled the ``Zero Dark 
Thirty'' report. These were boiled down to nine conclusions that fell 
into four broad categories: No. 1, impairment of IG independence and 
lack of commitment to the spirit and intent of the IG act; No. 2, weak 
leadership; No. 3, mismanagement; and No. 4, waste of time and 
taxpayers' money.
  The staff findings suggest that some corrective action may be 
justified, including an appropriate measure of accountability. If 
misconduct and/or mismanagement occurred, then Deputies Lynne Halbrooks 
and James Ives, both of whom led the ``Zero Dark Thirty'' project, 
would appear to be chiefly responsible for whatever happened.
  It is also recommended that the longstanding department policy--which 
earlier I told you I disagreed with--of censoring sensitive information 
from reports not be applied to cases involving alleged misconduct by 
top officials because agency heads and their senior deputies should be 
held to a higher standard. They should be subjected to greater public 
scrutiny. This policy needs review and possible modification.
  When all is said and done, the proof is, of course, in the pudding, 
as they say. What good came from this effort? Its true value is 
reflected in the end product, the highly sanitized report that was 
finally issued June 14, 2013, 6 months after it was finished. I believe 
that it is a second-class piece of work

[[Page S6336]]

that is not worth the paper that it is written on.
  Even Halbrooks seems to agree that the report's face value is close 
to zero. This is what she said during an interview with my staff. She 
said that once Ives removed all the derogatory information on Panetta 
and Vickers, the report was no longer interesting or important to me--
meaning her--and it just dropped off my radar screen--and words to that 
effect. She was talking about the report issued June 14, 2013.
  Halbrooks is correct about the value of the report, but she is dead 
wrong about her responsibility as IG for the unfinished report. At that 
point, she appears to have lost sight of her core mission as the 
inspector general.
  The report was about alleged misconduct by her boss, the Secretary of 
Defense. It was requested by the chairman of the House oversight 
committee, Mr. King.
  She had a solemn duty to put it back on her radar screen and keep it 
there--front and center--until it was fixed. Once it was ready and up 
to standard, she should have presented it proudly and enthusiastically 
to the Congress and the Secretary of Defense--and done it properly and 
in restricted format, if necessary.
  This project was an unmitigated disaster spawned by a series of top-
level missteps and blunders. All the wasted energy and blundering 
produced nothing better than internal confusion, turmoil, dissent, and 
more alleged misconduct.
  Two years's worth of hard work and money was more or less poured down 
a rat hole. To make matters far worse, a valued employee was threatened 
with termination. This person has unique and unparalleled knowledge of 
whistleblowing and a rock-solid commitment to fair treatment of 
whistleblowers.
  Were it not for Inspector General Rymer, he would be out on the 
street this very day. Halbrooks' search for the mole was misguided.

  The inspector general's office needs strong leadership that has the 
courage to tell it like it is and to report wrongdoing promptly to 
agency heads and even Congress with recommendations for corrective 
action. When the Secretary and the Under Secretary stand accused of 
misconduct, as in this case, the IG should double down and ensure 
public accountability. Thus far in this matter there has been none 
because truth was hidden behind a questionable policy that may have 
been abused.
  There is an excellent case in point from just a few years back. 
Deputy Secretary of Defense and CIA Director John Deutsch allegedly 
mishandled highly classified information and got hammered for doing so. 
He lost his security clearance for 6 years and came very close to 
prosecution. Unlike this case--the ``Zero Dark Thirty'' leaks--the John 
Deutsch matter was dealt with effectively and it was aired publicly.
  The ``Zero Dark Thirty'' model was wasteful of the taxpayers' money, 
it was harmful to morale, and harmful to the perceived independence of 
the IG's office. It should be used as an educational tool to teach 
Office of Inspector General employees in any department of government 
how not to conduct investigations of alleged misconduct by senior 
officials.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.

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