Fired by Trump, an Inspector General Writes a Book on Why the Job Matters

Glenn Fine was Inspector General for the Justice and Defense departments, part of a career spanning four presidencies. Recently, he released a book called Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government, which explains what IGs actually do and chronicles some of his work, including high-profile confrontations with the Trump administration. We asked him about some of his experiences.

Part of the book is about Trump firing you in 2020. Was the chance of Trump being in the White House again why you wrote this?

It wasn’t because of President Trump. I wanted to explain the important role of inspectors general to encourage people to support the role. I think they make government more honest. IGs are nonpartisan, they are challenged by every administration, and they are not popular in any administration.

During the Trump years, IGs got a lot of press. Did you notice more interest in your job?

When I became IG, I didn’t know what an IG did. It calls to mind for some people Inspector Gadget or Inspector Javert from Les Misérables or maybe Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther [movies]. Yes, IGs do get attention, but not as much as they deserve because of the importance of their work.

You served in IG roles for two decades. How much did the job change?

We live in a more polarized time, so IG reports sometimes get viewed through that lens. I also think IGs are asked to do more and more and not given significant resources and budget to do that. Their work is valued by both parties, but the resources to do it in a timely way don’t always follow. But ultimately, it’s similar. I served as IG under every President basically since Clinton, and I was fortunate be-cause basically every agency head, deputy, they all supported and understood our role, never tried to interfere with it. They didn’t always love our reports, but they accepted and welcomed the value of IG oversight.

Congress created the position in 1978, at a time of unprecedented transparency in government. Are we headed in the wrong direction? It’s hard to believe that if IGs didn’t exist today, we’d pass a bill creating them.

I think the pendulum swings: Sometimes we move further away from transparency and sometimes toward it. When the IG Act was passed in 1978, many agencies opposed IGs. But ultimately, that resistance was overcome. Most people think they can self-police. That’s what the Supreme Court and the judiciary think now. They say we need institutional decision-making independence and an IG would be inappropriate for the federal judiciary. I disagree.

This article appears in the October 2024 issue of Washingtonian.

Arya Hodjat

Editorial Fellow