Truth, Justice, and the (Un)American Way
It seemed nothing could stop CLARK KENT ERVIN, who lifted himself out of Houston’s Third Ward and became a go-to appointee for two presidents Bush. But when the former inspector general for homeland security blew the whistle on his department, he found that superhuman ambition is no match for the politics of Washington.
(Page 3 of 3)
But Ervin rallied. An influential buddy knew Texas attorney general John Cornyn, who in turn needed an assistant AG. A mere four years after Ervin’s job interview at the AG’s office, U.S. senator Cornyn sat before the Committee on Governmental Affairs and assured its members that President Bush’s designee as inspector general to the Department of Homeland Security was among “the best and brightest the state had to offer,” concluding, “I offer my enthusiastic and unequivocal support to this nominee.”
AND SO THE CLARK KENT ERVIN who jumped from inspector general of one of Washington’s oldest agencies to inspector general of its newest wasn’t Super Anything anymore, just a solid, honorable backstage workhorse with a freaky Rolodex. But the yearning for greater distinction does not so easily perish. And this may not be relevant, since the startling crash-and-burn of Ervin’s tenure as DHS inspector general can be seen as a Washington tale at its most cautionary, replete with the pettiness and cowardice we’ve come to expect from our nation’s capital. Then again, those with whom Ervin got crosswise might point out that when a lifelong performer is shown a stage, there is some chance that a performance will ensue.
Barely a week after his confirmation hearing, Ervin was in trouble. The Governmental Affairs Committee had questions about an incident that had taken place while he was IG at the State Department, in which a female employee had filed a sexual harassment claim. Ervin and two others on his staff had concluded that since the incident had taken place while the woman was working for the Multinational Force and Observers and involved her co-workers there, it fell outside the State Department’s jurisdiction. The committee staff asked Ervin to return for a briefing. Then another. Then another. Though the original purpose was to ascertain whether Ervin’s decision not to investigate the claim was proper, the proceedings, according to one staffer who was present, “were long and difficult, and they were obviously trying to trap him.”
The questions were repetitive and prosecutorial. At one point, Ervin and two DHS staff members met with committee chair Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine. Less than ten minutes into their discussion, Collins stormed out in a huff, though not before accusing Ervin of failing to disclose a personal debt on his disclosure form. (The debt turned out not to be personal; at the time, Ervin still owed about $25,000 from his failed 1992 congressional campaign.)
Ervin went to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who went to President Bush, who expressed confidence in his fellow Texan by bypassing the Senate vote and awarding Ervin a recess appointment in December 2003. That gave the inspector general a full year to do his work while hoping that Collins might at some point let his nomination go to the Senate floor for full confirmation. And so Ervin bore down on further areas of homeland insecurity. His staff seized on the DHS’s failure to integrate the various terrorist watch lists; on the visa waiver program, which allows foreigners to enter the U.S. without close scrutiny; on air marshals who napped on the job; and on the inept Transportation Security Administration’s hosting a lavish $500,000 awards ceremony.
Ervin’s damning reports, and especially his acute phrasing—such as his conclusion that private- and public-sector screeners “performed about the same, which is to say, equally poorly”—frequently made the evening news. The IG’s remarks became election-year political fodder for Democrats. Though inspectors general tend to be an anonymous lot, Ervin was out there, disseminating press releases, being quoted by name. Such actions never go unnoticed in Washington, and Ervin wasn’t a naif. If the Senate didn’t act on his renomination by December, he doubted a newly reelected Bush would begin his second term spending his political capital on an IG whose findings hadn’t done the administration any favors.
And so Ervin began to whirl his Rolodex. He asked senators Hutchison and Cornyn, along with Charles Grassley, the Republican senator from Iowa, with whom Ervin enjoyed good relations, to speak with Collins. The calls were made, but they did no good. Ervin then wrote a letter to chairman Collins, copying it to each of the Committee on Governmental Affairs’ seventeen members, imploring them to put their seemingly puny grievances aside, to acknowledge “the overall context of my record at State (which Secretary Powell himself has attested to) and my overall record here at DHS” and let the Senate give him an up or down vote. He did not receive a single reply. Collins’s hold on his nomination had become a death grip.
Finally, without so much as a single public objection to Senator Collins’s obstructionism, the White House let Ervin’s recess appointment dwindle, then quietly elapse. He cleared out his desk on the eighth of December. One of his subordinates would later reflect, “I guess some people have the view that he shouldn’t have been as outspoken on the work of the office. IGs vary in that [regard]. I think some of the IGs respected his independence. But they might point out that he’s gone, and they’re still there.”
THE BOOK CLARK KENT ERVIN intends to write and publish this year on homeland security issues will not criticize George W. Bush. He would rather not criticize anyone at all. Being as journalists ply their trade in not altogether sanitary waters, it’s worth sharing the following: My former debate nemesis did not seek me out. During our interviews, he never spoke off the record, never shared private information (such as the name of the woman whose sexual harassment claim triggered the campaign against him), never urged others to call me on his behalf, never called my sources to see what questions I was asking. All of this is in sharp contrast to Ervin’s detractors on Capitol Hill, who would speak only on deep background—and even then elliptically, with dark implications that are only meaningful, I think, insofar as they tell on the tellers.
At the end of our first interview, I asked Ervin what the whole experience had taught him. “I guess it hasn’t taught me anything,” he said after a brief pause. “I knew this kind of thing happened. I’ve certainly antagonized some people in the department, and perhaps some people in the White House. I knew that would happen if I continued to be aggressive. But given a choice between trying to do my job or trying to keep my job, I’d rather do my job. And that might make future confirmation difficult.”
Do my job rather than keep my job—that was a classic Ervin quip, the kind that would have elicited groans from his debate rivals thirty years ago. Now it rang true, and in that instant, I felt significantly smaller than the little guy on the other side of the desk.
“On the other hand”—and here, as Ervin leaned across the desktop, I felt suddenly awash in the thermal effervescence of his undying optimism—“recent history is full of examples of others who had difficulty. Look at Armitage. He had his little dustup over Iran-Contra. You just can’t worry about that sort of thing.”
That too was Ervin. No point in wringing hands, because you could drive yourself nuts flipping the Beltway tea leaves. Like the morning of the 2005 inauguration, when he attended the prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church and President Bush said hello as he walked past. It was a message, heartfelt and at the same time maddeningly obscure. And Ervin just can’t worry about that sort of thing.
Here, though, is something else: On the front page of the New York Times’ Sunday, February 20, 2005, edition, the top headline read “Audit Faults U.S. for Its Spending on Port Defense.” That report, which the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security began last year, confirmed that port protection funding was being wildly misappropriated, leaving cities like Los Angeles and New York vulnerable to terrorist attack. It was significant, surely, that the new inspector general’s name was not published. But the grim substance of the report was particularly meaningful, and among the things it meant was this:
Clark Kent Ervin was right.
My Library
