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Watchdog himself can't be trusted Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse! It will be difficult for Americans to trust the Pentagon in the wake of news that the Defense Department's Inspector General office, the agency given responsibility for exposing fraud in military matters, has been guilty of improprieties itself. Under a routine government program whereby federal inspector general offices are checked by their counterparts from other agencies, Internal Revenue Service auditors last year looked into operations at Defense Department. The IRS auditors found nothing amiss. After IRS examiners had left the Pentagon, however, an employee in the Defense Department Inspector General office uncovered evidence that, to avoid being caught in mistakes by the IRS, officials in her agency had destroyed certain documents and replaced them with fakes. But for a whistleblower in the Pentagon, who revealed the action to a member of Congress, the episode might have been covered up. "It's a very sad day indeed when the watchdog gets caught cheating," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, commented as he demanded an investigation. Grassley is correct -- but he and other members of Congress shouldn't allow this one to be dismissed lightly. If evidence of wrongdoing can be produced, those responsible should be punished severely. By that we don't mean simply dismissed from the service and allowed to take cushy jobs in the private sector -- we mean fined and sentenced to jail. When the watchdog himself can't be trusted, Americans have no reason to believe anything their government tells them.
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