CIA Wraps Up Probe of Its Own Inspector-General

It was one of the high points of recent CIA history, and that’s saying a lot: CIA Director Mike Hayden ordered an investigation of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson. On top of ordering a scathing review of the CIA’s pre-9/11 counterterrorism performance, Helgerson — legally tasked with being an independent internal watchdog — stuck his nose into the agency’s detentions, interrogations and renditions programs, angering many inside the agency. Hayden struck back.

Now the probe is over, the Los Angeles Times‘ Greg Miller reported yesterday, and the IG’s relationship to the agency has changed in some nebulous fashion. The CIA isn’t releasing what’s changed, exactly, but Miller reports that agency officials — including, presumably, those under investigation — now have “a greater ability to defend their actions and present their views.”

The investigation was criticized on Capitol Hill and by former agency officials as an attack on the independence of the inspector general.

The senior intelligence official disagreed with that characterization: “We have no interest in trampling upon the independence of the I.G. It’s not our interest, not our goal.” …

“This has always been a straightforward management review,” said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield. “The aim has been to make the office even more efficient and effective as well as making its procedures more transparent and understandable to employees.”

And what a coincidence! The changes come just in time for Helgerson’s joint probe with the Justice Department into the 2005 destruction of the CIA’s interrogation videotapes!