WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
the victims’ car testified that he
told police that the man who
shot him was still out there.
Prosecutors called Tracy
Henry, a detective from St. Paul,
Minn., to the stand. Minnesota
has the largest concentration of
Somalis in America.
Henry testified that Somalis
don’t trust police and prefer to
handle disputes themselves. She
added that Somali crime victims
and witnesses tend to “fabricate”
events to avoid retribution
within their clans.
Hirsi argued on appeal that
the judge never should have
allowed the detective’s testimony.
— Associated PressTuesday.
Ahmed Farah Hirsi was
charged with multiple counts of
attempted homicide and
recklessly endangering safety in
the January 2014 car-to-car
shooting at the Spirit Seller
liquor store in Hudson, Wis., just
across the state line from
Minneapolis and St. Paul. A jury
convicted him in 2015, and he
was given 35 years in prison.
According to court files, the
driver of Hirsi’s car testified in a
plea deal that Hirsi pulled the
trigger. But the victims who
testified at trial said that they
either didn’t see the shooter or
that it wasn’t Hirsi. The driver ofto inform the U.S. government
instead, prosecutors have said.
Peng was arrested in
September 2019 before
completing the next dead drop.
— Associated PressWISCONSINRetrial ordered over
detective’s testimonyA Minnesota man of Somali
descent who was convicted of
opening fire on other Somalis
will get a new trial after a
detective improperly testified
that Somalis often lie to police, a
Wisconsin appeals court ruledto use dead drops: rent hotel
rooms, leave money and leave for
several hours.
Peng made a practice run in
June 2015 and then participated
two dead drops in the San
Francisco Bay Area between
October 2015 and April 2016. He
then made three dead drops
from Columbus, Ga., before
telling the Chinese official that
he wanted to return to dead
drops in the Bay Area.
The United States was never at
risk because the information left
for Peng was provided by an FBI
double agent who had also been
approached for spy work by the
Chinese government but decidedPeng pleaded guilty on Nov. 25,
2019, to acting at the direction
and under the control of ministry
of state security officials in
China. If convicted at trial, he
could have faced up to 10 years in
prison and a $250,000 fine.
The Hayward, Calif., resident
admitted that while he was on a
business trip to China in March
2015, a Chinese official
introduced himself and asked
Peng to use his U.S. citizenship to
assist him. Peng came to
understand the official worked
for China’s Ministry of State
Security but agreed to take
actions in the United States on
behalf of China and learned howCALIFORNIA
Man gets jail for acting
as agent for China
A former San Francisco Bay
Area tour operator was
sentenced to four years in prison
for serving as an unregistered
agent for China’s Ministry of
State Security in a scheme to use
“dead drops” to pick up digital
memory cards from a source and
take them to China.
Xuehua Edward Peng, 56, also
was sentenced Monday in
Oakland, Calif., federal court to
pay a $30,000 fine, the U.S.
Justice Department said.
Politics & the Nation
DIGESTCuffari, who previously
worked as an aide to former
Arizona governor Jan Brewer (R),
was confirmed unanimously by
the Senate in July. He declined a
request for an interview through
the office’s spokeswoman, Erica
Paulson.
Paulson declined to answer
questions sent in writing, and she
said Costello was not authorized
to speak publicly about the in-
spector general’s office.
The inspector general’s head-
quarters were often empty on
weekdays long before the corona-
virus outbreak sent some federal
workers home, according to one
frustrated senior staffer. He de-
scribed coming to work in recent
months and regularly finding the
lights off because no one else was
there.
Established in 2002 after the
creation of DHS in the wake of the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
the inspector general was tasked
with providing “independent
oversight and promote excel-
lence, integrity, and accountabili-ty” within the department. While
the inspector general reports to
the DHS secretary, the agency is
designed to work closely with
congressional oversight commit-
tees to preserve independence.
Since October, the office has
published 17 audits and reports,
many of which are routine re-
views of Federal Emergency Man-
agement Agency grants to states
and municipalities. Lawmakers
have also raised concerns about
the quality as well as the quantity
of the office’s work.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-
Miss.), chairman of the House
Homeland Security Committee,
has joined other lawmakers
pressing for Cuffari to explain
what is happening at his agency.
“Particularly in these times, we
need a DHS Inspector General
who can and will be a vigilant and
thorough watchdog,” he said in a
statement to The Washington
Post, noting that he has invited
the inspector general to testify at
a hearing later this month and
expects him to appear, as all otherprevious inspectors general have.
“It is deeply troubling that the
office is not releasing reports at
the rate it has done in the past,
and that the work that is being
released is not up to standard.
This clearly cannot continue.”
Members of both parties have
written to the inspector general
to share their worries about
chronic dysfunction. In a Dec. 6
letter, the top Republican and
Democratic officials on the Sen-
ate and House homeland security
committees wrote to Cuffari to
raise “serious concern about the
cumulative effect of long-stand-
ing management and operational
challenges” at his office.
“A llegations have come to our
attention that the office has been
plagued by ongoing bureaucratic
infighting and competing allega-
tions of misconduct that threaten
OIG’s ability to conduct effective
oversight,” the lawmakers wrote,
telling Cuffari that under his
watch “problems have apparently
persisted and in some cases wors-
ened.”BY NICK MIROFFThe Department of Homeland
Security’s internal watchdog divi-
sion has been so weakened under
the Trump administration that it
is failing to provide basic over-
sight of the government’s third-
largest federal agency, according
to whistleblowers and lawmakers
from both parties.
DHS’s Office of the Inspector
General is on pace to publish
fewer than 40 audits and reports
this fiscal year, the smallest num-
ber since 2003 and one-quarter of
the agency’s output in 2016, when
it published 143, records show.
The audits and reports cover ev-
erything from contracts and
spending to allegations of waste
and misconduct.
At a time when DHS has mor-
phed into an instrument for some
of President Trump’s most ambi-
tious domestic policies, the in-
spector general’s role calls for the
office to exert rigorous oversight
of the department’s $70 billion
budget and 240,000 employees,
Democratic and Republican law-
makers say.
But the agency’s authority and
productivity have withered, and
in the weeks before the coronavi-
rus outbreak, Inspector General
Joseph Cuffari ducked requests to
appear on Capitol Hill for routine
testimony, a decision congressio-
nal staffers describe as unprece-
dented.
Adding to the turmoil, the of-
fice’s second-in-command and
former acting director, Jennifer
Costello, was placed on adminis-
trative leave last month for al-
leged ethical violations, three
current DHS officials said. An
attorney for Costello said her cli-
ent was not given a reason for her
removal, but Costello believes she
has been retaliated against for
trying to denounce Cuffari’s mis-
management and wrongdoing.
The letter noted that morale at
the inspector general’s office was
low and slipping further, citing
annual federal employee view-
point surveys. It was signed by
Thompson, as well as Sen. Ron
Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of
the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Com-
mittee; Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.),
the committee’s ranking Demo-
crat; and Rep. Mike D. Rogers
(Ala.) the top GOP member on the
House committee.
The lawmakers’ letter asked
Cuffari to provide detailed re-
cords of his agency’s staffing lev-
els, its recent hires, budget e xpen-
ditures, employee complaints
and other records for the past five
years. Congressional staffers say
Cuffari’s staff has provided par-
tial responses.
In a Dec. 10 staff email ob-
tained by The Post, Cuffari told
agency employees that the office
would fully comply with the re-
quest from lawmakers.
“I take the well-being of our
workforce seriously and want you
to know I am dedicated to im-
proving our collective workplace
experience,” C uffari wrote. “It will
take time and commitment from
each of us, and I am confident we
will get there, together.”
Cuffari told employees that he
had hired a veteran federal prose-
cutor, Lynn Mattucci, as a special
assistant, responsible for reduc-
ing backlogs and improving effi-
ciency.
Congressional staffers and ad-
ministration officials who spoke
on the condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized
to discuss staffing at the inspec-
tor general’s office said Cuffari
had gotten off to a slow start in
part because he was blindsided
by Costello’s move to fill several
top positions before his takeover.
The lawmakers told Cuffari in
their letter that the hiring moves
“deprived you of the opportunity
to install lasting and coherent
leadership” and might have con-
tributed to budget shortfalls.
Costello, who served as acting
inspector general before Cuffari
was sworn in, had clashes with
other senior staff, according tocurrent and former DHS officials
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because they were not
authorized to publicly discuss
staffing disputes. Paulson did not
respond to questions about Cos-
tello’s status or her hiring deci-
sions.
Eden Brown Gaines, a personal
attorney for Costello, depicted
her client as being a victim of
dysfunction and retaliation. Cos-
tello has discussed whistleblower
complaints with members of Con-
gress, Brown Gaines said in a
statement, and told lawmakers
the inspector general had “sup-
pressed a report concerning fami-
ly separations at the border.”
Brown Gaines said Costello
also denounced Cuffari for with-
holding reports and said he
“made misrepresentations to
Congress and mismanaged the
budget.”
“Ms. Costello is a well-respect-
ed member of the IG community,
having served for 20 years,”
Brown Gaines said.
The DHS inspector general’s
office has operated under a cloud
in recent years amid various in-
vestigations of its conduct. On
March 6, a federal grand jury in
the District of Columbia indicted
former inspector general Charles
Edwards and an aide for allegedly
conspiring to steal proprietary
software and confidential data-
bases from the government.
According to the allegations in
the indictment, from October
2014 to April 2017, Edwards and
his alleged co-conspirators tried
to defraud the government by
stealing s oftware along with sen-
sitive databases containing the
personal information of DHS and
Postal Service employees.
Last year, then-acting inspec-
tor general John V. Kelly retired
after The Post reported he told
staff to whitewash audits of the
government’s response to disas-
ters. Investigators found that Kel-
ly praised the work ethic of feder-
al emergency responders to show
“FEMA at her best,” while in-
structing supervisors to focus on
what the agency had done well,
not its mistakes.
[email protected]DHS watchdog nearly dormant as reports and audits plummet
Inspector general’s office
has been dramatically
weakened under TrumpCAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POST
T hen-acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan tours the department’s new St. Elizabeths
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