Bill Black – The Clintons Have Not Changed – The Clintonian War on the IG Watchdogs

Secretary Hillary Clinton is asking Democratic voters to believe that she has experienced a “Road to Damascus” conversion from her roots as a leader of the “New Democrats” – the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.  When exactly this conversion occurred is never stated, but an interesting fact has emerged that demonstrates it did not occur during her service as the Secretary of State.  A Wall Street Journal story provides the key facts, but none of the analysis.

Newly released emails indicate that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top staff were involved in the selection process for the State Department’s internal watchdog, a position that ultimately went unfilled throughout her four-year tenure.

The WSJ’s angle is that such involvement in the selection of the Inspector General (IG) is a threat to the IG’s vital independence.  True, and also true as the story notes that Hillary was far from rare as an agency or department head in seeking to select behind the scenes the supposedly independent IGs.

The function of the IG is to “speak truth to power.”  Naturally, “power” hates IGs with a purple passion.  Government leaders are most likely to hate having its abuses made public by IG when the government leader is secretly acting in concert with immensely powerful private leaders for their mutual benefit at the expense of the public.

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