MAJOR UPDATE: File Under: Where Do They Find Time?
As if dealing with FISA abuse and all isn't enough, OIG's plate is kept full with matters such as these:
Findings of Misconduct by a then Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge forSexual Harassment, Failure to Report an Intimate Relationship with a Subordinate, and Lack of Candor
Significant findings:
The OIG investigation found that the SAC sexually harassed six subordinate employees while serving as the SAC and two subordinate employees while serving in a previous position as a Section Chief at FBI Headquarters, failed to report an intimate relationship with a subordinate, engaged in actions following the end of that relationship that created a hostile work environment for the subordinate, and lacked candor during the SAC’s interview with the OIG, all in violation of FBI policy. The OIG investigation also found that the SAC violated the Department of Justice’s zero tolerance policy with respect to sexual harassment.
The OIG has completed its investigation and provided its report to the FBI for appropriate action.
One suspects that the zero tolerance policy is honored in the breach until such time as it can no longer be ignored or swept under a rug.
UPDATE: Adam Mills has a nice article on the general topic, Justice Department Protects Its Own from Tax Prosecution , (which in turn contains a link to a much longer article by Eric Felten, Accused in Justice Dept.'s Upper Echelon, and Innocent Until Scot-Free ).
The general topic, of course, is how to deal with corruption among those charged with upholding societal standards of morality, as embodied in the laws. I remember as a very young first office agent (that's Bureau lingo--we were transferred several times in our careers) getting into an argument with another first office agent, also a lawyer. He maintained that the laws we enforced had nothing to do with morality. It was wrong to disobey the laws simply because the laws were the laws. He later rose to a fairly high level in the Bureau, and I was reminded of him when I recently saw his name on the list of 2000 former DoJ/FBI officials calling on AG Barr to resign over the dismissal of charges against Michael Flynn. I was mildly gratified to see how few ex-Bureau people had signed on.
More broadly, Wikipedia has an informative article Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? that summarizes the dilemma nicely. As I have urged in the past, the dilemma becomes especially pressing when the highest standard for conduct becomes--as it seems to be in modern America--a purely positivist one, usually measured by the criminal law or the strictures of PC think. It then, logically, reduces morality to whatever you can get away with. If Bill Haydon is right that the intelligence services are the measure of a society's help, we're in a bad way.
Anyway, Wikipedia:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires (Satire VI, lines 347–348). It is literally translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", though it is also known by variant translations, such as "Who watches the watchers?" and "Who will watch the watchmen?".
The original context deals with the problem of ensuring marital fidelity, though the phrase is now commonly used more generally to refer to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions of power, an issue discussed by Plato in the Republic.
This phrase is used generally to consider the embodiment of the philosophical question as to how power can be held to account. It is sometimes incorrectly attributed as a direct quotation from Plato's Republic in both popular media and academic contexts. There is no exact parallel in the Republic, but it is used by modern authors to express Socrates' concerns about the guardians, the solution to which is to properly train their souls.
Who will guard the guardians? It's none of your business, but since you ask, the guardians will guard themselves--which is the whole incentive for becoming a guardianin the first place. That seems to be where we're at. You can tell from the howls of rage from the elite when AG Barr suggests the some standards of right and wrong actually have objective value.