IDB building in Washington, DC; Photo courtesy of flickr user wallyg

Over the course of the past year, GAP has received a succession of complaints about unethical practices at the Office of Institutional Integrity (OII) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). OII is the unit responsible for investigating allegations of corruption, waste and fraud at the IDB, and Brígida Benítez has served as OII Chief since January 2010. In each case, the complaints sent to us were first circulated internally at the IDB.

Soon after she took her position, Benítez’s lack of experience in fraud investigations became a source of concern. As a former partner at Wilmer Hale, her previous responsibilities had focused primarily on litigation and commercial trade disputes. Even as she serves as OII Chief, her extra-curricular work continues in this field: during the past academic semester, she taught a course in transnational litigation at American University (AU).

It should be emphasized that not only does investigation require a different skill set than litigation, but in many ways the two approaches to a set of facts are diametrically opposed. While an investigator examines facts impartially, a litigator uses facts to construct a narrative favorable to his/her client. The selection of a litigator, rather than an investigator, to head the IDB’s investigative unit, therefore, raises doubts about the Banks’ commitment to an impartial OII.

As reported today by the NYT, the complete Pentagon Papers are set to (finally) be released, about 40 years after making headline news. The whistleblower in that case, Daniel Ellsberg, has been recognized widely by the 'good government' community as the "patron saint" of whistleblowing. At a time when the negative connotations involved with whistleblowers were enormous and all too commonplace, he put his professional career, reputation, and the overall well-being of his family on the line to speak the truth about the Vietnam War. Ellsberg, who has graciously appeared with GAP on several occasions to promote our work and the importance of the phenomenon, was on the right side of history.

This announcement comes at an interesting time, because there's another prominent whistleblower who's about to go to trial -- who's also on the right side of history. Former NSA employee Tom Drake is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for retaining, not leaking, classified information about a data collection program that was amazingly expensive, threatening to Americans' privacy rights, and wholly undeveloped, despite the availability of a cost-effective, functional alternative that respected Americans' privacy.

Drake (a GAP client) did what he was supposed to do, raising concerns through official channels first -- including senior NSA management, the Defense Department's inspector general, and Congress. You would like to think that the progress made by the American government with regards to the whistleblower system, since Ellsberg's disclosures, would have never allowed for Drake's allegations to be sat on, and done nothing with. This, unfortunately, is not the case. His concerns were ignored.