March 16, 2005 | Former Vs. Former

Former Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge called former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin into his office twice in 2004 to scold Ervin for the tone of his reports on the failings of the department and to ask him to try to coordinate the message of his findings with the department, according to Pete Yost of the AP.

During a June 9 meeting, "Ridge said a couple of times, 'Look, are you my IG?' and I said, 'No, I'm not your IG,'" Ervin recalled.

Ervin said that when he told Ridge that the inspector general served the public, the former Pennsylvania governor replied, "I had an IG in Pennsylvania and he didn't release things to the Legislature or to the press."

Ervin said he answered: "But I do here. I have a reporting obligation" to Congress.

Ervin said the meeting "was two hours of 'Why are you doing this? Why are you being negative to the department? Why are you releasing reports?' It was a long come-to-Jesus meeting, angry and confrontational. I just spent the whole time trying to educate him about the role of the inspector general."

Ridge had just endured an uncomfortable morning on Capitol Hill. Senators had used one of Ervin's reports to question Ridge about problems, including lost and stolen passports, in a program that allows citizens from certain foreign countries to enter the United States without a visa.

In a subsequent meeting five weeks before the Nov. 2 election, Ervin said, Ridge talked about presenting the inspector general's reports in a way that would make them seem less critical of the department.

According to Ervin, Ridge asked, "What can we do to coordinate our messages on these reports so that you and we are saying the same thing about it?"

Ervin recalled: "I said, `I'm not in the spin business. We don't coordinate our messages with the department. You can characterize it and spin it however you want, but that's your business, not ours, and we're not going to coordinate anything with you.'"

Full story here.

Ridge denied he played politics while at the helm of the DHS, particularly when he was accused of timing trips to announce homeland security grants to help President Bush's re-election campaign.

He also says Ervin is not telling the truth about their meetings.

In a statement, Ridge said: "I did not always agree with the tactics, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations of the inspector general. At no time, however, did I ever ask him to suppress or withhold a specific report.

Ervin's statements are "untrue and deserve no further comment," said Ridge, who left as secretary last month.

Now that's a classic non-denial denial.

W. David Stephenson never bought the original line -- see his post here detailing Ridge's meeting with Republican pollster Frank Luntz (another story broken by the AP's Pete Yost).

Also note that Ridge's denial doesn't deal with the real meat of the story.

By all accounts, Ervin is a damn smart and principled guy who had the power to peer into the nooks and crannies of a sprawling Department cobbled together from 22 other agencies just about 2 years ago. You'd think that a head of such a department would want to talk to this guy pretty often, to get a sense of what Ervin thought the department could do better.

Instead, Ervin seems to have been treated with as much acceptance as cops give the head of an Internal Affairs division.

And since this is Sunshine Week, make a note that this blog entry owes its existence to Pete Yost filing Freedom of Information Act requests.

Posted by Ryan Singel at March 16, 2005 08:11 AM

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