warrants? the concern grows out of the fact that all of the failures and the and the information that should ved been given and wasn t given. and the question being what was the intent? what what washa their intention? their motivation there. and what we determined was we couldn t definitively say what the motivation was. are these pretty smart people? fairly well-educated? at least well-educated. i don t know if they re smart. i don t know if we re very smart to beow honest with you. i was b going to say they have law degrees, right? at least somehe of them do. so you think the woods review for people at this level of the organization. to be clear, the stuff that didn t happen on the woods review was basic stuff. yeah. you didn t need to be a deeply-experienced fbi agent to be able to do it the right way. well, that s my point. so wouldn t you think that would almost be muscle p memory for people who are going through this process to know they had an obliga
Inspectors general of these various agencies on that issue? as i mentioned, i m you know,yo allegations that come i. we ll talk with our fellow igs. on that specific one, are you working with other igs? we re not i don t have any ongoing work at this point. again, i m not sure what my legal if i d have a statutory authority to look at actions by lawyers at the department related to misconduct. have you been approached by any other igs to work with them on an investigation that related to that phone call? i ll say we ve had discussions generally. i don t know what whether other igs at this point have or do not have ongoing investigations. you have had conversations generally about this phone call? about about, generally, ukraine-related matters and discussions, generally., how about specifically about this phone call? i don t recall, as i sit here, discussions about it. you have to refresh your memory? refresh my recollection on this issue.
all right. understood. and i did want to get to this question, though, about the operation of the fisas. and, again, you may not answer this and that s fine. but it seems to me, if we go beyond the bias question. to intentional versus grossly negligent. it seems to me that the kind of misconduct that has been presented by you and reviewed by our chairman and many others here today is mind numbing to consider that it could be just accidental. can you reach a conclusion like that? i d be skeptical. but i understand why people would be skeptical of that. there is such a range of conduct here that is inexplicable. and the answers we got were not satisfactory. that we re left trying to understand how could all these errors have occurred over a nine-month period or so? among three teams, handpicked.
Investigate misconduct committed byve the attorney general of th united states.ct who is doing the bidding of the president to undermine our intelligence community. and i trust you take that duty seriously. i i do. and i d just like to add that, under the law, under the inspector general act, it carves out for my authority, the ability to look at misconduct by department lawyers from the line lawyer all the l way to the top and the attorney general. history has also shown us that the inspector general can participate in an investigation of the attorney general. and that, in fact, happened with general gonzales. do you recall that? that happened and go it s worth noting that happened after the attorney general said our office was not going to get the case. it was going to go to the office of professional responsibility. and the choice for our office was whether to join that investigation or not.or but that wasn t initiated through us. that s the important point. the law has to c
Continuing toar pursue cases. or aren t allowed to stay in those positions if they ve violated the trust that they ve been given. i think that s important. the reason we re talking a little bit aboute this and discipline, pollty, aicy, and procedures, is because the american people, when the look at an institution likehe the fb. they want to know that they are good guys. and if they are not good guys, they need to go. i think the american public gets tired of seeing bad actors with no repercussions. very important from our standpoint as i as the inspector general s office that there bes accountability for a conduct across the board. but certainly, for misconduct. and performance failures. and those need to be taken into account. yeah. performance failures. lying. i mean, there was a lot going on in the department. they weren t just d mistakes, a somebody casually mentioned. these are not just mistakes.