First there were agents. They were virtuous and true, and they made television shows and movies about them.  Remember Eliot Ness? He led the Untouchables, and that’s not a name one gets for being easily compromised. Violent, sure, but never on the take.

But reality offered too many opportunities, and some went bad.  So then there were watchers to watch the watchers. They called them Inspector Generals, and they were virtuous and true. But reality offered too many opportunities for them as well.

It was bound to happen.

From the Federal Bureau of Investigation :

A former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG) special agent in charge and another special agent were indicted in the Southern District of Texas late yesterday for their roles in a scheme to falsify records and to obstruct an internal field office inspection, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Special Agent in Charge Armando Fernandez of the FBI San Antonio Field Office.

The indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Brownsville, Texas, charges Eugenio Pedraza, 49, of McAllen, Texas, with six counts of falsification of records in federal investigations, five counts of obstructing an agency proceeding, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of conspiracy. The indictment also charges Marco Rodriguez, 40, of Mission, Texas, with two counts of falsification of records in federal investigations, two counts of obstructing an agency proceeding, and one count of conspiracy.

The problem with dirty agents is that there is an office whose purpose is to make sure there are no dirty agents. And if there are dirty agents, that office blew it. And if they knew about the dirty agents and still did nothing, then it double blew it.  The only way it could get worse is if the office whose purpose it is to make sure there are no dirty agents were dirty as well, hand in the till sort of thing.

According to the indictment, in anticipation of the inspection, Pedraza allegedly directed Rodriguez and other DHS-OIG employees to engage in a scheme to falsify documents in open criminal investigative case files, including numerous investigations in which DHS employees were suspected of participating in the unlawful smuggling of undocumented aliens and/or narcotics into the United States.

When Pedraza learned that his office was going to be subject to an inspection, he had his people falsify records to make it look like he had done his job when he hadn’t. When he learned that he was being investigated for falsifying records, he had his people pull the phony records out of the files.  The only thing he didn’t do, as far as the press release goes at least, was get a piece of the action for smuggling drugs and aliens. 

We often ask “who’s watching the watchers?”  Well, that would be Pedraza, and apparently its not going nearly as well as the government thought or would have everyone believe.  To their credit, they caught Pedraza, though one might suspect that someone in his operation ratted him out because not every agent in the employ of the government has forsaken Eliot Ness.  But for that, how else would D.C. know what was happening in Brownsville, Texas? 

But the core issue is that agents are human, and temptation affects them too.  As outraged as one might feel when a cop beats, perhaps kills, a person for not jumping as high as they command, there is still a bone in our heads that differentiates the bad cop from the dirty cop.  The dirty cop, the one who gets green stuff in paper bags from drug dealers or alien smugglers, is just despicable.  And yet, the dirty cop exists because the temptation exists and they fall prey to the worse angels of their nature.

Then why, one must ask, does the government think these temptations won’t filter down to their inspector generals?  If some better breed of human exists, one that is so certain to rise above temptation, to be untouchable, then why aren’t they wearing guns and shields and walking the border fence?  Of course, such a being doesn’t exist, and getting a gig in the OIG doesn’t make one immune from temptation.

Will the next step be some new office, new job title, the Office of Untouchable Inspector General, whose job it is to keep the lesser inspector generals from going down the road to perdition?  That’s the usual solution in government, premised on the belief that their people are somehow better, different, than the people who are expected to end up on the receiving end of their scrutiny.  And if such an office is created, it will only be a matter of time before they too will have a Pedraza to prosecute, because the watchers of the watchers of the watchers are still human.

The point isn’t that there is no fix to the temptation that cause a government agent to go bad, but that G-men and their watchers, their bosses in Texas and  their bosses in Washington, aren’t a breed apart from those they order around, beat with clubs, tase and occasionally shoot.  The public and judges ascribe them magical powers and inscrutability.  The media and lawprofs never want to cross them.  When they utter their special language of accusation, their every word is endowed with implicit truth.

And then there are the dirty ones who we never learn about because the watcher didn’t do his job, and the whole house of cards of law enforcement integrity collapses. It’s not that every cop is dirty, but that every cop isn’t clean. Not even the office of Inspector General can change that, because they are human too, and just as subject to temptation and frailty as anyone else. 

H/T FritzMuffKnuckle