Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sought to defend the ouster of Steve Linick, saying the former inspector general had neglected to make a “thorough investigation” of leaks targeting the State Department’s top Iran policy official.
“Steve Linick was a bad actor in the inspector general office here,” Pompeo told reporters Wednesday. “We asked him to investigate it in a certain way. He refused to do that, and that’s inappropriate.”
Those were some of Pompeo’s most forceful criticisms of the man whose firing he recommended last month. That recommendation spurred Democratic allegations that Pompeo was retaliating over investigations into his own actions. Congressional investigators released the transcript of their interview with Linick earlier on Wednesday to fortify that charge, but Pompeo maintained the auditor turned a blind eye to the use of leaks to undermine his team.
“Mr. Linick didn’t do what he was asked to do: to respond to a story, I think written by one of you, that suggested that a couple of anonymous sources from inside his operation … had leaked a very politically sensitive document designed to destroy the career of a professional State Department official,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo’s public complaint builds on a June 1 letter that his brain trust sent to challenge the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s investigation into Linick’s firing. Brian Bulatao, the State Department’s undersecretary of state for management, claimed that Linick had broken surreptitiously an agreement to have an independent body, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, investigate the leak.
“The department learned months later that, instead of referring the matter to CIGIE, Mr. Linick had asked another agency’s inspector general to review the issue,” Bulatao wrote to House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat. “We hope that the committee would agree that this episode raises serious concerns about Mr. Linick’s judgment and does not meet the high standards of trustworthiness that the secretary would expect from an inspector general within the department.”
Still, that explanation did not forestall bipartisan criticism of the firing process. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, announced three days after that letter was sent that he is blocking two of President Trump’s nominees to senior positions until the administration gives more information.
“Without sufficient explanation, the American people will be left speculating whether political or self-interests are to blame,” Grassley said.
Linick testified that he asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to probe the leaks after CIGIE officials explained that they could only undertake an investigation into specific individuals — an explanation that he says he gave to Pompeo’s team at the time. “I remember specifically saying, you know, if CIGIE is a place where this should land, then you’d have to make a referral about me in particular,” Linick said in a June 3 interview that the Foreign Affairs Committee released on Wednesday.
The disagreement centers on an investigation into allegations that Brian Hook, the State Department’s point man for Iran policy, had engaged in politically motivated firings of non-political officials who had worked on Iran policy during Barack Obama’s presidency. The Daily Beast cited “two government sources involved in carrying out the investigation” to report that Linick had recommended that Pompeo discipline Hook over the matter.
“We’re determined to figure out how that information escaped, which was aimed at harming someone here,” Pompeo said. “As I said before, my mistake was letting Mr. Linick stay here as long as he did. He continued to undermine what it is the State Department’s mission is aimed at achieving.”
