This is the fifth Washington Examiner op-ed documenting our team’s whistleblowing experience related to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hurricane Maria recovery debacle in Puerto Rico.
What does a failed watchdog look like? The Department of Homeland Security‘s Office of Inspector General offers the clearest example in modern federal oversight: a measurable, documented collapse, demonstrated in its reports to Congress. The office has become an oversight void — where credible whistleblower disclosures disappear, and accountability is systematically avoided.
We compiled these numbers from the Office of Inspector General semiannual reports to Congress during DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari’s tenure. We then compared those numbers to those of other agencies. From fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2025, the Office of Inspector General’s Whistleblower Protection Division reviewed 3,144 retaliation complaints. It confirmed just 11 — a validation rate of 0.35%.
Other federal watchdogs corroborate 3%–8% of retaliation cases. In the private sector, the rate is 20%–25%.
That makes the Office of Inspector General between ten and 25 times less likely to confirm retaliation than comparable federal offices and 50 to 70 times less likely than the private industry. No statistical model explains a gap this extreme. It reflects institutional posture, not case quality.
The same pattern appears in waste, fraud, and abuse complaints. Even using the most generous reading of its semiannual reports, the Office of Inspector General acted on only 1,070 out of 140,344 complaints — a rate of 0.76%. Peer agencies average 2%–10%. The Office of Inspector General is not an outlier; it is the floor. This is not a rounding error, but rather an institutional fingerprint.
Inspectors general are supposed to function like umpires: impartial, with a bias toward protecting whistleblowers and an arm’s-length relationship with those they oversee. This is not the case at the DHS. Here, the cozy relationship between the Office of Inspector General and the departments it oversees enables and provides cover for misconduct.
Cuffari’s ineptitude is well known. Two GOP congressmen, multiple Capitol Hill staffers, and watchdog groups such as the Government Accountability Project and Project On Government Oversight all warned us: avoid Cuffari’s office! They have seen credible disclosures vanish into the Office of Inspector General black hole. At a whistleblower conference, a panel devolved into a two-hour discussion on the futility of using the Office of Inspector General.
Our cases comprised two of those rare 11. Our prime contractor, ATCS PLC, was found to have retaliated against me and a team member. They account for roughly one-fifth of confirmed retaliation cases, repeat offenders in a system designed to find none. Their misconduct was so blatant that even a 99.65% dismissal rate couldn’t hide it.
The WPD report completely ignored the retaliation and sabotage by colluding FEMA employees. When we asked for an appeal, WPD head Rohan Prashad ignored us and passed the buck to Office of General Counsel lawyer Rina Martinez. She was so dismissive when I spoke with her that I hung up. My lawyer finished the call. Case closed. Even though the report was 900 days late, slipshod, and failed to hold FEMA accountable, we were supposed to be grateful.
The strategy was obvious: sacrifice a pawn (ATCS) to protect its bishop (the corrupt FEMA employees), hoping we would go away. But we didn’t.
Even after proven retaliation, Karley Hoyt, a contracting officer representative who mismanaged the contract from the start, has still not downgraded ATCS in the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System.
We took evidence directly to FEMA acting administrator David Richardson, who initiated debarment against ATCS, citing records falsification, whistleblower retaliation, collusion with FEMA officials, intellectual property theft, knowing Anti-Deficiency Act violations, overbilling, and the loss of the $70 million Digital Site Inspection Tool that would have shaved years off Puerto Rico’s recovery. He also terminated FEMA employees who sabotaged our program. Our end-run proved it: ATCS was only held accountable after we circumvented the Office of Inspector General.
This wasn’t simply understaffing; it was institutional design. During our investigation, the WPD had only two full-time investigators. The unit was inundated with 300 to 400 complaints per period, most of which were declined.
For the fraction that did enter the system, the two investigators shared an active caseload of 45 to 50 retaliation cases. Occasionally, they borrowed Justice Department staff, but that support was sporadic. WPD refused to incorporate work from other DHS offices, including the Office of Professional Responsibility, even when covering the same facts and personnel. The goal was not to get it right, but to appear to have gotten it right. A Potemkin village of oversight: under-resourced, structurally hobbled, and indifferent to justice.
The Office of Inspector General rarely meets reporting deadlines, taking four months instead of two to provide the statutorily required semiannual report to Congress. This is dereliction disguised as delay.
This culture of suppression and indifference, set at the top, filtered down.
Over the course of three months, we provided multiple opportunities for Prashad, Martinez, Hoyt, and lead field agent Jose Acosta to respond. ATCS was also offered the opportunity. But they all declined.
These structural failures were mirrored by personal misconduct at the highest levels.
In October 2024, an independent inquiry found Cuffari guilty of “substantial misconduct.” The findings confirmed he misled the Senate during his confirmation and abused his authority by spending $1.4 million in taxpayer funds on a retaliatory internal investigation against three whistleblowers on his staff.
Separately, his office paid a $1.17 million settlement in a whistleblower retaliation case, one of the largest such payouts for a federal employee.
The corruption ran so deep that it triggered a mass exodus and an anonymous plea to the president. Thirty of 60 attorneys, half of his legal staff, resigned during his tenure, fleeing a toxic and retaliatory environment. Those who remained wrote former President Joe Biden an anonymous letter calling for his removal, saying they could not identify themselves “for fear of retaliation.”
Signed by “concerned DHS OIG employees representing every program office at every grade level,” the letter said, “He has permanently damaged the reputation of DHS OIG … He no longer has the support of his workforce. Staff do not trust IG Cuffari and his senior leadership to make the right decision.”
The ultimate irony: Brian Volsky, former head of the WPD, filed a whistleblower complaint against Cuffari for mishandling legitimate cases. At the Office of Inspector General, the protectors have become the persecutors. It’s a rendezvous of Joseph Heller, George Orwell, and Michael Scott at dysfunction junction.
We experienced this toxic culture firsthand.
When we met with Office of Inspector General agents in April 2019, including Acosta, we gave them everything: evidence, documentation, and witness lists showing fraud and retaliation at FEMA. This evidence detailed widespread malfeasance in Puerto Rico, on our contract, and the broader recovery. They made clear they were only interested in readily provable fraud.
We reported $1.5 billion in fake fixed cost estimates meant to mislead a delegation of 60 congressmen. The response: “Did anyone take the money?” We explained they had not, but lying to Congress should matter. But they just shrugged.
We warned about a $4 million purchase being bypassed for a $46 million lease. They dismissed it because it had not occurred yet.
We warned FEMA that a faulty Guidehouse model used poor sampling that overstated water tank losses and risked wasting millions. ATCS, our contractor, falsified reports to protect its partner, Guidehouse. A field agent asked, “Has anyone gotten sick from unsafe drinking water?” “No,” we replied, “but the fraud was fixable.” They were uninterested.
That April 2019 meeting could have been a turning point. Instead, the system failed. The game was rigged, a fact proven by what it took to get even a single case validated.
The persistence of this impotent oversight at the third-largest department is hardly a mystery. Within 100 hours of his second term, President Donald Trump fired 17 inspectors general (even axing the top three judge advocates general in the first month — a preemptive strike on military oversight). He spared only two: Cuffari and DOJ’s Michael Horowitz.
Trump eliminated effective watchdogs while protecting Cuffari, an inspector general renowned for inaction and incompetence, who even retaliated against whistleblowers within his own office. The preference was clear: perimeter cleared, effective watchdogs fired, bad inspectors general retained.
Retaining an inspector general notorious for inaction is not oversight; it’s institutional self-protection.
This purge was not isolated, but part of a consistent pattern of silencing oversight. The administration also removed the head of the Office of Special Counsel, the key agency responsible for protecting federal whistleblowers, and has moved to strip whistleblower protections from up to 50,000 senior government employees. The message is unambiguous: The entire accountability system is being dismantled.
The message is clear: Trump doesn’t want oversight. But does Trump know the full story? The administration wants loyalists feeding it the answers it likes. This preference for a neutered watchdog had immediate consequences.
Richardson lasted only months before being forced out. The same toxic stew that crippled whistleblowers, a symbiotic relationship between colluding DHS employees and protected contractors, unceremoniously destroyed a reformer.
When Richardson sought a briefing, I was banned from FEMA headquarters. It took four months, including back-channel DHS non-FEMA emails, code names, and a Starbucks in Dupont Circle, to finally meet off-site. The system doesn’t just bury evidence, it neutralizes leaders who try to act on it.
The revolving door spun freely. A former ATCS partner became FEMA’s top official in Puerto Rico, shielding his former company until he was removed for unrelated misconduct. The contractors are still there. The other officials who enabled them are still there. No one faces consequences for the core corruption.
Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem want to disband FEMA, citing incompetence and waste. They are right, but they are unaware of the legitimate grounds because Cuffari’s Office of Inspector General has suppressed that evidence for six years.
When one of us, Barry Angeline, finally briefed Richardson at DHS headquarters, his team mentioned malfeasance uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency.
“That’s the tip of the iceberg,” we responded. “We have evidence of everything you described and a lot more.” They prepared an independent investigation because they did not trust the inspector general. “No need,” we said. “We have it all.”
Trump kept Cuffari to protect the administration from oversight. But in doing so, it is protecting the very bureaucratic rot it claims to want to eliminate. The evidence of FEMA’s systemic failures — the $1.5 billion in false reports to Congress, the $70 million lost tool, and hundreds of millions in waste and fraud — sits buried in Office of Inspector General files while DOGE scrambles for justification. The watchdog Trump kept is guarding the evidence that would vindicate his agenda.
Meanwhile, FEMA’s “Puerto Rico Problem Solving Group” is unaware of our work and will likely reinvent the wheel, wasting time in identifying problems that we have already documented.
It is protection, all right, but not for Trump. It is protection for the swamp.
The Office of Inspector General’s systemic failure to validate whistleblower claims, whether of retaliation or of fraud, waste, or abuse, creates a culture of impunity and signals that speaking up is futile.
These numbers should warn would-be DHS whistleblowers: don’t do it. If the urge continues, lie down until it passes. When the watchdog retaliates against its own while ignoring thousands of complaints, when the administration protects the most corrupt inspector general, the system is not broken; it’s working as designed.
Evidence won’t matter. Moral clarity won’t protect you. The offices created to safeguard whistleblowers have been weaponized against them. At DHS, filing a complaint isn’t courage; it’s insanity.
This is not about bad math; it is about Office of Inspector General inaction: letting $2 billion in documented fraud and waste fester, a $70 million tool be erased, training vanish, and lawsuits pile up.
Every day it continues, the message to corrupt insiders grows louder: commit fraud and retaliate at will; the watchdog has been defanged.
A watchdog that confirms retaliation in only 11 of 3,144 cases is not failing. It is executing its true mission, performative oversight. Being toothless and neutered isn’t a bug; it is THE feature. The DHS swamp is well guarded under Cuffari.
Barry Angeline is a retired executive with more than 30 years of experience leading process improvement at General Electric, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner, the Marine Corps, and the Army. He holds multiple patents, has published on performance management, and led FEMA’s Lean Six Sigma deployment in Puerto Rico. Federal whistleblower.
Retired Army Col. Dan McCabe earned two Bronze Stars as an armor officer during Operation Iraqi Freedom. After retiring, he worked with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and the State Department to transfer U.S. security training to the Iraqi government. He served as a senior consultant on FEMA’s Lean Six Sigma mission in Puerto Rico. Federal whistleblower.
