{"id":1394,"date":"2005-01-11T13:32:22","date_gmt":"2005-01-11T18:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/01\/pressured_to_keep_silent\/"},"modified":"2005-01-11T13:32:22","modified_gmt":"2005-01-11T18:32:22","slug":"pressured_to_keep_silent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/01\/pressured_to_keep_silent\/","title":{"rendered":"Pressured To Keep Silent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/transcripts.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/0501\/11\/lt.01.html\">Part of an interview<\/a> with  Clark Kent Ervin, former Inspector General (watchdog) at the  Department of Homeland Security.  Mr. Ervin wrote a number very critical reports about DHS:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>ZAHN: At any point during your two years of service as inspector general, did anybody try to silence you or mute your criticism?<br \/>\nERVIN: Happened all the time, and I resisted it very, very fiercely.<br \/>\nZAHN: Clark, can you explain to me how pressure was put on you to mute your criticism along the way?<br \/>\nERVIN: There were times I was urged not to release reports.<br \/>\nZAHN: By whom? Would these be members of Congress?<br \/>\nERVIN: Not by members of Congress but by senior members of the department. It happened on a number of occasions. And I resisted each time. The good news is that the law gave me the authority to do just that.<br \/>\nZAHN: So you say you felt pressure from high-ranking members of the Department of Homeland Security?<br \/>\nERVIN: Yes.<br \/>\nZAHN: Did Tom Ridge ever come to you personally and say, &#8220;You can&#8217;t do this, Clark. This is making us look bad&#8221;?<br \/>\nERVIN: To his credit, the secretary never did that. He did not. There&#8217;s no question that on a number of occasions, there were hard-hitting reports about very, very sensitive topics that the senior leadership in the department &#8212; I don&#8217;t want to personalize this or name names &#8212; would just as soon had not been released publicly or to the Congress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Upper-tier Bush administration officials attempting to silence realistic assessments of how effectively government policy is working?  I&#8217;m shocked.<br \/>\nMr. Ervin is doing interviews now because the administration refused to reappoint him; apparently he was doing his job too well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/01\/pressured_to_keep_silent\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Pressured To Keep Silent\"><p>Part of an interview with Clark Kent Ervin, former Inspector General (watchdog) at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Ervin wrote a number very critical reports about DHS: ZAHN: At any point during your two years of service as inspector general, did anybody try to silence you or mute your criticism? ERVIN: Happened all the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}