Lawmakers question whether key CIA nominee misled Congress
WASHINGTON — Two former CIA employees are accusing the Trump administration’s choice for CIA chief watchdog of being less than candid when he told Congress he didn’t know about any active whistleblower complaints against him.
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Christopher Sharpley, the current acting inspector general who’s in line for the permanent job, about complaints that he and other managers participated in retaliation against CIA workers who alerted congressional committees and other authorities about alleged misconduct.
“I’m unaware of any open investigations on me, the details of any complaints about me,” Sharpley testified at his confirmation hearing last month.
He said he might not know because there is a process providing confidentiality to anyone who wants to file a complaint against government officials, who often are individually named in cases against management.
“No action or conclusions of wrongdoing have been made about my career or anything that I’ve done,” Sharpley added.
The committee is still considering Sharpley’s nomination.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Ron Wyden say they find it hard to believe Sharpley didn’t know about the complaints when he testified. They said one of the open cases is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.
They say that inspector general’s office, which is looking into the CIA matter to avoid a conflict of interest, asked Sharpley in January for documents. The office asked to interview Sharpley on Oct. 12. Sharpley’s office said he wouldn’t be available until after Oct. 17 — the day he testified to senators.
“How is it possible that he could have been unaware of any open investigations against him at the time he testified?” Grassley, R-Iowa, and Wyden, D-Ore., asked in a letter they wrote to Senate intelligence committee leaders.
GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, had planned a vote on Sharpley’s nomination last month. It has been delayed while the committee holds discussions about the whistleblower cases, according to someone familiar with the matter. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani defended Sharpley’s five-year tenure at the agency as deputy and then acting inspector general. He said Sharpley has 36 years of investigative and law enforcement experience and created two inspectors general offices from scratch within the federal government.
“Whether there are any complaints or investigations regarding Mr. Sharpley is not something we could confirm or comment on,” Trapani said. “What we can say is that Mr. Sharpley has had a sterling five-year career at CIA and there have never been any findings of wrongdoing or misconduct of any sort by Mr. Sharpley during his tenure here.”
Documents provided to the AP by attorneys representing two former CIA employees challenge Sharpley’s testimony.
They point to discord over several years within the CIA’s inspector general’s office, an independent unit created in 1989 to oversee the spy agency. It’s charged with stopping waste, fraud and mismanagement and promoting accountability through audits, inspections, investigations and reviews of CIA programs and operations — overt and covert.
John Tye, executive director of Whistleblower Aid, who is representing two of the complainants alleging retaliation by Sharpley and other senior managers, said some discord in the office stemmed from a case several years ago involving kickbacks from contractors.