This coming Saturday is the 20th anniversary of the attacks upon America on September 11, 2001. Like most Americans, this was the seminal event in the history of our country. I have been thinking a lot about that date and the anniversary; even more so with the fall of Afghanistan and the evacuation from Kabul. I wanted to do something to commemorate this anniversary, so I decided to do a podcast series featuring the personal stories of persons in the compliance field with their thoughts about what the date of 9/11 means to them, how it changed our profession and their thoughts looking back some 20 years later. The lineup for this week is:
- 6 – Gabe Hidalgo
- 7 – Juan Zarate
- 8 – Alex Dill
- 9 – Eric Feldman
- 10 – Scott Moritz
- 11 – John Lee Dumas
For this episode of Looking Back at 9/11, I visited with Eric Feldman, Senior Vice President and Managing Director at Affiliated Monitors, Inc. (AMI), a company that deals with monitoring large and small companies in government contracting, construction, engineering, manufacturing, and financial services. AMI is also the sponsor of the Looking Back on 9/11 podcast series. Feldman also conducts assessments of corporate ethics and compliance programs across many countries. Eric talked about the impact the events of 9/11 had on the role of Inspector General (IG) at the CIA.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, at 7:30 AM, Eric was in the morning staff meeting at the CIA. Then Director George Tenet was en route to the Headquarters. An assistant of Director Tenet came into the conference room and announced that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Feldman related that although it “was unclear what was going on at that point before the second plane hit, everyone in that room was quite certain what was going on because of reporting that had gone on before that.” From that point it was “battle stations and you had never seen people snap to attention and leave as quickly as that.”
Feldman went back downstairs back to his office where he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. At that point, Feldman was scheduled to be heading to the White House for a meeting of agency IGs to meet on the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency. As he could not get in touch with anyone at the White House, he got into a car and drove down. As he was driving down George Washington Parkway, he could see the smoke coming out of the Pentagon. Feldman said, “it was clear we needed to go back, and we made a U-turn on the cross, the median on the GW Parkway, which is a quite a feat, and headed back toward CIA headquarters. As we’re coming into the compound, people are rushing out of the compound on foot, which was somewhat disconcerting. At that point, of course, there were all kinds of rumors, about the next plane, which ultimately crashed in Pennsylvania, but they thought would, could potentially be hitting the agency. It was chaos.”
9/11 greatly changed the role of IGs. Feldman noted, “it was the most informative time of my career, and the careers of many other Inspector Generals. It was a refocusing moment for everyone.” Feldman got to work within the oversight function, but as part of the mission he was overseeing. “That focus on mission was it for me”. Feldman went to work for John Brennan in an operational role which Feldman said helped make him a better IG, “as part of the mission that we were overseeing, and it gave me a renewed sensitivity to why we’re there in the first place, IGS, auditor’s, compliance officers need to understand the mission and the organization that they are overseeing.” Feldman believes that IGs all over the world became more concerned with looking at the broader picture of how funds were being used at their agencies to fight the war on terror, instead of the minutiae of looking at time and attendance reporting.
We then turned to the how the IG role changed post-9/11. Government IGs became “part of the team” in different ways. This new focus fostered more collaboration across the agencies that IGs oversee. There is also independence: Eric expressed that there must be a balance between collaboration and independence. IGs are especially important as they ensure that the dollars being spent on the war and mission are being spent properly. Feldman believes there can be both collaboration and independence by IGs, that these “are not mutually exclusive terms. I think that IGs across the government became more collaborative and, therefore, I think much more effective in doing what they’re doing.” He also said that the other thing that happened, particularly in places like the CIA and Defense Department and even within the greater defense community, is that the IGs became very important in ensuring that all of the dollars that were needed to be spent on the war and related mission expenditures were spent properly.
We concluded by Feldman reflecting back on 20 years after the initial attacks on 9/11. He reflected that 9/11 was a wake-up call for the United States. The country came together, and there was a level of unity and patriotism, as well as a sense of duty that overtook politics. It was so good to see. He said, “I think we’ve lost that. And I wish that we could get refocused without another catastrophe on what’s important in this country and the tribalism, as we all know, is just way out of hand. And I yearn for that feeling, that we were one country, solidly behind a single mission to defend ourselves.” He hopes that the people can return to that unity without another catastrophe.
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