RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Glenn Fine may be the most powerful law enforcement officer you've never heard of. Hes been the Justice Departments top watchdog for more than a decade, and during that time, Fine exposed widespread violations of civil liberties by the FBI, and he criticized Justice Department officials for injecting politics into hiring decisions.
Fine has decided to step down soon, but first, he sat down with NPR's Carrie Johnson.
CARRIE JOHNSON: A lot of people have underestimated Glenn Fine over the years, starting with his success in basketball. The San Antonio Spurs drafted him in 1979. Fine keeps a team poster on his wall to prove it.
Mr. GLENN FINE (Inspector General, Department of Justice): I'm quite short, I'm five foot nine, and they don't believe I played basketball. So I've taken to telling people, well, before I started this job as the inspector general I was six foot nine.
JOHNSON: Actually, Fine's stature has grown over 10 years as inspector general. One reason: the focus on national security at the Justice Department after the September 11th attacks. Fine exposed security flaws and privacy violations by the federal government. He trained his 400 employees to pick high value targets and he gave them the freedom to roam.
Michael Bromwich used to be the Justice Department's inspector general.
Mr. MICHAEL BROMWICH (Former Inspector General, Department of Justice): There were a lot of questionable and unfortunate things that were going on at the department that led to important investigations that the inspector general's office did and that Glenn led. And that helped inform the public and the Congress as to some of the things that were going on that shouldn't have been going on.
JOHNSON: During the middle years of the Bush administration, Fine found that politics motivated the hiring of lawyers for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and its summer interns. He also went after the FBI's use of national security letters to snoop on people. Some Republicans said that Fine was playing to the media and Democrats in Congress. But Fine says those kinds of complaints are to be expected in his line of work.
Mr. FINE: Whenever you're doing a sensitive report, it's bound to make someone unhappy. We're not going to be the most popular people here in the Department of Justice. But our job is to do an aggressive, tough, but fair review and to lay out the facts, and we try to do that.
JOHNSON: George Terwilliger is a Republican lawyer in Washington. He's defended several people under investigation by the inspector general. But he generally gives Fine good marks.
Mr. GEORGE TERWILLIGER (Former Deputy Attorney General, George H. W. Bush Administration): Any time you're in that position, the person investigating your client is an adversary, but I always found Glenn to be a worthy and respected adversary.
JOHNSON: Terwilliger says it's important for the White House to choose a replacement with experience leading big investigations. But he says there's another factor that's even more critical.
Mr. TERWILLIGER: I would hope that they would be nonpolitical, because the position is subject to politicization and political abuse.
JOHNSON: Justice Department sources say it could take a while for them to nominate someone to fill Glenn Fine's shoes. Fine's longtime deputy, Cynthia Schnedar, will lead the office for the time being.
Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
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