ard, odd problems subject to the mind that members of the Board should be saying to themselves I have a fiduciary position and I need some help. In fact, I might just ask Mr. Strickland, is it true that Ms. Barnett told the treasurer or the general counsel not to talk to members of the Board?

Mr. STRICKLAND. The way Ms. Barnett has organized the operation, we have a chief administrative officer. And the treasurer reports to the chief administrative officer. When they make presentations to the Board, when they, the chief administrative officer and the treasurer make presentations to the Board, they do so jointly. So the Board has access to the treasurer.

Mr. CANNON. Has she said to any officers at LSC that they shouldn't talk to Board members?

Mr. STRICKLAND. I don't know.

Mr. CANNON. Well, then we will leave it at that. But let me say that is appalling to me. I don't know how anybody could be on a Board who doesn't feel like he had the opportunity to walk into any employee's office, anybody's office and

Mr. WATT. Can I reclaim my time? It might be appalling to you, Mr. Chairman, but that is a level of micromanagement that I think is not befitting this institution, the Board or this Congress and, you know, if we start micromanaging at this level, it is appalling to me. Mr. CANNON. I think the gentleman is correct that any Board member who goes in to a secretary and looked over his shoulder while he is typing is probably an idiot. Unless there is something for that.

Mr. WATT. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about us looking over the shoulder of the Board of-you know, hey, I wouldn't any more condone the Board going in and looking over the shoulder of a secretary than I would condone the Members of Congress going in and looking over the shoulder of the Board.

This Board has responsibilities. It has not violated those responsibilities that has been able to decipher. It has not violated those responsibilities even so near as the reports that Mr. West has submitted to us. And yet because we don't like lawyers or we don't like the Legal Services Corporation, we are out there micromanaging the business of this Board in a way that I think is inappropriate. Mr. CANNON. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT. Yes, I will, and I will ask for another minute so you can respond to that.

Mr. CANNON. The point the gentleman is making is very, very important. The point is that we should not be micromanaging Legal Services Corporation and no Board member should go look over the secretary's shoulder. That said, if a Board member doesn't have the ability to look over a secretary's shoulder, if he doesn't have the ability to get to books, if he doesn't have the ability to look at whatever information he feels is important so that his corporation or in this case this Legal Services Corporation can operate in a reasonable fashion; that is, if he can't take on the responsibility that he actually holds to effectively perform his duties, then he is not going to work very well.

We don't have shareholders of LSC. We have taxpayers and our role is to make sure the Board is performing its function. We have had very serious discussions about what we are going to do with

the building that you have purchased or worked with Friends of Legal Services to purchase. We have some fundamental problems here where I think there is a true breakdown of understanding by Board members, and I think this was the deal you were talking about, Mr. Watt. There are some-I believe that what I see here are members of the Board who are getting the perks of an operation who are being directed by staff but who are not using the Inspector General for the purpose that he exists, which is to protect the Board from allegations of impropriety or for overseeing an operation that there is impropriety going on.

That is what I think this hearing is about. It is oversight of those things, and the issue about the reports that the Inspector General, Mr. West, has issued are not so much on point. It is the reaction of the Board to those reports that I think is significant here.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of think time if I have any.

Mr. CANNON. The gentlemen yields back. I doubt he has any. But the Chair appreciates his indulgence and the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona for 5 minutes.

Mr. FRANKS. Mr. Chairman, I am learning a great deal here. Could you entertain-could I yield additional time to you, sir?

Mr. CANNON. I have a number of other questions if you don't have any.

Mr. FRANKS. I would be glad to yield.

Mr. CANNON. I'll take your time and probably my time again.
We have distracted somewhat Mr. West.

Mr. Williams, you have heard the discussions between the Ranking Member and me. Do you have comments on the issue?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Broadly speaking, the job of the Inspector General is a difficult one. I've investigated the heads of most of the departments and agencies that I have been a member of. With regard to Boards, they are normally evenly split. And it isn't unusual to vote along partisan lines. So a super majority is something that I take comfort in. And many times in the investigations that I conduct, members of the commission and now the Board are party in interest and sometimes they are even the subject of the investigation. I think people have a natural tendency to want to tell the truth, but they ought not to have to choose between telling the truth and feeding their families.

What seems to have occurred here, the timing between the investigation and discussions regarding firing Mr. West are very instructive and very damning and very serious. And I consider this a very serious matter, and I think that any provision that will provide levels of security for Mr. West and speaking the truth to powerful figures is welcome and is needed.

Mr. CANNON. So what you are saying as opposed to what Mr. Watt is saying is that this is an important investigation and needs or this bill and what we are doing here is not micromanaging but creating a context that makes sense?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I think if you don't protect people speaking the truth, there are going to be a lot of people that won't tell you the truth. This was done at your request, I understand. It is the duty of the Committee to join in an effort to make sure that retaliation doesn't occur. In the case of TVA and HUD and other instances

where this sort of thing occurred, legislation followed and strong Congressional action followed, and I think it is appropriate in this instance as well if this is what it looks like.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. West.

Mr. WEST. Well, I would like to follow up with one example of, I think, sort of what is going on and again, as I said, I am trying to keep this off any kind of, you know, personal dispute or whatever. But back a year and a half ago your Subcommittee asked me to look into the lease and I issued a report, as you noted in your comments, Mr. Chairman, that the-my lease report was rejected subsequently to that. Your Subcommittee held an independent hearing, arrived at basically the same conclusions that I did regarding the building in the House appropriations.

Mr. CANNON. In fairness, there was no testimony that contradicted your position. The amazing thing was that having said that, it all turned on whether or not there was a conflict of interest. Someone I believe on the Board of LSC resigned because of the obvious conflict of interest. Others wanted to pretend the conflict didn't exist. We bent over backwards to try to construct a context where that would be straightened out, and I think we are of one mind on that issue. And yet we are here without that fundamental conflict having been resolved and we created I think the I think we bent over backward to create a context where we could solve that problem about using those and others.

Mr. WEST. I had the privilege of, you know, or happened to look and be able to read some closed transcripts of the Board's performance review of me which, by the way, I am entitled to under the law. So it I got them in the course of investigation by—I am also entitled to them on a case involving the firing of the first LSC IG back in 1991, I believe.

And what I found was that there is still disagreement over my issuing this report on the lease, notwithstanding the fact that the House, in the House report on appropriations, which was adopted by the conference report in which the conferees told the LSC that they needed to negotiate a more reasonable rent rate and try to lessen the amount of space they need.

So I'm sort of in a situation where I provided a report to the Congress. I believe I did, on my professional standards using independent outside appraisers who were referred to me by the General Services Administration and the facilities department Postal Service, I issued the report. Congress agreed with me. And I hear from the Board that my performance is bad because they disagree with how this lease report was issued.

I then find that I have been criticized because I didn't respond to why a particular appraisal-lender's appraisal-was included as part of my lease report. I hadn't seen it. I was told you didn't respond to our concerns, and I issued two reports regarding why I didn't consider it relevant.

And I don't know what to say when I am being criticized for things that I in fact have done, that I have been told that I haven't done, and I have done it. I have done things that Congress has agreed with and the Board tends to still disagree with my findings as well as Congress' findings.

Mr. CANNON. The time of the gentleman from Arizona has expired.

The gentleman recognizes himself for 5 minutes. Maybe this is a good time to shift to Mr. Strickland. You have heard the discussion here about whether this is relevant or important or micromanaging. And yet you are the chairman. You are concerned about your reputation. I know this is a matter of great importance to you. We have talked about the difficulties that the building represents.

Do you recognize the problem of a Board that rejects a general counsel an inspector general, instead of using that inspector general to help protect the Board, its chairman and members and their reputations?

Mr. STRICKLAND. It is correct that the Board disagreed with the findings in that report. By way of follow-up to that, Mr. Chairman, we have taken two approaches to resolve that problem. One is

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Strickland, would you mind focusing on the question, which is, as the chairman of the Board, aren't you concerned that you have someone who really is independent on the outside, who acts as an agent to protect you and your reputation and the reputation of the Board?

Mr. STRICKLAND. We appreciate the role of the inspector general and we are working very hard to gain a better understanding of the proper role of an IG. As I said a moment ago in my opening statement, none of us came to the Board with any experience with the inspector generals. It is a foreign concept to us.

Mr. CANNON. Have you served on boards of corporations?

Mr. STRICKLAND. No publicly traded corporations, no, sir. Nonprofits.

Mr. CANNON. Have any of your members that you know of served on boards of publicly traded corporations?

Mr. STRICKLAND. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. CANNON. Well, I certainly hope to the degree you have input, and we certainly will take the initiative to bring people on the Board-actually, I do know Tom Fuentes is on the board of at least one-a publishing company.

Mr. STRICKLAND. That is correct. I don't know that that is public, but he is on that board.

Mr. CANNON. That is not a public corporation, I don't think. Mr. Strickland, what I think we need here is a recognition of the role of a Board member in the context of the terrific legal responsibilities and burdens that come with being on a Board. Now, that is a little different when you are on a public board with funding-taxpayer funding. But I think that makes our role overseeing it a little more poignant than perhaps other activities. But you know, do you have lawyers on the Board who are corporate lawyers?

Mr. STRICKLAND. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. And who serve as general counsels for public or nonpublic

Mr. STRICKLAND. I presume they do provide general counsel advice, yes. And I do myself for some clients.

Mr. CANNON. I apologize. I interrupted you and you had something else to say.

Mr. STRICKLAND. I was going to say with respect to the lease, it is true we had a disagreement with the lease report. It is also true,

I think, that I don't know anyone in the room would say inspectors general are infallible. So I think it is our responsibility to speak up if we have a disagreement, and we have done that.

Most of our disagreements with Mr. West have had to do with style rather than substance, and omissions of things that we thought were material to his reports. With respect to the lease, we attempted through the appropriations process to get some language that would help us on the ultimate ownership of the building. That process did not work. I wrote you a letter a few months ago suggesting another alternative for protecting LSC's ultimate ownership in the building, and I would like to explore that with you on another occasion, rather than in detail. But we have had not had a chance to discuss that letter since it was sent.

But it was a proposal that would provide for a supermajority vote to Friends of LSC, who is our landlord, and would also add some representatives of LSC to the Friends board, and impose the supermajority requirement before that board could take any action that would be detrimental to LSC. We thought that was the only safety valve we could think of that would have additional protection to the LSC's ultimate ownership of the building.

Mr. CANNON. My time is about to expire. But let me just ask, I have been personally involved in the issue of the building, and I talked to the Chairman of the Subcommittee, Mr. Wolf, who has a long association with LSC. And I thought we were making progress there. What happened between you and the Chairman of the Subcommittee that I'm not aware of that derailed ownership of the building by LSC?

Mr. STRICKLAND. I am not sufficiently conversant on appropriations language to give you an intelligent answer to that.

Mr. CANNON. Were you involved in those discussions or was it someone else on your staff?

Mr. STRICKLAND. Someone else on the staff. And the advice given to me was

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Polgar raised his hand.

Mr. STRICKLAND. Yes, I believe he is the one who had those discussions, and I can't give you an intelligent answer to that, other than my understanding is that we were not able to work out any appropriations language that would help us in that regard, although we made the effort.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you. I see my time has expired Mr. Watt, are you interested in another round?

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I think I will pass.

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Franks.

Mr. FRANKS. Mr. Chairman, do you need any additional time?
Mr. CANNON. I do.

Mr. FRANKS. Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to give it to you, sir.
Mr. CANNON. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. WATT. If I had known you need additional time, I would have been happy to yield to you also. I just want the record to show that.

Mr. CANNON. I apologize for keeping the gentleman here longer, but I would really like to work through some of these questions.

Mr. West, I have heard from Mr. Strickland that the situation at LSC is no different from the situation at other entities with in