FDA Defends Use of OCI Agents in Employee ‘Conduct’
Probes
3/26/2010 Barely three months after the Government
Accountability Office faulted FDA’s oversight and management of its Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) and Office of Internal Affairs (OIA) —
and the agency’s parent HHS agreed — FDA 3/24 staunchly defended the way those offices conduct investigations
of employee misconduct. In a six-page letter to House Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX), who believes use of criminal
investigators to investigate non-criminal allegations and whistleblowers is intimidatory and bad for morale, FDA ignored the morale issue.
Instead, assistant commissioner for legislation
Jeanne Ireland told Barton FDA’s “current practice of staffing OIA with experienced criminal investigators [from
OCI] is beneficial to both FDA and the public.” She wrote that because the existing system “successfully addresses
allegations of non-criminal misconduct with few complaints, and its use of criminal investigators is consistent with the practice
of other federal agencies, FDA believes that additional training or hiring is unnecessary and would not be a sensible use
of limited resources.”
Ireland said that by “using its
most highly trained investigators to pursue allegations of employee misconduct, FDA sends a strong signal to its staff and
the public that FDA employee misconduct will not be tolerated and that allegations against its employees will be subject to
the same high level of scrutiny applied to allegations against outside entities.” READ
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