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11 Each of the 100 investigations covered in this book left its own mark on history and followed its own path to impact or irrelevance . If not absolutely unique, each investigation nevertheless created its own story, including some that became the grist of Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, not to mention ongoing speculation on what really went wrong. Each investigation had its own timeline, for example. Some lasted for years, as investigators scoured the country looking for plots against the nation such as communist infiltration of government , illegal lobbying, or China’s theft of U.S. nuclear secrets, while others moved quickly to address urgent breakdowns such as the Gulf oil spill, limit the contagion from rapidly spreading disasters such as the 1987 savings and loan collapse, or resolve doubts about lingering controversies such as allegations that the Reagan campaign had contacted Iran in an effort to delay the release of the fifty-two U.S. hostages being held in Tehran and thereby prevent an “October surprise” that might assure President Jimmy Carter’s reelection.1 Each investigation was also sparked by some kind of government breakdown, whether the result of a decision or a nondecision. Some were presaged by a tragic word or two such as the “uh oh” uttered by the shuttle Challenger pilot,Navy Captain Michael J.Smith, just nanoseconds before he and his crew were killed in a preventable explosion.Others were launched after yet another news story about government waste or another “Golden Fleece” award that Sen. Counting Investigations TWO 02-2268-7 CH 2:0322-8 9/30/13 1:53 PM Page 11 William Proxmire (D-Wis.) pioneered as a way to highlight“the biggest, most ridiculous, or most ironic example of wasteful spending for the month.”2 Others still were ignited by a surprise such as quiz show rigging revealed by the media, a whistle-blower, or the release of a best seller. Finally, still others began with a seemingly innocuous “my-eyes-glaze-over” hearing on the Defense Department’s bloated stockpiles of spare engine parts, clothing, dental floss, nose spray, and even bubonic plague vaccine.3 Each investigation had a somewhat different purpose as well. Some trivialized national disgraces such as the Ku Klux Klan’s brutal tactics during the civil rights movement, minimized systemic problems surrounding technical failures such as the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant meltdown, or glossed over the broader causes of front-page events such as the May 4, 1970, killing of four Kent State University students during a Vietnam War protest. Others pursued the facts about hidden abuses such as the federal government ’s domestic spying operation during the same war and the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra program, which raised money for Nicaraguan anticommunist rebels from secret arms sales to Iran.4 Finally, each investigation had its own structure and modus operandi. Some of the investigations were designed for partisan advantage by focusing on personal misconduct, such as the Clinton administration’s alleged misuse of the White House Christmas card list to raise campaign cash and the transformation of the Lincoln bedroom into the “Fat Cat Hotel” for “Friends of Bill,” or by firing a warning shot about the potential regulation of a beloved game such as professional baseball. Others, such as the 9/11 investigation, embraced bipartisanship as they sought the facts about what went wrong in the past and what must go right in the future. Yet even as each investigation created its own résumé, all 100 stand together as significant efforts to address a government failure, be it to fix the problem or to exploit it for political and institutional advantage. All 100 can also be compared against each other using measures such as their length, call to action, seriousness, and bipartisanship. In turn, these and other measures can be used to explain the footprints that the investigations left behind and to predict their eventual impact on government performance. This chapter begins with short vignettes about three iconic investigations that illustrate the concept of historical significance. It then explains how investigations differ from traditional oversight, discusses my methodology for selecting the 100 investigations on my list, and provides a brief introduction to the list itself, along with a demographic profile of the 100 investigations and an analysis of basic investigatory patterns over the past seven decades. 12 Counting Investigations 02-2268-7 CH 2:0322-8 9/30/13 1:53 PM Page 12 [3.140.185.123...

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