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‘Watchdogs’ author has no regrets about choosing civil service over the NBA

By Lee Rawles

November 6, 2024, 8:11 am CST

Glenn Fine’s career-long crusade against corruption might have its roots in his college days. As a point guard for the Harvard basketball team, Fine had his personal best game Dec. 16, 1978, the same day that he interviewed for—and received—a Rhodes Scholarship. He put up 19 points against Boston College, including eight steals, and the team nearly eeked out a win against the favored Boston players. A remarkable day.

What Fine would later discover was that mobsters had bribed Boston College players to play worse, keep the game tight and not cover the point spread. Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke—later portrayed by Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro in the movie Goodfellas were part of the point-shaving scheme.

Fine would later be drafted in the 10th round of the NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs, but it was the anti-corruption law that stuck, not basketball.

Fine took a job out of law school as a prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and joined the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Justice in 1995. He would go on to serve as inspector general at the DOJ from 2000 to 2011, then at the Department of Defense from 2015 until 2020. He was one of the five inspectors general fired by then-President Donald Trump in what the Washington Post referred to as the “slow-motion Friday night massacre of inspectors general.”

But what do inspectors general do? It’s a question that Fine wants to answer with his book, Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government. In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Fine and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the function, history and importance of the position, along with ways that Fine thinks that government oversight can be improved.

As of the book’s publication in 2024, there are 74 inspectors general offices at the federal level, with more than 14,000 employees. As the IG for the Department of Defense, Fine oversaw the largest office, with some 1,700 employees. Inspectors general conduct independent, nonpartisan oversight investigations into waste, fraud, misconduct and best practices and deliver their reports and recommendations to Congress and the agencies involved. The IGs cannot enforce the adoption of recommendations, but their work acts as the “sunshine” for disinfection, Fine says.

One major recommendation that Fine makes in Watchdogs is that an inspector general be established for the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, who could perhaps file their reports to the chief justice or the head of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Fine points to judicial ethics concerns and polls finding public trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows and argues that one way to increase public trust is through the transparency provided by an inspector general.

Also in this episode, Fine offers advice for anyone considering a career in public service. Rawles and Fine discuss stories of his investigations, including evaluating the claims of a whistleblowing scientist at the FBI laboratory and looking into how the infamous double-agent spy Robert Hanssen was able to fool his FBI superiors and pass intel to Soviets and Russians.

In This Podcast:

Glenn Fine

Glenn Fine served as the Department of Justice’s inspector general from 2000 to 2011 during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. After practicing law at a large Washington law firm for several years, Fine returned to government. And in January 2016, he became the acting inspector general of the Department of Defense. In that role for over four years, he led the largest federal inspector general’s office, which employs over 1,700 staff in 50 offices around the world. Fine was co-captain of the Harvard basketball team and was drafted in the 10th round of the 1979 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs. Instead of trying out for the Spurs, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford and a law degree from Harvard Law School. Fine is now a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. He also teaches as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and Standford Law School. Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government is his first book.