Talk:Steve Linick

February 2022 Request Edit
Hi, I have some suggestions for improvements to this article. I have a conflict of interest as a personal connection of Steve Linick. Thank you.

1.

In the Career section, the existing third paragraph – which reads “He served as the first Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency from 2010 until 2013” – is based on a primary source and is missing relevant details about Linick’s work at the FHFA. Here is a suggested replacement, which provides more relevant detail and has a reliable secondary source:

In 2010, Linick was appointed Inspector General (IG) of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In that capacity, he led audits and investigations to curb inefficiency and abuses within FHFA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. In March 2011, Linick published a report criticizing FHFA for authorizing tax-payer funded salaries of $35.4 million to the top six executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In October 2011, Linick published the results of an investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which found that the regulator for the two companies had failed to create adequate risk controls to help prevent foreclosure abuses.

In 2013, he left FHFA for a new appointment as Inspector General of the State Department.

2.

In the Career section, please delete paragraph four (“Linick began his tenure as the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of State…”) because it a) relies entirely on a primary source, b) offers excessive detail about the general job of an Inspector General, c) reads in places like a resume.

And replace it with the following account of his time as IG, focused primarily on events as reported by reliable secondary sources. The only exception is the date of his appointment.

Linick became the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of State on September 30, 2013. As IG, his primary function was to audit and investigate possible instances of corruption, abuse, or mismanagement within the State Department.

Early in his tenure, Linick conducted inspections which turned up numerous security deficiencies in five newly-opened overseas State Department facilities, all of which were in locations which were considered to have a high risk of terrorism or socipolitical unrest; the report became public in 2014. In an August 2015 article in Foreign Policy, writer John Hudson said Linick “surprised observers inside and outside Foggy Bottom with his willingness to publicly criticize the State Department” over matters such as security lapses in overseas compounds exposed by the 2012 Benghazi attack as well as the mishandling of billions in reconstruction funding in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In April 2015, Linick started a review of the “use of personal communications hardware and software by five recent Secretaries of State and their immediate staffs.” Secretary of State John Kerry requested Linick also examine how the State Department meets its "preservation and transparency obligations”. As part of the review, Linick examined Hillary Clinton's use of private email services for correspondence during her tenure as Secretary of State. In his May 2016 report about these practices across various administrations, Linick found Clinton had failed to comply with State Department policies concerning preserving federal records (including emails) and had never sought permission to use a private email system while Secretary of State; Linick also criticized former Secretary of State Colin Powell for failing to appropriately keep records by using private email, but noted that the rules surrounding emails were not as strict during his tenure.

3.

In the Career Section, “Report on retaliation” subsection, there are inaccuracies and the omission of highly relevant details. The current version states that “In 2019, Linick produced a widely read report in which he found that Trump administration officials were retaliating against career diplomats based on politics rather than merit”; in fact the press reports on this incident state that the retaliation was based not only on political affiliation but also in some cases on the basis of ethnic background. The current version also says that “The report highlighted five examples” but does not describe any of them.

Remove:

In 2019, Linick produced a widely read report in which he found that Trump administration officials were retaliating against career diplomats based on politics rather than merit. The report highlighted five examples.

Here is my suggestion for a corrected version:

Beginning in 2018, Linick oversaw a State Department investigation concerning discrimination or retaliation against civil servants within the State Department by Trump administration political appointees. The findings of this investigation were detailed in a report, released in November 2019, which found that Trump appointees violated State Department policies directing placement of career State Department staff members on a meritocratic basis and instead engaged in harassment of certain staffers because of their ethnic background or political affiliation.

4.

In the Career section, the first sentence of the current “Firing” subsection is unsourced and incomplete. While Trump took credit for firing Linick at the time, later Mike Pompeo said it had been his decision. The conflicting versions can both be worked into Wikipedia with reliable sourcing. The current version is:

On May 15, 2020 President Trump fired Linick, claiming he had lost confidence in him.

To give the proper context, I propose replacing that first sentence with the following language:

On May 15, 2020, Linick was informed by Brian Bulatao and Stephen Biegun, two of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s high-ranking aides, that President Trump had decided to remove him from his post; Linick was then immediately placed on administrative leave. His dismissal was officially announced in a letter sent by Trump to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late that same night. In that letter, Trump said that the firing was necessary because he had lost confidence in Linick, however Pompeo later said that it was his decision to remove Linick.

Congress held hearings to determine if Linick's firing was in retaliation for conducting investigations related to Secretary Pompeo and other officials. In a June 2020 Congressional hearing, Linick testified about the circumstances leading to his firing, including an investigation into whether Pompeo and his wife used government staff for private errands, and alleged “bullying” by Pompeo aide Brian Bulatao to try to stop an investigation into emergency arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates despite congressional objections.

5.

In the Career section, please add two new sentences to the last paragraph of the current “Firing” subsection, following the sentence that reads: “Linick had also been conducting—as he testified to Congress on June 3, 2020, which was released in a transcript a week later—five investigations into the State Department, including a watchdog investigation into Secretary Mike Pompeo's alleged use of a political appointee as a domestic personal assistant. ”

Here are the suggested additional sentences to complete the final paragraph :

In April 2021, the State Department Inspector General’s Office released the final report on the internal investigation begun by Linick concerning Pompeo’s improper use of State Department employees as Secretary of State. The report found that more than a hundred improper requests were made by either Pompeo or his wife, including asking aides to mail out personal holiday cards, care for family pets, or plan personal events not related to State Department activities.

6.

In the Career section, please add a new paragraph following the end of the current “Firing” subsection. This paragraph adds details about one of the investigations that Linick was overseeing when he was dismissed, such as an investigation concerning alleged improper behavior by the Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Woody Johnson.

When he was dismissed, Linick was also investigating a potential pattern of racist and sexist behavior by Woody Johnson, the ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as the possibility that Johnson had used his position as ambassador to advance President Trump’s personal business interests. A report released by the IG’s office in August 2020 found that Johnson had made “inappropriate or insensitive comments” to Embassy staff in London, but the allegations that Johnson had attempted to further Trump’s private business interests as ambassador were not investigated further.

7.

In the Career section, immediately after the third paragraph about his appointment as the IG of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, please add a new subsection titled:

State Department Inspector General

Also, please remove subsection titles:

Trump-Ukraine scandal

Report on retaliation

Firing

As the previous requests demonstrate, there were a number of high-profile events that took place during Linick’s tenure as Inspector general at the Department of State, and having a new subsection for each of these events seems excessive formatting, especially given that some of them are only one sentence. If Wikipedia doesn’t delete all of them, it would actually need to add three new subsections just to cover the new content in this proposal. The better alternative is to just have one subsection for his time as State Department IG.

Thank you for your consideration. Skijackson (talk) 19:56, 23 February 2022 (UTC)


 * After reviewing I have incorporated all your recommended changes including those from BLPN (07/2022), with some copyedits. I regret it's taken this long, as your recommended changes are simply excellent for someone with no edit history. The problem may just be that nobody's paying much attention to this BLP (which is a pity because the BLPs that get much more attention – and have the most garbage – tend to be of obscure kooks and cranks.) I ask that you consider editing Wikipedia more in the future, as the experience here can be much more lively and rewarding than what you may have found with this article. Also, after a longer more varied edit history, you potentially have much more freedom to make improvements if you just declare COI in edit summaries.


 * As for this article, the changes I have made, and suggest to be made further, to your edits involve mostly tightening of the prose and just general deference to material that would be explained in more detail in some of the main articles linked like the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. It's partially stylistic on my part, to think in a long-term perspective of how to write about (relatively) recent newsmakers, but also part of WP:10YEARTEST. Anyway, thank you for your contributions, and I hope we see more of you in the future! SamuelRiv (talk) 16:32, 6 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Closed the edit request box because the requests have been incorporated into the article. Go4thProsper (talk) 01:47, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

BLPN discussion
BLP noticeboard Skijackson (talk) 18:17, 5 July 2022 (UTC)