House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HOGR) Chairman Rep. [crscore]Jason Chaffetz[/crscore] is slapping a subpoena on Office of Personnel Management Acting Secretary Beth Cobert after waiting months for documents about the agency’s massive security breaches.
OPM’s repeated failures to address known cyber security gaps allowed hackers to steal the personal information of more than 21 million current and former federal employees. But OPM hasn’t turned over all of the 11,000 un-redacted files and directories HOGR has been demanding for months. The committee even received some of the same files OPM held back from private company CyTech, a contractor that inspected OPM’s networks.
Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, said Cobert is “not working in good faith with the committee.”
“OPM, under Ms. Cobert’s leadership, is not cooperating with the Committee’s investigation,” Chaffetz said in a news release Wednesday. “We made a commitment to the American people to ensure a hack of this nature never happens again. The documents we’ve repeatedly requested be provided to this Committee are essential to fulfilling that promise.”
“Despite assurances of cooperation, I’m disappointed Ms. Cobert is not working in good faith with the committee,” Chaffetz continued. “I will use all available remedies to obtain the information needed to conduct a thorough and meaningful investigation.”
Sparks flew at the beginning of the year, when HOGR grilled OPM’s Jason Levine, director of OPM congressional relations office.
“Why aren’t you giving this information, the same stuff that was already hacked?” Chaffetz fumed at Levine during the Jan. 7 hearing. “We know that the adversary has it, but you won’t let us see it,” he said, waving OPM documents almost entirely obscured by black ink.
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