Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to introduce Roslyn A. Mazer. I have known the Mazer family for many years, and am pleased to introduce Roslyn to you today.
I must tell you that I believe that Roslyn is the ideal nominee for the position of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security. I need not tell the committee the importance of this position for such a relatively new but large cabinet agency in our government. Particularly in a time of scare resources, we need an Inspector General at DHS who has a proven track record of conducting investigations, supervising audits, and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.
Roslyn has spent almost her entire professional life in public service, and has nearly a decade of work experience specifically in the Inspector General community.
Roslyn earned her B.A. magna cum laude from Syracuse University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her J.D. from the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America here in Washington, DC. She is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, and before her government services was a partner at Dickstein Shapiro.
From 1993 to 2009, Roslyn served in senior positions at the Department of Justice, including seven years in the Office of Inspector General’s Oversight and Review Division. In that capacity she led reviews of the FBI’s abuses of national security letter (NSL) authorities, leading to two reports mandated by Congress in USA PATRIOT Reauthorization Act of 2005. I must tell you that as the former Chairman of the Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, I found these reports to be very useful in our committee’s deliberation and briefings on the reauthorization of expiring Patriot Act authorities.
Partly due to these reports, the committee proposed new oversight provisions for the use of NSL’s by the government.
At the Justice Department she also conducted investigations of high-level misconduct by officials and employees. She also led a review team on the FBI’s implementation of the Attorney General’s guidelines. She also held several specialized positions at DOJ, including that of Associate Deputy Attorney General and the President’s Chair of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel. I would also note that she received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service, the Award for Excellence by the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency in Government, and the DOJ Office of the Inspector General’s Award of Merit.
Mr. Chairman, Roslyn already had a list of significant accomplishments before taking her current position in 2009, which is the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Ms. Mazer serves concurrently as the chair of the Intelligence Community Inspectors General Forum, working with all Intelligence Community elements to fulfill community-wide objectives established by Congress.
Roslyn was involved in both unclassified and classified reviews of the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP), which I again found useful as a former member of the Judiciary Committee as we considered how to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to provide for greater oversight by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
In her current position Roslyn has been instrumental in helping the OIG prepare to transition the office to become the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community (IC), as recently required by Congress. And I will remind the committee that the ODNI is a newer agency than even than DHS, as the first Director of National Intelligence did not take office until 2005. So once again Roslyn was given an enormous challenge and opportunity, and she rose to the occasion. She has overseen efforts to better integrate the IC, use funds more wisely, improve contractor and acquisition oversight, and enhance the effectiveness of the ODNI and IC. In particular, I am pleased with Roslyn’s work to track the implementation of IG recommendation made to IC elements.
In my view, Mr. Chairman, Roslyn serves as a shining example of public service and doing what is best for your country.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I want to express a little home-state pride as well. Roslyn grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a proud graduate of Pimlico Junior High School. She is also a proud graduate of Western High School, which is the oldest public all-girls school in the United States, founded in 1844. Most of the Mazer family still lives in Baltimore, and I look forward to their introduction to the committee today. Let me thank the Mazer family, in particular Roslyn’s father, William Mazer, and her husband, David Holzworth, for agreeing to share in the sacrifices that public service demands, as well as the rewards it provides.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
