VA watchdog agrees to brief relatives on vet's death. Is this appropriate?

Wow.

This is the part that struck me:

"It appears that the VA OIG is placing the legal interests of the VA – the department that the VA OIG is charged with overseeing – ahead of the interests of the grieving families of deceased veterans,"

It mentions that the OIG is the oversight for the VA, and that Congress is their oversight. Theoretically they shouldn't be "protecting" the VA. Whatever the issue is, it is. Whatever the findings are, so be it.

Going to Congress first, without the family triggered Privacy concerns in the back of my brain, but I don't know how the legalities work when it gets that far up the food chain.

In my years with the agency, I had interacted with OIG on various audits. I also knew criminal investigator OIGs and their mission was completely different. I agree with SPC Jan Allbright with the notion OIG is ensuring the government's interests are protected above and beyond the interest of the veteran's family. Some of the OIG auditors had their degrees in subjects unrelated to the topic they were auditing. They had a little check list and followed the check list. If someone from the Agency can explain the matter clearly and show the policy/regulation to support it, then all was good. If not, then they would cite the failure as a failure to follow policy/regulation. I recall one audit where the investigator could not find one thing wrong on my program. He told me he couldn't turn in a report without a finding. So I reached into my records and showed him an issue I had resolved months before when I caught it, and he used it as a negative finding on the audit, but as it was he who discovered the failure. SOB couldn't even give me credit for the finding and props for doing a great job.

Really? "We can't tell you because we haven't made the findings public yet, but we've got no problem briefing politicians who could care less why veterans are dying..."