Thank you, Alex (Acosta, Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice). I am honored by your presence and words today. Alex was the first person at the Department of Justice I talked with before I came to Washington. He has helped me navigate the sometimes treacherous waters of Washington politics and bureaucracy.

Of course, I am lucky today to have with me friends and relatives. First, my lovely and patient wife, Catherine, and my brother, William, from Los Angeles, and my dear friends from Kansas City, the Department of Justice, and other places in Washington public policy.

This morning I was privileged to be sworn in at the United States Supreme Court by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Our very own receptionist, Carolyn Maynor, attended high school with Justice Thomas in Savannah, Georgia, and she was there this morning talking to Justice Thomas like they were old friends.

I want to thank my new deputy, Jim Renne. Unfortunately, he is not here. He set all of this up today. Then he received orders last week that he had to depart for duty for a week of JAG training for his new commission.

There is a scene in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, where the ever-credulous Sancho Panza, the trusted side kick and squire to the numinous Knight of La Mancha, has come to the castle of a Duke and Duchess who have read about Don Quixote and Sancho in the book that has come out about them called Don Quixote. The Duchess is contending with Sancho about the Island that Don Quixote has always promised Sancho he will one day attain to govern, and now the Duke and Duchess have pretended to give an island to Sancho to govern as a practical joke, but Sancho does not want to leave his donkey, Old Gray, outside the castle that night. The Duchess, surprised, wonders why Sancho intends to take his donkey inside the Duke’s palace, and whether he would do so with the governor’s mansion on his new island. Sancho matter-of-factly says, “It is not uncommon at all for asses to occupy the seats of government, for it happens all the time.”

Cervantes pokes fun at many things, including governors who place too little importance on dreaming big dreams and who subordinate truth to expediency, fairness to self-interest. I hope I will never emulate the qualities that resulted in Sancho’s remark.

I find the events of the last few months both exhilarating and humbling. People are expected to say they are humbled. There’s a reason for that: when you are honored with a high position in our great nation, you wonder as I have, whether you will be up to the task on which you have set out.

But I am encouraged by the fact that we have immense talent in this agency. I am not alone. We have vast stores of experience, hard won wisdom and battles fought. With those lessons learned, and the combined wisdom of the staff, and their good will, I do not think there is anything we cannot achieve. I am honored to be working with the people at this office.

I now feel to be true what George Washington said in 1775: “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” Of course, he wrote this to Benedict Arnold.

This office, and the people in it, standing here, and those attending by video conference, represents something deep within the heart of our national experience, deep inside the soul of our citizenry, and at the center of our longings for a just state where ordered liberty commands of us a standard of behavior befitting the public trust. This office grew out of the desire of a nation, reeling from scandal, to recommit itself to ethical government in the 1970s. The famous whistleblowers of the past contributed greatly to giving the public a reason to trust its government. So our office seeks to prevent waste and corruption and to prevent conditions that threaten our national security and health.

I have shared my vision of helping to promote these noble goals in a more efficient way, and with more integrity. While this office has achieved great things over the last 25 years, in the last decade while the prominence of the office has grown, and it has been able to reach into areas of national importance, many believe their voices have not been heard. Whether public servants have a good or not so good complaint, they deserve to be heard in a timely way and to receive due process from us.

As a practicing attorney, we used to murmur the old adage: Justice delayed is justice denied. We have a backlog in various places in our agency. We have a dedicated staff that is trying heroically to attack this backlog and hear the complaints of each person whether those complaints are of discrimination by a high level federal official against a journeyman mechanic, or of retaliation against an employee who has brought to light very dangerous conditions on an aircraft carrier, or whether it is investigation of a disclosure by a federal worker concerning unsafe procedures within our air traffic control system that threaten safety of the public.

Sometimes organizations lose their direction, and when they do, the core mission can suffer; people’s rights can be affected; and justice is delayed. But no longer can it be denied for hundreds of people who may have been waiting for years to hear about their case.

I believe I have an excellent Deputy in Jim Renne who, due to his experience, dedication and energy will help in this task. We will bring on new people; for a comprehensive assessment, utilizing professionals, as well as drawing on the vast expertise of investigators and attorneys, and other professionals, in OSC, to get to the root causes of inefficiency or backlog or other conditions that result in not being able to carry out our core mission.

Too often in our federal government, at all levels, and in all branches, we lose sight of purpose, of why we exist, unable to see the forest for all the trees, and we get lost in process, of the daily tasks of memos and procedures and levels of review. Whatever keeps us from accomplishing our core mission we will examine and, where possible, reform. Whatever makes us unable to service the merit system and those who need our help must be sacrificed for the good of what we are supposed to do. We must never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Having said that, I intend to continue in the tradition of high professionalism and high quality of work product for which this office is known. As I have talked to staff, and as I have read over briefs, memoranda, and met in meetings to make decisions, I have been repeatedly impressed with the high caliber of people who work here and the superior work product of this Office. I want to stimulate the talent we have here to help in solving the problems we have. I do not think efficiency and superior work product are incompatible or need be at odds. It requires striking a balance, which is what I intend to do, first taking note of the oldest cases and addressing the past injustice to those complainants who have had to wait such a long time. We will look at a new prioritizing system, addressing the persistent backlog, and particularly the individual cases that right now are older than two years old.

So now I offer this challenge: by the end of this year, I am asking the dedicated and professional staff to eliminate the backlog in the intake and disclosure units as well as the Hatch Act unit. We will not just make a dent in it, but eliminate it. I think I just heard someone in San Francisco faint.

We will accomplish this by asking great energy and focus of the current staff, and by bringing on new talent, skilled at locating issues and understanding problem solving, keen on protecting rights and mindful of the need to clear out cases that lack jurisdiction or do not meet the requisite thresholds. In all of this, we will be guided by the understanding that this is all being done so that we can better service the merit system and protect whistleblowers. If we can do all of that, then we can institute a mode of operation that prevents us from allowing such a backlog of cases to surface again.

My vision for this office goes beyond management and backlog issues. Our country faces a crisis of sight, or perhaps insight, of seeing beyond process, seeing beyond broad categories to the underlying philosophy. We as Americans often just ask what, not why, just ask how does it work, not what should we be doing, or even doing better. We must replenish our sight by trying to take a new look at old things; we must try new perspectives. We must be philosophical. We must stop to consider things before we simply change them.

We must balance the need for greater flexibility in management with the needs of fairness and justice that are the envy of governments around the world. We have an embarrassment of riches in the United States. We must take those riches and allocate them properly and fairly. OSC will stand as a force to oppose those who use government as their personal playground, or who abandon their charge to keep the public trust, or who slack off when we most need them to protect our borders or our national security in this difficult time. OSC will protect those who need protection – the good faith whistleblower, acting in the public interest; the returning serviceman or woman who fought for their country or served to support our uniformed service members who are putting their lives on the line, and who only want to come back to their jobs with its benefits and privileges, as the law requires; the employees who act as a check and balance on waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

We do not make the law here, we enforce it. The executive branch is, as the name implies, about executing the laws. John Adams said, “Good government is an empire of laws.” The founders built self-government and a system of checks and balances that insure fairness and process for all citizens, including especially those who serve the country around the world in important positions supporting our national security, our military, and our federal government’s executive branch. Without these citizens, we could not function. Our office exists to ensure good government, or when people behave in ways that do not promote good government, or safety and health in the nation, that we take corrective and disciplinary action. We exist to promote good, efficient, fair government – we exist to promote integrity in the nation.

If I make or break laws, I abuse my power. Government officials appointed by the President do not make the law. I do not make the law. Nor do supervisors. We announce to the world of supervisors and high government officials – keep the public trust, and when you do not, we will investigate and prosecute cases when it is merited.

I thank the President and the Congress for giving me this opportunity to serve the country, and to serve the people in this noble office. I thank you for being here and honoring me with your presence. To return to Don Quixote where I started, I would ask your indulgence as I try to accomplish things that may appear hard to achieve, or when it appears that at times we are tilting at windmills and don’t recognize brick walls when we see them. To that I would say that just like Don Quixote, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance, you sometimes have to attempt the ridiculous to achieve the impossible. Let us then achieve what others think impossible, and let us do so with vision and integrity.