United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

Under the chairmanship of Homer S. Ferguson of Michigan (1948) and Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina (1949-1952), the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments held hearings on such matters as export control violations, for which Soviet spy William Remington was called in to testify; the trial of Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch; and the Mississippi Democratic Party's sale of postal jobs, which Mississippians from rural areas attested to purchasing.

A much larger scandal erupted with the "5 percenters", so-called because these men, including Presidential aide Harry H. Vaughan, were accused of charging a 5% commission for their influence in securing government contracts.

Nineteen of the 83, including well known communist party members James S. Allen, Herbert Aptheker, and Earl Browder, were summoned because their writings were being carried in United States Information Agency libraries around the world.

The hearings also investigated such matters as communist infiltration of the United Nations; Korean War atrocities; and the transfer to the Soviet Union of occupation currency plates.

The televised hearings of the special committee also introduced Senators Barry Goldwater and John F. Kennedy to the nation, as well as leading to passage of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.

Senator Roth led a wide range of investigations into commodity investment fraud, off-shore banking schemes, money laundering, and child pornography.

In the early 1970s, student loan programs created by the Higher Education Act of 1965 and subsequent legislation had begun to produce evidence of fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.

Secretary of Education Ted Bell told the Subcommittee "It must be kept in mind that when the floodgates were opened in 1968 to allow virtually every kind of institution operating on an interstate basis to lend under the program—public, private, profit, nonprofit, noncollegiate, and correspondence schools—we had only 50 persons on the staff.

After an 18-month investigation and a series of hearings, the Subcommittee concluded that the student loan program, "particularly as it relates to proprietary schools, is riddled with fraud, waste and abuse.

The hearings received significant media attention for the combative appearance of British politician George Galloway of the Respect Party, in which he forcefully rejected the allegations.

[1] In this aspect of its role, the Committee has introduced and passed a number of bills to improve the DHS and ensure the country's safety, including the Homeland Security Act.

It found "that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street."