How to: Write a Request Letter

Presenters:

• Robert Roach, Oversight Chief Counsel/Oversight and Investigations Director, House Financial Services Committee. Mr. Roach has over thirty years of experience as an investigator for Congressional oversight committees, with a concentration on money laundering, financial crimes, tax abuse, contractor mismanagement and environmental issues. From 1999 through 2014 he served as Chief Investigator for the Democratic staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He has led investigations into the role of financial institutions in the financial crisis; dividend tax abuse by offshore entities; tax haven banks and U.S. tax compliance; tax abuses through offshore tax havens; money laundering and the proceeds of foreign corruption at Riggs Bank; the promotion of tax shelters by accounting firms; and the role of the financial institutions in Enron’s collapse. He also worked on investigations into the vulnerabilities of correspondent banking to money laundering and the connections between private banking and money laundering.
• Justin Rood, Investigative Correspondent, Insider. Mr. Rood previously directed the Project On Government Oversight's Congressional Oversight Initiative, which aims to improve and enhance Congress's ability to do effective oversight by providing information, advice and other assistance. From 2012 to 2014, Rood served under U.S. Sen. Tom A. Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) as director of investigations on homeland security matters on the Minority Staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. From 2009 to 2012, he worked under Coburn as senior investigator on the Minority Staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. There he led an investigation into domestic intelligence fusion centers, finding them "pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions," in the words of The Washington Post's front-page coverage. Rood also has been a non-resident fellow with Yale Law School's Information Society Project, and an award-winning investigative producer and reporter with ABC News and other outlets. He is a graduate of Pitzer College in California.

The session was also moderated by Justin Rood, former Director of POGO's Congressional Oversight Initiative.

Training Resources: 

• PSI to ACICS (2015)- sample majority/bipartisan request
  
• Senate Banking (2015)- sample request with items as attachment
  
• Waxman to White House (2003) - sample minority request