February 11, 2026
Paul Grondahl
February 11, 2026
Pop quiz, history nerds: What do Lucy Lang and Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben have in common?
Answer: Both swore an oath as an inspector general to root out government corruption, fraud, abuse and all manner of malfeasance.
Lang, 44, is the 11th New York state inspector general. A former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, she was appointed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2021.
Baron von Steuben (1730-1794) was appointed inspector general of the Army in 1778 by Gen. George Washington. The former Prussian army officer impressed Washington during the Revolutionary War with his command of military tactics at Valley Forge.
Separated by centuries, the disparate worlds of Lang and von Steuben merged recently in a historical program at the State Museum. It highlighted the 40th anniversary of the creation of the office of the New York state inspector general against a backdrop of the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States as an independent nation.
The corruption busters in Washington and Albany were hailed as unsung heroes and referred to by Lang as “the most important public servants you’ve never heard of.”
The subtext of the discussion was the need for guardrails to rein in the unbridled exercise of power and retaliation by President Donald Trump. Panelist Mark Greenblatt, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior, underscored that issue. His investigators uncovered hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars ripped off by embezzling employees who handled cash for admission to national parks.
“I.G.s have flown under the radar for far too long,” Greenblatt said. “We need to show our value and build support for what we do by taking our work out of the shadows.”
That admonition came too late for Greenblatt, who was fired last year by Trump after a successful six-year tenure. Greenblatt was one of 17 inspectors general dismissed in a mass firing by Trump on Jan. 24, 2025, just four days after his inauguration. It was dubbed the “Friday night purge.”
“It was a warning that if you do real oversight, you’re going to get fired. It had a chilling effect,” Greenblatt said. “We’re not there to support Trump’s policies. We’re there to call balls and strikes. This administration lost all credibility.”
The political merged with the historical throughout the 90-minute program, which included musical performances and a dramatic reading of von Steuben’s letter to Washington by Lang’s father, actor Stephen Lang, of Kinderhook, who stars in three “Avatar” films.
Outside the State Museum’s Huxley Theater, state Archivist Brian Keough and his staff displayed von Steuben artifacts, including his gold pocket watch, handwritten letters and a first edition of his 1779 military training manual, “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.” It is known as the “Blue Book.”
Baron von Steuben faced resentment when Washington brought him on board to whip the Continental Army into shape through rigorous training and strict discipline. He was disliked because he was foreign-born and leapfrogged senior American-born commanders. He also exhibited a grating, imperious personality, according to panelist Paul Lockhart, a professor of history at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and the author of a biography on von Steuben.
“Washington saw that von Steuben’s skills as a drillmaster of the troops could be quite useful. After the war, he created a legacy of government oversight by holding soldiers and commanders to account,” Lockhart said.
Von Steuben, undisturbed by animus directed at him for his watchdog role, went on the prowl to uncover scammers within the army. “He had a temper and a short fuse and did not tolerate fraud,” Lockhart said.
Washington gave von Steuben the inspector general job after he blew the whistle on Continental Army soldiers who made off with their weapons and military gear after the end of the war, rather than returning their government property to its rightful owner, the U.S. Army.
Panelist Rose Gill, a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, discussed her agency’s genesis of uncovering systemic corruption by the Tammany Hall Democratic political machine and its leader, William “Boss” Tweed. Tammany perfected “the skim” by bribing officials and inflating contractor bills on public works, including the Brooklyn Bridge. The skim involved embezzlement and kickbacks of more than $200 million in New York City in the 1860s and 1870s.
The massive graft scheme was cracked by an internal government whistleblower who leaked accounting books to the New York Times, whose exposés led to the downfall of Tweed and Tammany Hall. Gill praised the watchdog role of journalists in uncovering corruption.
“The public outcry from the Tammany corruption spurred the creation of the Department of Investigation,” Gill said. “The statutes put in place as a result insured independence of the DOI and its ability to investigate fraud to the very highest level of city officials.”
Gill credited Mayor Ed Koch with “turbocharging oversight of the DOI” during his three terms from 1978 to 1989. Her office cracked about 100 fraud cases a year and returned about $550 million to city coffers and taxpayers in her 11 years running the office.
Lang, who moderated the panel discussion, described “a culture of complacency” that contributed to inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat’s escape from the Clinton Correction Facility at Dannemora and the massive manhunt in 2015. After the I.G.’s investigation, new procedures were put in place to help prevent future escapes.
“We need inspectors general to come out of the shadows with their work and to become the visible check on presidential power,” Greenblatt said. “Despite our polarized politics, there is universal agreement that fraud is bad.”
Lang said her office receives about 6,000 complaints a year, more than half about alleged corruption in the prison system. “We have a lot of work to do in that area,” she said.
Lang introduced her father as “my favorite actor.” He read a heartfelt letter from von Steuben to Washington pleading for deferred compensation.
“The truth is my situation is peculiarly grievous,” von Steuben wrote in the fall of 1787. He pleaded for Washington’s “justice and favourable sentiments” due to his pivotal role in the Revolutionary War.
In 1790, Congress finally granted him a $2,500 annual pension. The decorated warrior who called himself an “illustrious stranger” when he arrived in America died four years later.
A replica of the log cabin where he spent his final years is part of a state historic site in the town of Steuben, near Utica, which includes a picnic area, walking trails and a memorial tomb.