Posted on 12/28/2007 8:12:40 AM PST by doug from upland
NOTE: It has been suggested that a member of Congress is allowed to view the entire report and give the information to a constituent. Can someone please confirm that? I have asked David Dreier three times to do just that, but he has refused.
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Democrats Try to Squelch Report on Clinton-Era Corruption by Robert Novak
The last remaining U.S. independent counsel, David Barrett, after spending $21 million over 10 years, on Jan. 12 finally will close down his investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros' lying to FBI investigators about hush money paid to an ex-mistress. The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress.
A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the light of day. But if that happens, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley will still try to force its release. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee with oversight of the IRS, he wants the first real investigation of the tax agency.
That investigation would be a long walk into the unknown, with possibly far-reaching consequences. Prominent Democrats in Congress have spent much of the last decade in a campaign, successful so far, to suppress Barrett's report. Its disclosures could dig deeply into concealed scandals of the Clinton administration. These vital considerations, not the mere continuation of a $58-an-hour independent counsel position, is why Republican lawyer Barrett for a decade would not close down his prosecutor's office.
If this were just about one politician's illicit love life ruining his political career, Barrett would have ended his operation long ago. But an IRS whistle-blower told Barrett of an unprecedented cover-up. The informant said a regional IRS official had formulated a new rule enabling him to transfer an investigation of Cisneros to Washington to be buried by the Justice Department. Barrett's investigators found Lee Radek, head of Justice's public integrity office, determined to protect President Bill Clinton.
That triggered intensive efforts to get rid of Barrett and suppress his report by three of the toughest Democrats in Congress: Sen. Carl Levin, Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Henry Waxman. At the same time, the powerhouse Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly -- representing not only Cisneros but also the Clintons -- was filing multiple suits with federal appellate judges supervising the independent counsel.
The sympathetic judges sealed everything concerned with the case, including the report. Barrett was instructed to remain deathly silent on pain of criminal prosecution. Yet Levin, as ranking Democrat of a Senate oversight committee, eight years ago gained access to the raw data of Barrett's prosecutorial effort after requesting it in a Nov. 20, 1997, letter to the judges.
Barrett's densely packed 120-page report is followed by a 500-page appendix with more than 2,500 footnotes. Grassley thought he had an agreement with Dorgan to amend the Treasury appropriations bill to close down Barrett's office and publicly release "all portions of the final report" except for any "clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy."
But Grassley is not an appropriator, and Democrats in the Senate-House appropriations conference slipped through a critical change. The final language authorized the judges "to protect the rights of any individual named" in the report. With two out of three judges on a three-judge panel inclined to the Democrats, that means hardly any of Barrett's allegations will remain in the report made public. The bill was passed by Congress on Nov. 18 and signed into law Nov. 30.
Republican congressional sources expect Section B of the report, dealing with the allegations of IRS-Justice corruption, to be eliminated in its entirety. The rest of the report will be so heavily redacted to obey the new congressional language that it will be of scant interest to either ordinary citizen or legislator. This long, tendentious battle to keep David Barrett away from opening a probe into what really happened in the Clinton administration then will have appeared to have been concluded with an unconditional victory.
But maybe not. Chuck Grassley is a stubborn Iowa farmer who often drives the White House and Republican leaders to distraction. He has said that if the Barrett report finally emerges as a mutilated remnant in order to protect the IRS, he will press for legislation to change that. It may be the last hope for the truth to emerge.
The stonewall with the FEC nominations being held up is likely orchestrated by Hillary and her legal team. The fix is in. Unless something dramatic happens, I am now actively shopping for a bunker in state where I can hide.
You’ll be interested in this...
Free the Barrett Report
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Published 1/5/2006 12:06:19 AM
WASHINGTON — In a very clever year-end column, the venerable William Safire writing in the New York Times asks whether “special prosecutor David Barrett’s 400-page expose of political influence within the Internal Revenue Service and the Clinton Justice Department” will be the government report “most likely to resist investigative reporting” this year. I certainly hope not. The misuse of the IRS and Justice Department has a long record going back to Richard Nixon and Watergate and before that to Franklin Roosevelt and his harassment of former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and publisher Moses Annenberg. Wealthy individuals such as Mellon and Annenberg can protect themselves — though Annenberg was cruelly sent to jail. Ordinary citizens cannot, and the way the IRS is set up today not much provocation is necessary to instigate a costly investigation...costly to ordinary taxpayers.
People familiar with the Barrett Report claim that during his investigation of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, Barrett came across illegal IRS and Justice Department activity in the Clinton years that involved corruption and infringements on the civil liberties of private citizens. A whistle-blower in the IRS, John Filan, delivered up an 18-page blueprint sketching out the illegal activities and perhaps identifying the victims. Sources claim it contains some of the most illuminating revelations of IRS misconduct ever. Lawyers at the Clintons’ ever-reliable Washington firm of Williams and Connolly have bottled the report up since it was finished in August of 2004. Democrats and a couple of incompetent Republicans have seen to it that the report is gutted. This month the gutted report will be made public. The date is January 19. Safire seems to want investigative journalists to get the rest of the report out. Frankly I would like to see our elected legislators on Capitol Hill get the whole, unredacted report out.
If Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had his way, the unredacted report might get out. His committee has oversight of the IRS and he thought a month or so back that he had the agreement of the three-judge panel overseeing Barrett to allow him to receive the unredacted report and make it public for the citizenry to see. Unfortunately Democrats on the Hill led by Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Dick Durbin, and Congressman Henry Waxman have thwarted Grassley’s wishes by late-night legislative subterfuge. They were assisted in this project by two easily confused Republicans, Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Joe Knollenberg. Now the 120 pages of the report that outline illegal behavior by the IRS and Justice Department during the Clinton Administration will be suppressed unless the investigative journalists Safire hopes for get to work on the January 19 release. Of course Republican leaders Bill Frist and Denny Hastert could weigh in too. They head both houses of Congress.
Just before Christmas one of the perpetrators in the Democrats’ cover up, Senator Durbin, the Minority Whip, boldly asseverated that “We will initiate at the beginning of this year one of the most serious debates and discussions on Capitol Hill in our history about individual rights and liberties.” Well, I suggest that Frist and Hastert hold Durbin to his words. Surely Senator Grassley will be on their side.
This report by Independent Counsel Barrett is the first time in history that the unique powers of an Independent Counsel have been brought to bear on the IRS. With Barrett’s grand jury subpoena power he has, sources familiar with the report say, opened the internal workings of the IRS against private citizens for the first time. For ten years and at a cost of over $20 million to taxpayers Barrett has put together this important report. Surely the taxpayers have a right to see it.
Senator Durbin has declaimed his desire to look into the state of our “individual rights and liberties.” No agency of the federal government has more power to infringe on our rights and liberties than the IRS. Surely Durbin should be held accountable for suppressing this report. There are no legitimate grounds for not publicizing it in its entirety. The reports of every other Independent Counsel have been published in full, save for brief sections containing classified materials. Gutting a report of 120 pages of detailed government wrongdoing goes too far. Are Safire’s investigative reporters ready to pounce? Will Frist and Hastert rise to their responsibilities? Civil libertarians throughout the country should take note, and so should historians.
Hillary’s shills will call this “old news”.
Generally, when Democrats AND Republicans want a report buried, that menas they are BOTH involved.
Grassley long ago quit being a real GOPer. He’s been in DC too long.
I was a delegate in ‘06. It gave me an opportunity to ask outgoing congressman Bob Beauprez to release the report. He said he would look into it but I never heard any more despite follow up calls.
Now senator Wayne Allard is set to retire. Perhaps he could be persuaded to.
Pinging.
Same cover-up applies to Sandy Berger and AbleDanger and Barrett and Ron Brown and Stan Lee and China gate....this Clinton disaster is like being tied to the whippin post isn’t it!
The Klintoons are corrupt.
So tell me something I didn’t know.
The Bush and Clinton families are in this together since the days of Mena, Arkansas.
It’s called Mutual Assured Destruction. Both parties understand the rules.
How can you say this Doug? We were assured by the Rowan and Martin of the press corp (Woodward and Bernstein) that Clinton’s infractions were mere child’s play compared to Nixon’s.
Funny, but I don’t recall Nixon leaving a trail of criminality that lasted some thirty years, included so many counts of infidelity that we lost track, and that included trists in the Oral Office while on the phone with a Congressman from Florida discussing whether troops should be deployed at the same being serviced by an intern.
A number of people dropped dead around Clinton. His council wound up in Fort Marcy park, a bullet to the head with no blood on the ground. Then Clinton abuses one Kathleen Willey in the Oral Office, while her husband offed himself in another park.
If Bill and his wife never see prison time, it will be one of the most flagrant injustices of all time.
Nixon was involved in one scandle with periferal issues. Clinton was involved in upwards of twenty, with periferal issues. Nixon’s staff had one FBI file and Clinton’s had nearly if not more than one thousand.
Nixon’s staff member (Chuck Carlson) was imprisoned for that one file. The Clintons weren’t even ordered to return the FBI files. That’s how far down the road to destruction our nation had traveled in thirty years.
Yes there’s much more, but who could address it all in a short response. The Clintons need to be convicted for at least part of what they have done.
Which means there had to be some high level repubs who showed up in the report - and the rest of them are covering up the mess.
This is the stuff that really bugs me.
Thanks for the ping!
Both the 'Rs' and the 'Ds' want the Barrett Report buried, and it will stay buried!
Maybe if everybody asked their congresscritter at the same time to release it ???. Nagonna happen. I've asked my congresscritter a half-dozen times and I get the same answer - NO! .................. FRegards
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