Misfired 2010 email alerted more IRS officials to Tea Party scrutiny

Reuters ^ | June 7, 2013 | Kim Dixon and Patrick Temple-West

[grundle]

A misfired email from a U.S. Internal Revenue Service employee in Cincinnati in July 2010 alerted a broad group of Washington IRS officials to the heightened scrutiny being given conservative groups, according to an interview the IRS worker gave congressional investigators.

The interview transcripts, reviewed by Reuters on Thursday, provide new details about Washington IRS officials' awareness of the scrutiny given to groups seeking tax-exempt status using terms like "Tea Party" or "patriot" to flag applications.

The transcripts show that in July 2010, Elizabeth Hofacre, an IRS official in Cincinnati who was coordinating "emerging issues" for the agency's tax-exempt unit, was corresponding with Washington-based IRS tax attorney Carter Hull.

She was asked to summarize her findings in a spreadsheet and notify a small group of colleagues, including some staff in the Washington tax-exempt unit. She sent an email that month to a larger number of people in Washington by accident.

"Everybody in D.C. got it by mistake," Hofacre said in the transcripts. She later clarified that she did not mean all officials but those in the IRS Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements unit.

[aimhigh]

I wonder how many other headlines Obama will create to keep Bengazi under wraps.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks grundle.

A misfired email from a U.S. Internal Revenue Service employee in Cincinnati in July 2010 alerted a broad group of Washington IRS officials to the heightened scrutiny being given conservative groups, according to an interview the IRS worker gave congressional investigators.

Yeah, that's what happened. Cover story meme-building partisan media shill ping.

[justiceseeker93]

Yeah, that's what happened. Cover story meme-building partisan media shill ping.

Would you expect anything much different from Reuters? After all, long-time FReepers might remember "Green Helmet Guy" from the Israel-Lebanon War. He appeared in so many of the phony photographs used by Reuters then in their attempts to manufacture sympathy for the "poor" Hezbollah victims, that you knew they were trying to dupe the unsuspecting.

Reuters, whether in the US, Europe, or the Middle East, is always at the service of leftist or Islamist tyrants and their propagandists.

[muawiyah]

intresting that you interpret it that way ~ since the field agent who sent the email has an electronic version of it still dated, etc. and that preceded her being REMOVED from that unit. She works elsewhere in IRS ~ since 2010!

She used it to show that the top brass already knew, not that she informed them. She was the designated slow working hit lady to whom all the TEAParty cases were being assigned and they already had her working hand in mailed fist with Herr Hull in DC before she sent that email.

So, you aren't arguing with her ~ you're arguing with Reuters perhaps? Or do you know something the original key staffer at the working end doesn't know?

[ClearCase_guy]

I'm saying that nothing the government says is true. The folks in Washington seem to be claiming that they had no knowledge of this activity in Cincinnati. It was only thru an accidental email, you see, that they knew anything was going on.

I'm saying that this is being put out in the media at this point in an attempt to provide cover for Washington leaders who want to appear clean.

I'm not buying what they're selling. Maybe the lady did mess up an email. That part could be 100% true. BUT -- that's not how Washington learned that this stuff was happening. Washington ordered it.

[muawiyah]

I think that's what the email says ~ she ratted them out ~ you have to remember that since that woman put out her own story you haven't heard any of the IRS or WH geeks involved in any of this say anything.

They are lawyering up and shutting up!

The grand conspiracy has been blown ~ it's not a secret anymore ~

[Eepsy]

A lot of people are misinterpreting this. The lady in question knew something hinky was going on and soon after got herself transferred out of the mess. This “mistaken email” is a classic CYA move so her superiors couldn’t later blame the frontline workers- which was precisely their first move.

[Nita Nupress]

Thank you for clarifying. I thought i was the only one who read it that way and couldn’t figure out why people were razzing on the woman.

[Olog-hai]

I've had some bad email accounts in the past, but none of them ever did this.

[muawiyah]

We seem to have a vast number of shop keepers and small business people who have no idea how people survive inside the large bureaucracies, and how they avoid being crushed.

I've sent my own share of misdirected emails!

Another trick with any decision that may be questioned later on by higher ups who are trying to protect their own butts first is to copy everything to a single file ~ and if you need to send the file forward there it is ~ by 'everything' I mean the decision you wanted to write, the decision you actually write, the decision you could have written, a decision actually relevant to the issue, and another decision that's just total fiction and points to non existent data with no explanation.

Then, do the same with the data files.

I did that once with a case I figured would be appealed because the company had some otherwise unused but high priced legal talent. It was all about a shell corporation ~ and I didn't even use the term 'shell corporation'. The appeal came back with this guy going nuts about the decision ~ but he knew he was had. He thought he could flim flam higher management.

Surprise, he couldn't flim flam them but I sent forward that immense file of mine filled with all sorts of tricky decisions ~ and the top boss' analyst got hold of it and totally missread things ~ without bothering to call me to find out which decision in the file was the one they were appealing.

She wrote this very apologetic recommended decision for the top boss that didn't back off the 'shell corporation' problem, but it got the facts screwed up so bad they wrote back to ask just what that was all about? They actually panicked thinking no one at USPS cared (which, of course, was true)

The lady who wrote that final decision for the big boss shortly thereafter accepted a job as an assistant dean at a womyn's studies program in a leftwingtard church related college.

I think I had the whole organization laughing their tails off for months on that one!!!

I pity the poor girls who had to deal with that woman as a dean.

[muawiyah]

HS ~ reminds me of the first day on the firing range in Army basic. We had these guys swinging their firearms around to talk! From New York city ...... about 100 of them. They all wanted to know where the bullets came from.

[Enterprise]

That is painful to watch. My first impression was that the shooter did not know when the safety was on or off. Yikes!

[Nita Nupress]

< ... and the top boss’ analyst got hold of it and totally missread things ~ without bothering to call me to find out which decision in the file was the one they were appealing. >

Lol! I wish we had a dollar for every time someone in a mgmt position takes action before clarifying the situation. We would be millionaires!

You’re right. When dealing with large bureaucracies, you have to watch your back closely because no one else will. And it’s always the one in the middle of the ladder who gets blamed. I think that’s written in Murphy’s Law somewhere. :-)

[stockpirate]

Check out this link and let me know what you think....

http://www.chronicle.su/news/anonymous-infiltrates-prism-intercepts-obamas-skype