Posted on 01/11/2002 1:39:47 PM PST by expose
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:32:08 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
BUMP
Really? Just to check into this, I went to finance.yahoo.com and randomly entered stock symbols to check the insider trading. I found one (DELL) dated 2-Jan-2002 (little over 1 WEEK ago)!
C'mon, Bill. Cut the SPIN and stick to the truth.
Executive Privilege Again
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON -- Stephen (the Rifleman) Flemmi is a gangster who spent a generation as a valued informant for the F.B.I. in Boston. He is now awaiting trial for 10 murders he is charged with committing while on the F.B.I. payroll.
Also charged is his F.B.I. handler, John Connolly Jr., accused of tipping off Flemmi and his mobster boss before police were dispatched to pick them up. The boss, accused of 19 murders, is still a fugitive. Six years ago the Rifleman claimed that the F.B.I. had promised him immunity from prosecution for his killings — allegedly including a couple of his girlfriends — but Federal Judge Mark Wolf, in a landmark decision, ruled that nobody in law enforcement had the power to sanction murder.
The New England F.B.I.'s long-running abuse of power is "the greatest failing in federal law enforcement history," according to James Wilson, chief counsel to the House Government Reform Committee. Evidence of this sustained miscarriage of justice was the 30-year imprisonment of Joe Salvati, whom F.B.I. officials are said to have known to be innocent of the crime for which he was convicted — but they remained silent to protect Mafia sources.
John Ashcroft's Department of Justice does not want Congress to air out this long, shameful story.
At the time J. Edgar Hoover belatedly began his war on the Mafia, civil liberty was set aside to meet the perceived emergency — abuses that lasted through three decades. The current F.B.I. chief, Robert Mueller, was U.S. attorney in Boston during the mid-80's and presumably did not have an inkling about the unlawful law enforcement going on around him.
Accordingly, the Bush Justice Department induced the president to sign an order asserting executive privilege over its "deliberative documents" that would inform the public of answers to questions like: Why did Justice decline to indict an F.B.I. supervisor who admitted taking money from Flemmi's gang? Why did Justice help defend a hit man in California who killed a man while in the witness protection program?
Much of this systemic perversion of justice took place decades ago, but the Ashcroft-Mueller crowd is determined to keep the embarrassing institutional history hushed up. That's why department lawyers recently adopted a policy of refusing all documents relating to its declinations to prosecute.
One reason for Bush's executive privilege claim, unprecedented in its sweep, is: Such decisions are never to be examined by Congress lest politics influence prosecutors' judgments. But this power grab would eviscerate Congressional oversight.
The other reason, spoken sotto voce, is that some of the documents Chairman Dan Burton's committee is requesting deal with other cases — such as Janet Reno's decision to abort investigations into Bill Clinton's overseas fund-raising over the protest of special counsel. Burton, some of these Bush G.O.P. appointees say, is just an old Republican Clinton-hater out to beat a dead horse.
That's a red herring. At issue here is Congress's responsibility and authority to examine the misdeeds of the executive branch in a thorough manner — with an eye toward legislation to make criminal those policies evidently adopted by a regional division of our F.B.I. to subvert the law in the name of the law. (Burton, with Ashcroft's thumb in his eye, is considering legislation renaming the J. Edgar Hoover Building.)
Is the White House counsel explaining to the president the scope of the powers being asserted in his ill-advised orders? "Executive privilege" was restricted by the Supreme Court in the Nixon case and further circumscribed by the courts in Clinton's frantic attempts to place himself above the law. Why is Bush, so early in his term and with little to hide, going down this road to upset our system of checks and balances?
Maybe it's hubris; popularity breeds contempt. When you're sailing up there around 90 percent, your advisers tell you that wartime is the perfect time to put those Congressional pipsqueaks of both parties in their place.
Maybe it's ultra-cleverness; by wrapping the latest self-levitation in the mantle of protecting a former administration's reputation, you dream of winning liberals' support.
It's another mistake that will come home to haunt the Bush presidency. Call me Cassandra, but history will not look kindly on those who let ends justify means — and let helpful hoodlums get away with murder.
O'Reiley is just another media guy who has let succes go to his head. He hasn't a clue about Enron or much of anything else. If he did any investigative research on the subject himself, he would learn that the Bush administration did absolutely nothing to help Enron. And, as far as I know, it is not unlawful for business men to make political donations--which is the only thing so far that has come out--Bush and Cheney received political donations from Mr. Lay--CEO of Enron. So did a couple hundred other politicians!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this. It gets so grating
on the eyes to read over and over on these boards how superior
the morals of conservatives are to those of liberals, while blithely
dismissing shortcomings on the right. Shades of "so what?"
No one I know in law enforcement seriously believes that
Attorney General Ashcroft has any interest at all in getting to the
bottom of the Marc Rich pardon given by President Clinton.
The decision by this administration to deny access to
previous presidential records, something even Clinton
did not do, should have been a wakeup call for
independent minds everywhere.
Dirty and Ugly, This president didn't win by a Landslide, he won by the skin of his teeth. I was down in Florida at that time and people were disgusted with both parties.
This is coming home to roost as everybody seems dirty and corrupt. Maybe it's time to really look into the WTC as many are calling an investigation to that.
Have a Great Weekend could you let me know when something new comes up as I'm gone for the weekend. ;-)
I can understand why Bush doesn't want to rake up all of clinton's old crimes. Clinton is old news, and Bush wants to move on and do his own thing, and avoid being accused of partisanship by a partisan press.
Nevertheless, I think Bush has let things slide much too far. Why is he defending the clinton administration with executive privilege? Why isn't he letting Ashcroft go after these people. It isn't the President's job to prosecute crimes, but it IS the Attorney General's, and he should not be restrained from doing so.
Why has he permitted the Loral treason matter, one of the gravest betrayals of our country in its entire history, to be settled for $14 million? It would have been better just to leave the matter unresolved than to settle it for peanuts.
Bush is letting his desire to seem nonpartisan override his own best interests, the interests of his party, and the interests of his country. I don't think he is fundamentally corrupt, like clinton, but by acting like this he is, in effect, consenting to corrupt dealings, and that just isn't right.
Nicely put. And the coda is: conservatives are keeping quiet about it because he is "one of ours." This from the crowd of moral absolutism.
You don't get it yet, do you? They WON'T be exposed because
without Clinton's express permission, the presidential papers
can never be opened. And that is Dubya's doing.
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