Posted on 01/22/2002 3:53:43 AM PST by RJCogburn
Bush, Ashcroft imitate Clinton, Reno in blocking probe of Boston FBI
REP. DAN BURTONS House Government Reform Committee hearing, scheduled for Wednesday but postponed until early February, will continue months of rancor between old Republican comrades. George W. Bush and John Ashcroft have given an excellent imitation of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno by withholding information from Congress. Indeed, they have surpassed their Democratic predecessors in defying the legislative branch.
While President Clinton was trying to undermine investigations of his own campaign finance abuses, President Bush has ruled against the Burton committees access to old scandals unconnected to him. The Bush team has seemed to back away from an earlier blanket rejection of all congressional subpoenas, but its claim to invoke executive privilege on a case-by-case basis is suspect. Incredibly, it refuses to give up documents about the FBIs Boston office condoning law-breaking.
More than FBI abuse or executive privilege is at stake. The Bush White Houses cavalier attitude toward Burtons subpoenas presaged inept handling of the Enron scandal. Its insistence on secrecy about Vice President Dick Cheneys energy task force stems from the same root as its attempt to permit a Republican national chairman to double as a registered federal lobbyist. That root is arrogance of power, which infects administrations without regard to party or ideology.
Nobody is more distressed by this arrogance than Dan Burton, a true-blue conservative Republican from Indiana who wanted no fight with his administration. It just devastates me, Burton told me. There is nobody who supports George W. Bush more than I do. Nevertheless, he insists his investigation really needs to be done and cannot be blocked by government lawyers.
The blockage stunned Burton and his staff last summer when they sought government documents in two areas: first, then Attorney General Renos rejection of Justice Department recommendations to investigate Clinton campaign scandals; second, FBI misuse of mob informants in Boston decades ago. The message from Attorney General Ashcroft and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was blunt: Congress never again will have access to any documents reflecting deliberations inside the executive branch.
During a heated Burton Committee hearing Dec. 13, Justice Department Criminal Division Chief of Staff Michael Horowitz modified this hard line by promising a case-by-case analysis. But it soon became clear that no case ever could meet the test. If FBI abuses in Boston failed, what case could succeed?
In Boston, Joe Salvati went to prison for 30 years on murder charges because of lies under oath by star FBI informant Joe Barboza; the FBI knew Salvati was innocent but wanted to protect Barboza. Stephen Flemmi allegedly committed murders over two decades while informing for the FBI and was not prosecuted. The same is true of another FBI informant and alleged killer, Whitey Bulger, who remains at large. Burton wants to know why killers were protected.
I believe that congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest, Bush said Dec. 12 while invoking executive privilege. Burtons response in a Jan. 3 letter to Ashcroft: It eludes me how it is in the national interest to cloak this dark chapter of the Justice Departments history in secrecy.
Reading ample correspondence between Burton and government lawyers makes the Bush teams intransigence look identical to Clintons. Indeed, a Dec. 19 letter from Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant (a former Republican congressional staffer) appeared to defend Attorney General Renos refusal to cooperate with Burton. Bryant suggested that Reno had satisfied the committee with an oral interview, which in fact was wholly unsatisfactory.
For Bushs Justice Department to align itself with Janet Reno is drenched in irony. James Wilson, the Burton committees chief of staff, worked for Michael Chertoff in the 1995 Senate investigation of Whitewater. Chertoff, assistant attorney general running the criminal division, today clashes head-on with Wilson. As a tough prosecutor, Chertoff is regarded by former Capitol Hill colleagues as the real source of this intractable policy.
Burton has come under attack from some conservatives because of praise from Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Barney Frank for opposing the pretensions of executive privilege even when a Republican President is responsible. Those critics want Republicans in Congress to accept and actually imitate the arrogance that habitually comes with executive power.
Luckily we can laugh at silly statements. I doubt Joe Salvati is doubled over in hysterics.
FReegards.
Note also the interesting Boston mob connections and the activities on their behalf of one Carmine *Raymond* Gagliardi, found shot to death and floating in Boston Harbor in 1969.
Mueller BBC bio info *here*, as follows:
Profile: FBI chief Robert Mueller
Mr Mueller also worked for George Bush senior
President George Bush's decision to nominate Robert Mueller for director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation came as no surprise. He had long been considered the most likely choice to replace Louis Freeh, who announced his retirement in May, well ahead of the end of his term in 2003.
But Mr Mueller faces the task of rehabilitating the public image of a badly battered FBI.
Many questions about the efficiency of the security services have been raised in the wake of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
When the hijacked planes were deliberately crashed into the buildings the agency was still reeling from the Robert Hanssen spy scandal and a last-minute revelation that it failed to turn over thousands of pages of documents to lawyers defending Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Important backing
Mr Mueller gained the backing of Attorney-General John Ashcroft after serving as acting deputy attorney-general from January to May this year.
Mr Ashcroft's support was key because the Bush administration wants to bring the FBI under tighter control of the Justice Department.
The FBI made a blunder in the McVeigh case
Mr Mueller, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, is known as a strong manager, a trait the administration saw as necessary in rehabilitating the FBI.
He also is well respected in federal law enforcement circles, and he would bring a wide range of legal experience to the post.
Although a conservative Republican, he is known for his ability to win support from both parties.
California Senator Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat, recommended him for his previoust post as the US Attorney for the Northern District of California.
He began his law career at a private law firm in San Francisco in 1973, and he took his first public post in 1976 when he became an assistant US attorney in San Francisco, where he served until 1982.
He then moved to Boston where he held several positions in the US Attorney's office there, including criminal division chief and deputy United States attorney.
Investigative experience
After spending 1988 and 1989 in private practice, he joined the staff of Attorney-General Richard Thornburgh, and his star rose at the Justice Department as the head of the criminal division under President George Bush's father from 1990 to 1993.
He supervised such high profile cases as the prosecution of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and organised crime boss John Gotti.
And he led the investigations of the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International banking and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103.
He joined a private Washington firm in 1993, but in 1995, he left private practice, joining the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia as a senior litigation counsel in the homicide section.
-30-
Now THERE's the Necessary Credentials to head the FBI. Proved his value and capability to safeguard us peons then, didn't he?
BTW, anybody seen Cheney?
The evidence that cleared Salvati was provided by a Justice Department task force to the Courts.
Bush has provided 3500 documents on these matters to the Congress.
Former FBI Special Agent John Connolly - the agent in charge of the informants from 1975 to the early 1990s - is awaiting trial on charges that range from bribery to the possibility that information he supplied to Bulger led to the deaths of other FBI informants.
(The court will have access to any FBI deliberative documents that there is an evidentiary need for).
Especially perverse of Novak is his criticism of Ashcroft's rejection of Reno's political abuse of the separation of powers.
"In 1993, then-Attorney General Janet Reno broke a long-standing tradition of protecting career employees from outside political pressure by allowing department lawyers to be interrogated by congressional investigators probing the elder President George Bush's record of prosecution in environmental cases, a move the elder Bush had resisted. "
"1. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting,
Stephen Flemmi, including, but not limited to, records relating to decisions to
prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting Flemmi for the bombing assualt on attorney
John Fitzgerald. Please exclude all records drafted in anticipation of, or subsequent
to, the 1995 indictment of Stephen Flemmi.
2. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting, James
J. Whitey Bulger. Please exclude all records drafted in anticipation of, or
subsequent to, the 1995 indictment ofJames J. Whitey Bulger.
3. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting,
Joseph Barboza.
4. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting,
Vincent J. Jimmy the Bear Flemmi.
5. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, orrefrain from prosecuting,
Raymond L. S. Patriarca.
6. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting,
Gennaro Angiulo.
7. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting,
Theodore J. Sharliss, a.k.a. James Chalmas.
8. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting,
Joseph J.R. Russo.
9. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, orrefrain from prosecuting, H.
Paul Rico. Please exclude all records prepared by the Justice Department Task Force
led by John Durham.
10. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting, John
Corinolly, Jr. Please exclude all records prepared by the Justice Department Task
Force led by John Durham.
11. All records related to decisions either to prosecute, or refrain from prosecuting, John
Morris.
12. All records related to decisions to prosecute Francis P. Salemme for the bombing
assault on attorney John Fitzgerald.
13. All records related to decisions to prosecute, or to refrain from prosecuting, Robert
Daddeico..."
I think Burton should meet a higher standard for overriding the privilege- having evidence that there was institutional abuse, instead of only evidence of one corrupt agent. The court trying Connally will have access to any deliberative docs that they show an "evidentiary need" for. Given the record, I would expect the court to be generous to the defense in granting access.
If that info showed others besides Connally were corrupt ( I think one other agent has been implicated), Burton would have a case that more clearly called for overriding the Executive protections.
You're right, of course, that investigating a corrupt deliberative process requires looking at the deliberative process.
"But if the salt lose it's flavor..."
In the words of (yuck) Chief Justice Burger in US vs Nixon,"Human experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decision-making process."
By assuring his employees that their input won't be unneccessarily subjected to public examination, the Executive protects them from political criticism.
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