The revolution has begun.
(Above image courtesy of FReeper CA Schack)
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.
Doug, do you really think that the Bush and Clinton families are in this together since the days of Mena, Arkansas?
That is very frightening, indicating deep, deep corruption in theis Government. What to do when all else seems hopeless...
You are absolutely correct except that you should have capitalized Mena(s).
Yup. The ethics truce lives on. From 2006....
Mum's the word for ethics committee
A pox on both parties.
“All are culpable in the cover up. The shame of this congressional body knows no limits ...REPUBLICANS INCLUDED!”
What could be so damning in the report as to make Republicans cover up for their worst enemy? Is it because of the damage it would do to the public trust? It’s not as if the public trusts the government any more, except for some Freepers.
I’m thinking there’s something in the original report that would bring the whole house of cards down on a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats and politicians.
Hi,
Excuse my ignorance of things American but does the public have no recourse to have information released that their Taxpayers dollars paid for.
Mel
I wonder why the word try is in the headline.
I goofed. Try was in it because it was a story from two years ago. I put (Dec 2005) in the headline.
It was ordered to be sealed. It would take Congress voting to release the entire thing, and they are not going to do that. There are many Clinton secrets we will never know during our lifetimes.
Yes.
When it seems hopeless, we fight harder.
The revolution has begun.
It will probably be the most flagrant injustice of our time then. They are protected from all sides....It all reads like a wacky novel doesn't it? I fear for America if we have a Dem President and a Dem majority in the Senate and in congress.
I fear for the country due to the democrat candidates, but I also fear for it with regard to some of the republican candidates as well. We don’t need to slip further left at all, and the status quo isn’t a good deal either. We need a massive roll-back of leftist policy in this nation.
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