JUDICIAL WATCH FIGHTS CLINTON IRS ATTEMPTED AUDIT

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the non-profit educational foundation that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it was fighting in court an audit attempt instituted by the Clinton IRS in retaliation for Judicial Watch’s litigation against President Clinton. Judicial Watch first received notice of an attempted IRS audit on October 9, 1998, a few days after its “Interim Impeachment Report,” which called for Bill Clinton’s impeachment for misuse of the IRS, was officially made part of the Congressional record. The IRS’s initial audit letter demanded that Judicial Watch “[p]rovide the names and addresses of the directors and their relationship to any political party or political groups.” In January, 1999, an IRS official admitted to Judicial Watch representatives, in the context of the propriety of the audit, “What do you expect when you sue the President?” Another IRS official admitted in June, 1999, that the political affiliations of Judicial Watch’s directors is a factor in any IRS audit.

After Judicial Watch scored legal victories against the Clinton Administration, Judicial Watch received audit notices and warnings from the IRS. For instance, immediately following its uncovering of the Clinton-Gore White House e-mail scandal in February, 2000, Judicial Watch lawyers received a call from an IRS official to inform them that Judicial Watch was still on the IRS’s “radar screen.” The IRS finally agreed to defer on deciding whether to audit Judicial Watch until after the Clinton Administration ended. Despite this agreement, in one of the last acts of the Clinton Administration, the IRS sent Judicial Watch another audit notice on January 8, 2001. The IRS also sent new audit notices throughout 2001 after Judicial Watch criticized IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti. Rossotti is a Clinton appointee who “inexplicably” continues to serve under President Bush. In addition to presiding over the audits of perceived critics of the Clinton Administration, Judicial Watch requested criminal and civil investigations of Rossotti for his criminal conflict of interest in holding stock in a company he founded, AMS, while it did business with the IRS.

Judicial Watch now is fighting the attempted audit in federal courts in the District of Columbia and Maryland. As Robert Novak reports in his April 18th column, despite repeated requests to Attorney General Ashcroft to investigate, his Bush Justice Department has thus far refused to do so. (See Judicial Watch's letter to Attorney General John Aschroft) Instead, in the context of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit against the Cheney Energy Task Force, a Bush Administration official told Novak, “I don't know what we are going to do with this Klayman.” A copy of Judicial Watch’s complaint against IRS officials is available by clicking here.

“Judicial Watch has no objection to IRS audits at the proper time and place, under correct, non-political circumstances. We have nothing to hide. But when we were told that we were being audited because we sued Bill Clinton, we had no choice but to stand up and fight in court. Now, for its own reasons, the Bush Administration is content to let Clinton appointee Rossotti continue to harass Judicial Watch. Our lawsuits in response are intended not only to protect Judicial Watch, but are for the good of all Americans,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.

I don't believe that Ron Brown was shot or murdered. I believe that he died as a result of injuries received in the plane crash. I do not have anything to base that opinion on, other than contemporary news reports and what I have read here on FR.

Am I a liar?

That statement doesn't make you a liar. But your next few answers might ... or they might make you look foolish.

What SPECIFIC facts in those "news reports" and what you read on FR make you believe he died by blunt force trauma? Surely you can tell us.

Are your sources of news the mainstream sources ... like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, the LA Times, the NY Times, the Washington Post, Slate? Why would you believe them given all the other facts about Clinton and democRAT crimes that they have failed to tell their viewers/readers? If you have paid attention to Brown threads on Free Republic, then surely you realize by now that those news sources omitted many, many incriminating facts about the case? I can list all of them if you like. Here is just one of many examples. Why would you believe them given that they haven't even mentioned the EXPERT opinions of the pathologists involved in or who commented on the Brown case who say that it looks like a bullet wound and he should have been autopsied? That should make you wonder about the truthfulness and unbiaseness of those news sources, shouldn't it?

And if your sources are military documents, like the "official" Air Force report on the Brown crash, and you have paid attention to the threads on Free Republic, then by now you know that that report also fails to mention or explain many incriminating facts. For example, does that report mention/explain the simultaneous loss of transponder and radio contact when the plane was still 8 miles from the crash site? Does it mention the missing beacon or the fact that the maintenance officer in charge of that beacon died under somewhat unusual circumstances before he could be interviewed? Does it mention the report to Warren Christopher by Ira Sockowitz that there were 2 survivors? Does it mention the 2nd set of x-rays that were taken at the examination of the body? Does it mention the fact that pathologists at the examination said the wound looked like a bullet wound and called for an examination of the body? Does it mention the search at the crash site for objects that might have caused such a wound, and the failure to find any? Does it mention that the Whitehouse, JCS and Commerce Department ordered Gormley to not do an autopsy, even though by law once a pathologist at the examination voiced suspicions that it might be a bullet wound they should have called in the FBI and done one? If not, why would you trust its conclusions ... especially when they were clearly influenced by the Clinton administration?

And do you have an explanation for why the Air Force would skip the Safety Board portion of their normal crash investigation process for only the second time in history (the first being a clear case of friendly fire in Iraq)? The Safety Board is the portion of the investigation that is SPECIFICALLY chartered with "finding the cause". Why was the Air Force so confident that they already knew the cause in this crash given all of the above facts that they could skip the Safety Board? The Accident Board, which wrote the "official" report is, I understand, charged with producing a collection of facts that can be used in court, by lawyers, who might wish to sue the Air Force or some other entity as result of the crash. Why doesn't that document contain such incriminating facts? Don't you think the lawyers would have wanted to know about such information? In fact, don't you think the families of the victims might have wanted to know such facts. You do realize, don't you, that the families didn't learn any of these facts until years after the crash when events took place that caused several of the pathologists and the photographer involved in the case to come forward and question what had happened.

You see, the problem I have with your statement is that it ignores the fact that even the pathologist, Colonel Gormley, who did the examination of Brown, has admitted that the reasons he gave for concluding that the wound was the result of blunt force trauma were not true ... that he was mistaken (actually he lied and was caught on live TV doing it). You see, the problem I have is that unless you can name SPECIFIC facts that counter or explain all of the above incriminating facts I've raised, along with many others that you would have to be aware of if you'd paid any attention to Brown threads on Free Republic, you have no credibility whatsoever and the smart thing to do would simply be to say "I have no opinion because I don't know the facts." As it stands, it sounds like you've been lied to by your sources and, if anything, that should make you mad. Does it?

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