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...