WASHINGTON — In a very clever year-end column, the venerable
William Safire writing in the New York Times asks whether
“special prosecutor David Barrett’s 400-page expose of political
influence within the Internal Revenue Service and the Clinton
Justice Department” will be the government report “most likely to
resist investigative reporting” this year. I certainly hope not.
The misuse of the IRS and Justice Department has a long record
going back to Richard Nixon and Watergate and before that to
Franklin Roosevelt and his harassment of former Secretary of the
Treasury Andrew Mellon and publisher Moses Annenberg. Wealthy
individuals such as Mellon and Annenberg can protect themselves —
though Annenberg was cruelly sent to jail. Ordinary citizens
cannot, and the way the IRS is set up today not much provocation is
necessary to instigate a costly investigation…costly to ordinary
taxpayers.
People familiar with the Barrett Report claim that during his
investigation of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary
Henry Cisneros, Barrett came across illegal IRS and Justice
Department activity in the Clinton years that involved corruption
and infringements on the civil liberties of private citizens. A
whistle-blower in the IRS, John Filan, delivered up an 18-page
blueprint sketching out the illegal activities and perhaps
identifying the victims. Sources claim it contains some of the most
illuminating revelations of IRS misconduct ever. Lawyers at the
Clintons’ ever-reliable Washington firm of Williams and Connolly
have bottled the report up since it was finished in August of 2004.
Democrats and a couple of incompetent Republicans have seen to it
that the report is gutted. This month the gutted report will be
made public. The date is January 19. Safire seems to want
investigative journalists to get the rest of the report out.
Frankly I would like to see our elected legislators on Capitol Hill
get the whole, unredacted report out.
If Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, had his way, the unredacted report might get out. His
committee has oversight of the IRS and he thought a month or so
back that he had the agreement of the three-judge panel overseeing
Barrett to allow him to receive the unredacted report and make it
public for the citizenry to see. Unfortunately Democrats on the
Hill led by Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Dick Durbin, and
Congressman Henry Waxman have thwarted Grassley’s wishes by
late-night legislative subterfuge. They were assisted in this
project by two easily confused Republicans, Senator Kit Bond and
Congressman Joe Knollenberg. Now the 120 pages of the report that
outline illegal behavior by the IRS and Justice Department during
the Clinton Administration will be suppressed unless the
investigative journalists Safire hopes for get to work on the
January 19 release. Of course Republican leaders Bill Frist and
Denny Hastert could weigh in too. They head both houses of
Congress.
Just before Christmas one of the perpetrators in the Democrats’
cover up, Senator Durbin, the Minority Whip, boldly asseverated
that “We will initiate at the beginning of this year one of the
most serious debates and discussions on Capitol Hill in our history
about individual rights and liberties.” Well, I suggest that Frist
and Hastert hold Durbin to his words. Surely Senator Grassley will
be on their side.
This report by Independent Counsel Barrett is the first time in
history that the unique powers of an Independent Counsel have been
brought to bear on the IRS. With Barrett’s grand jury subpoena
power he has, sources familiar with the report say, opened the
internal workings of the IRS against private citizens for the first
time. For ten years and at a cost of over $20 million to taxpayers
Barrett has put together this important report. Surely the
taxpayers have a right to see it.
Senator Durbin has declaimed his desire to look into the state
of our “individual rights and liberties.” No agency of the federal
government has more power to infringe on our rights and liberties
than the IRS. Surely Durbin should be held accountable for
suppressing this report. There are no legitimate grounds for not
publicizing it in its entirety. The reports of every other
Independent Counsel have been published in full, save for brief
sections containing classified materials. Gutting a report of 120
pages of detailed government wrongdoing goes too far. Are Safire’s
investigative reporters ready to pounce? Will Frist and Hastert
rise to their responsibilities? Civil libertarians throughout the
country should take note, and so should historians.
