Curlton-
That crack about Waco- you know, where our brave boys from BATF and FBI got their man, along with 25 incinerated children- was a real thigh-slapper. Not that the pos in the White House has done a dam thing to challenge the FBI (hey, he might have very good reasons for not wanting to ruffle feathers there!) about how their handling of Waco. Or Ruby Ridge, for that matter, where this government's finest shot and killed- make that murdered- a 14 year old lad in the back as he ran home saying, "I'm coming, Dad".
Nothing- absolutely nothing, including lies and coverups involving the deaths of 25 children at Waco- will stop Bill's admirers from defending their man. But the rest of us- an increasing number, I gather- are, shall, becoming a bit critical of the sleazebag in the Oval Office, along with the Defender of Ruby Ridge in the DOJ. The spectacle of retired and sitting FBI agents turning against their bosses is not something we see every day, and this WSJ editorial that I have excerpted discusses this phenomenon. Gad, can anybody with his head screwed on honestly expect the Reno DOJ to investigate the crookedness of this administration? And to think there have been morons on this thread who lambasted the motives and integrity Kenneth Starr for his audacity to even investigate the crooks running our government!
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The Obstruction
Of Justice Department?
Congressional veterans couldn't recall ever seeing anything like it. Last
Wednesday, four current or retired FBI agents appeared before a Senate
oversight committee to testify in detail how Justice Department officials had
blocked and subverted their efforts to investigate the campaign finance
scandals of the 1996 Clinton-Gore ticket.
... FBI agents testifying in public against their superiors in the
Department of Justice is explosive stuff. But with a few notable exceptions ... press coverage of the story has been minimal or nonexistent. So we're going to take some space here to tell this fascinating tale.
The tension traces back to the Justice Department's
investigation into the sources of the Clinton-Gore
campaign fund-raising abuses. FBI agent complaints
about the limits that Justice's Public Integrity
Section placed on them date back some two years.
"I am convinced the team at DoJ is, at best, simply
not up to the task," said I.C. Smith, a now-retired
26-year Bureau veteran who ran its Little Rock,
Ark., office, discussing an August 1997 memo he
had written to Director Louis Freeh. "The
impression left is the emphasis is on how not to
prosecute matters, not how to aggressively conduct
investigations leading to prosecutions." Mr. Freeh
didn't respond directly to Agent Smith's letter, but
within three months he unsuccessfully urged Janet Reno to appoint an
independent counsel to probe the Clinton-Gore campaign.
Still, there had to be some reason to account for the agency's sense of
non-movement in the Justice Department. A strong illustration of it emerged
from the agents' testimony last week.
The agents testified that Laura Ingersoll, then head of the campaign finance
task force set up by Justice, and Lee Radek, the head of Public Integrity, for
four months blocked their request to ask a judge for a warrant to search the
Little Rock office of Clinton fund-raiser Charlie Trie. Agents sifting through
Mr. Trie's trash found that vital records subpoenaed by Senator Thompson's
committee were being shredded. But their request to main Justice for a
warrant was turned down for four months. It wasn't granted until Charles La
Bella replaced Ms. Ingersoll; by then newspapers were uncovering the
relevant evidence first. Eventually Mr. La Bella himself was sidelined and
forced to leave Justice after he joined Mr. Freeh in recommending an
independent counsel.
Agent Smith said he was "astounded" by the torn-up Trie documents.
According to the agents' search-warrant affidavit, they included torn
photocopies of six checks from Asian contributors to President Clinton's
legal defense fund, travel records for Ng Lap Seng, the mysterious Macau
tycoon who wired $1 million to Mr. Trie, statements from Chinese banks,
Democratic National Committee donor lists and a Federal Express record
showing that Mr. Trie had sent two pounds of documents to the White
House in May 1997. Some of the documents indicated that the White House
was keeping Mr. Trie informed of the investigations against him.
However, the Asian checks to the legal defense fund were dismissed by
Justice. "Ingersoll indicated, in so many words, 'we will not pursue this
matter'," Agent Smith told Director Freeh on a separate occasion.
Ms. Ingersoll also refused the FBI's request to seek a search warrant,
....
The White House's touchiness on the campaign finance probe has to be seen
in the context of other developments this month--the unpopular clemency for
the Puerto Rican terrorists, the revival of the controversies surrounding
Waco, and even the difficulties over the Clintons' New York mortgage.
Senator Arlen Specter, for instance, announced he will lead a bipartisan
probe of the Justice Department's handling of high-profile cases such as the
Waco disaster and its refusal to wiretap the phone of suspected Chinese
nuclear spy Wen Ho Lee.
What these revelations demonstrate is that Senator Thompson is showing
some Congressional initiative, precisely the form of oversight we hoped
would emerge in the wake of the independent counsel statute's expiration.
There isn't going to be another impeachment, but it's clearer than ever that
the most significant institutional damage to result from this period is the
subversion of Justice.
The formation of serious policy, for example on China, can't proceed
because of this rot. What emerges from these FBI accounts is a portrait of
not merely a botched investigation but of an active coverup. |
