President Nixon attempted to abuse the IRS and was shut down by his own
bureaucracy; Mr. Clinton, however, has succeeded. Nixon compiled a
media enemies list, but not one person on the list was ever audited or
harassed; Mr. Clinton has managed to isolate or punish many of his press
antagonists.
May 18, 1998
Criticizing Clinton
Got Me Audited
By JOSEPH FARAH
White House lawyers defending President Clinton's executive privilege
claims go to great lengths to distinguish this scandal from a previous
invocation of executive privilege, in Watergate. Unlike the Nixon White
House, they say, Mr. Clinton's operatives don't use their power to get at
critics. Well I'm a critic, and starting in December 1994, the White House
counsel's office targeted me, the news organization I work for and one of
my associates because of our investigation of administration corruption and
coverups. Thanks to congressional investigators, I have the memos to prove
it--and I plan to do so in a lawsuit filed last week against several Clinton
administration officials.
The White House and the Democratic National Committee began building a
secret dossier on me and the Western Journalism Center. In 1995, these
files were used by Clinton aide Mark Fabiani to help prepare a 331-page
report, "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," designed to
discredit our investigations and the work of a few others researching Clinton
administration scandals. The report, written and distributed at taxpayer
expense, was leaked to selected reporters. To this day, the White House
has refused Freedom of Information Act requests to provide us with a copy
of the report and other files used to prepare it.
An Internal Revenue Service agent visited our accountant the next year to
announce that the Western Journalism Center was the target of an audit and
that our tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit was being challenged.
The first document requests revealed the political nature of the intrusive
audit. The IRS showed little concern with our bookkeeping procedures, our
financial records or our fund-raising techniques. Instead, the tax collector
questioned our journalistic standards and practices, our choice of
investigative reporting projects and especially our continuing probes of the
administration.
When our accountant questioned the direction of the audit, IRS field agent
Thomas Cederquist responded: "Look, this is a political case and the
decision will be made at the national level." The agent repeated this
astonishing statement on a subsequent occasion.
Rather than take this un-American form of harassment lying down, I went
public with my story in these pages. I demonstrated that our case was part
of a broad pattern of political audits against those who had challenged the
administration's ethics, policy and propriety.
The flurry of national publicity paid some immediate dividends. IRS
Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson, a close friend and political ally
of the Clintons, unexpectedly resigned. Congress's Joint Committee on
Taxation announced an investigation of the pattern of political audits. Other
congressional committees focused attention on IRS abuses.
But the IRS escalated the pressure on us--expanding the audit into another
tax year. Officials refused to allow me to exercise my legal right of
tape-recording examinations. They demanded documents well beyond the
purview of a financial audit--including all incoming and outgoing
correspondence for a full year. They forced us to divert our limited staff
time and resources to defending ourselves in a seemingly endless paper
chase. Attorney and accountant fees spiraled.
Nine grueling months later, the IRS closed the case, extended our
tax-exempt status and launched a face-saving internal investigation of its
own agent--but not before the damage to our center had been done. The
strain on our time and resources had nearly bankrupted the organization. As
a result, half the staff had to be laid off and one of our two publications
folded. Nearly two years after our ordeal began, Congress has yet to issue
a report on political abuse of the IRS. The IRS has not granted our
Freedom of Information Act requests to turn over the case file on the
center.
President Nixon attempted to abuse the IRS and was shut down by his own
bureaucracy; Mr. Clinton, however, has succeeded. Nixon compiled a
media enemies list, but not one person on the list was ever audited or
harassed; Mr. Clinton has managed to isolate or punish many of his press
antagonists.
Such blatant political manipulation and media intimidation has a chilling
effect on free speech and independent monitoring of the administration.
That's why the Western Journalism Center filed a lawsuit last week against
White House and IRS officials, asking for damages in excess of $10 million
for interfering with our First Amendment rights. If the administration won't
end its abuses, and Congress won't act, perhaps the courts will do the right
thing.
Mr. Farah is editor of the Internet newspaper WorldNetDaily.com and
executive director of the Western Journalism Center.
interactive.wsj.com
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