December 29, 1998
'Disregard for the Law'
Here's a question philosophers have pondered through the
ages: If someone were to fire a cannonball up Pennsylvania Avenue, would
anyone hear it? Or to put it differently, Is it true that trees only talk to one
another? We raise these mysteries after observing that not much of anyone
in Washington beyond a few reporters seems to have noticed that on
December 22 a federal district judge denounced the behavior of a group of
Clintonesque former Commerce Department officials as akin to "hooligans"
and "scofflaws." What's more, he said the department's handling of a lawsuit
over the late Ron Brown's trade junkets has been so untrustworthy that he
is appointing a special magistrate to keep an eye on them.
Judge Royce Lamberth found that the facts "strongly substantiate the claim
that the agency was deliberately destroying and jettisoning documents,"
ending "in a flurry of document shredding" in Secretary Brown's office after
his death in Bosnia in April 1996. He describes the department's four years
of legal stonewalling as an "egregious . . . disregard for the law."
Again, one must ponder the Beltway's apparently
eternal mysteries: Does anyone connect the dots
down there anymore, or do all the capital's solons
and scribes really believe the whole issue is just Bill
Clinton's pattycake habits?
It's been four years since Judicial Watch, a
conservative legal watchdog group, filed suit under
the Freedom of Information Act requesting
documents on Ron Brown's foreign trade missions
and the possible linkage of seats on them to political
contributions. This was the scandal that flushed
Democratic fund-raiser John Huang out of hiding
and into a federal deposition a week before the 1996 election.
Commerce had good reason to destroy documents. Back in 1996, even the
preliminary memos that Judicial Watch had uncovered were judged by
Charles Lewis of the liberal Center for Public Integrity "to support the
notion that favorable treatment was given to friends of Ron Brown, Bill
Clinton and the Democratic Party." "Seemingly everywhere Judicial Watch
looked, there lurked some piece of Commerce dirty laundry," Judge
Lamberth notes. Oh, and as to the all-purpose dismissal of Judicial Watch's
lawyer Larry Klayman as a pest, the judge laconically observes, "The DOC
appears to have demonstrated a disregard for the law that cannot be
explained even by the idiosyncrasies of Judicial Watch's counsel."
The stench from Commerce's soiled laundry eventually became so great that
the Clinton Administration capitulated in August 1997 and asked for
judgment against itself, offering to pay $2 million in legal fees to Judicial
Watch and to initiate a new document search. Judicial Watch took the
unprecedented step of opposing the motion, claiming Commerce had
proven it couldn't be trusted. And Judge Lamberth agreed:
"Almost ironically, the DOC's motion must be denied, not because the
evidence fails to establish that the government's conduct was unreasonable,
but because the record of misconduct in this case is so egregious and so
extensive that merely granting the DOC's motion and ordering a new search
would fail to hold the agency fully accountable for the serious violations that
it appears to have deliberately committed. . . ."
Judge Lamberth has now ordered a new search of government records
under the close supervision of a federal magistrate. He also allowed a
motion to compel new testimony by Mr. Huang, the former Commerce
official, because "little of his deposition testimony is particularly credible."
The Justice Department was also criticized for having "repeatedly denied"
requests for a legible copy of the desk diary Mr. Huang had kept at
Commerce. Judge Lamberth specifically ordered Attorney General Janet
Reno to provide Judicial Watch with a legible copy of Mr. Huang's diary.
In short, the Clinton Administration's common practice of misusing the
good-faith patience inherent in the legal system's procedures has run up
against one public official with the courage and the authority to order it
stopped. Judge Lamberth's blunt and clear criticism stands in contrast with a
post-modern Beltway culture more prone to merely smirking at the
Clintonites' brazenness or fluttering anxiously over it.
The documents that Judicial Watch is really after probably no longer exist.
Nolanda Hill, a former business partner and confidante of Secretary Brown,
testified this past April that shortly before his death Mr. Brown showed her
a packet of documents that he said had been retrieved from Commerce files
during the search for Judicial Watch's FOIA requests. Ms. Hill reviewed the
top five or six documents and saw they were copies of letters to trade
mission participants specifically referencing their donations to the DNC. The
documents have never been seen since, and Judge Lamberth notes that Ms.
Hill, who is now under federal indictment for tax evasion, "has never been
questioned by anyone" from the government about what she saw.
"On many occasions," Judge Lamberth concluded, "the DOC appears to
have engaged in the illegal withholding of responsive documents, in the
removal of such documents from the DOC, and in the destruction of
potentially responsive documents in the office of the late Secretary Brown
and elsewhere, as well as a great deal of misconduct during the litigation,
which the Court leaves for another day's decision."
We'd say that a week or so from now is an ideal time to take up these
matters, which are perfectly relevant to the core issue of conduct that is now
before us.
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