Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (62790)	11/18/1999 11:13:00 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 67261

Amen....

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (62790)	11/19/1999 7:17:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

November 19, 1999 Where's Janet? Looks like we have company. For some time, we have covered the battle waged by the Landmark Legal Foundation to get the IRS to explain why an extraordinary number of think tanks and organizations that might reasonably be described as Clinton opponents suddenly found themselves audited in the mid-1990s. To determine whether this was an astounding coincidence or part of a more sinister effort to use the IRS to go after political enemies, the Landmark people have sought the answer to one question: Who asked the IRS to investigate whom? Theirs has been a largely solitary battle, fought over tedious legal terrain. Even so, they have managed to extract some telling nuggets the IRS and its politician friends would as soon not have you know. The growing stench is attracting some of our colleagues in the Fourth Estate, notably the Associated Press, Fox News and ABC News. This week, for example, the AP baldly stated that "officials in the Democratic White House and members of both parties in Congress have prompted hundreds of audits of political opponents in the 1990s. The audit requests ranged from the forwarding of constituent letters and newspaper articles alleging wrongdoing to personal demands for audits from members of Congress." Former Rep. David Skaggs (D., Colo.) was named as one of the latter, fingering the Heritage Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste. Both found themselves the subject of audits within two months of the IRS's getting Mr. Skaggs's letter. The IRS position is incredible. It says letters from politicians asking that someone be audited are confidential tax-return information. But then it makes sure that such requests track through the case files. It is hard for us to understand why the officer looking into whether the Heritage Foundation should be audited would need to see that Congressman Skaggs wanted just such an audit. Republicans, to be sure, also have played this game, but we don't know yet know the degree because the IRS refuses to release the information. What we know is that there are a raft of conservative outfits complaining about audits and no corresponding complaints from liberal ones. Indeed, at this stage we don't know whether forwarding possible targets on to the IRS is just another thing Congressmen do, or whether there was a campaign among outfits to get constituents to write letters to their Congressmen suggesting audits of their political enemies, which would then be forwarded on (thus providing the Congressmen with cover). We don't even know the nature of those hundreds of communications between Congress and the IRS and the White House and the IRS that have not been released. In short, not least of the scandals here is that going on three years after Landmark first filed its FOIA request, we have yet to move out of the discovery phase. It is hard to reconcile this stonewalling on the part of the IRS and its attorneys at the Justice Department with Janet Reno's May 1997 memo to all agency heads about the imperative for "following the spirit as well as the letter of the [Freedom of Information] Act, and applying a presumption of disclosure." Specifically, there remain three unresolved issues that would reveal much about what was going on at the IRS. - Landmark wants to ask an IRS official about 114 relevant case files, which have inexplicably gone missing. The Justice Department is dead set against it, and has asked the judge to say no. - Landmark wants to ask the IRS official who handled the FOIA request for "any" information about third party audit requests why he did not include the Commissioner's files in his search. The Justice Department again says they can't have it. - Finally, Landmark has asked for a key tape recording of a San Francisco meeting in which IRS official Terry Hallihan is alleged to have talked about the shredding of files and ways to conceal the fact that audit requests came from a Congressman. At first the IRS denied the tape existed; now it says that it was the personal tape of an employee, which anyway has been recorded over with music and another meeting. Justice is asking the judge to say Landmark can't have this, either. Those who remember Watergate know that Richard Nixon complained bitterly about his enemies, and many times told aides to have these people audited. How many times during the Clinton impeachment hearings did the likes of Richard Ben Veniste, Marty Meehan, Liz Holtzman and Lawrence Tribe tell us that sex was nothing compared with the scandal of politicizing the IRS? As Congress rightly appreciated in 1974, this constituted a grave abuse of power and a direct assault on the First Amendment. Less well known is that a Congressional investigation determined that the IRS largely resisted Nixon's attempts to politicize it--much to Nixon's evident frustration. Unlike Nixon's foes, however, it is a matter of record that many of Clinton's enemies were audited. And that politicians were instigating such audits. If the First Amendment means anything, surely it means that an American has a right to agitate for his views without having it result in the IRS looking over his books. What it is that Janet Reno and Justice so desperately do not want us to see? interactive.wsj.com