Reporting the Report~Clinton Admin shut down IRS investigation of HUD Sec Cisneros

[Sandra]

Reporting the Report~Clinton Admin shut down IRS investigation of HUD Sec Cisneros

Source: Am Spectator
URL Source: http://spectator.org/archives/2006/01/20/reporting-the-report
Published: Nov 6, 2010

WASHINGTON -- There was some last-minute drama in Washington before yesterday's release of the long-awaited report by Independent Counsel David Barrett. Sources close to the
three-judge panel overseeing the report say that the panel's members
were furious about leaks to the press previewing the report's contents.
The report, detailing an organized attempt by Clinton Administration
officials to shut down an Internal Revenue Service investigation into
possible tax violations by President Bill Clinton's secretary of housing
and urban development Henry Cisneros, was to be released at 9:00 a.m.
Thursday. The day before, late in the afternoon, word went out from the
judges to the Independent Counsel's office that the release would be
delayed.

Its delay Thursday morning caused apprehension as to the report's future. It had cost some $23 million in taxpayers' money to produce and a decade to research. It allegedly contained information on
the politicization of the IRS and the Justice Department during the
Clinton years and now might never see the light of day. The morning of
the delay saw the kind of stories that roused the judges' ire. In the
Washington Post syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote that the
impending report was heavily redacted -- 120 pages, poof! Simultaneously
with Novak's column came a front-page New York Times news story similar
to the story published in the New York Sun last Monday that the Barrett
Report chronicled a cover-up by the Clinton Administration of both IRS
and Independent Counsel investigations into Cisneros. But the Times
report had a significant omission: no mention of the redacted pages in
the final report, which after a three-hour delay did come out -- though
with the 120 pages missing.

Had the members of the three-judge panel cooled off about these leaks? I cannot say. I do know that the head of the panel, Judge David Sentelle, is an amiable man, a published
author, a cigar smoker. He is a Republican and his two colleagues are
Democrats. There is no reason they too could not have a sense of
proportion. Leaks take place in Washington all the time. Right now a
leaker from the National Security Agency is celebrated in this town as a
patriot. The Barrett Report contains a memo from an IRS leaker who
apparently first tipped off the Independent Counsel to the Clintonistas'
funny business. Perhaps he too will become a hero. Throughout the
history of special counsels there have been admired leakers. During
Iran-Contra, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's office leaked
prodigiously. There were even leaks while Special Counsel Patrick
Fitzgerald was investigating I. Lewis Libby prior to his indictment. Of
course, some of those leaks could have come from the targets' lawyers.
Who knows?

It is in the nature of leaks that their origins and purposes are mysterious. Barrett's office has been leakproof for years. He has been as quiet as a church mouse, which is why this week's
hullabaloo caught many observers by surprise. Moreover, as in the Libby
investigation, people mentioned in the report have very good reason to
do the leaking or have their lawyers do it. In fact, throughout the
Clinton years we now know that leaks came more often from targets'
lawyers than from Independent Counsels. Clintonistas such as the
renowned Lanny Davis have boasted that it was best when bad news was
coming to get out in front of the bad news by leaking to the press and
putting one's own spin on the story.

The aforementioned New York Times story is a perfect example of the kind of stories confected by the Clintons and their lawyers over the years. It appears to be
fair-minded, but read carefully it is interlarded with the Clintons'
defenses. The Times' story's first words contain the sullen line
"longest independent counsel investigation in history." Soon Barrett's
work is described as a "scathing report." Then we have this land mine:
Barrett's work "came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute
high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors." Later
one of the individuals mentioned in the report is quoted as writing
that the gravamen of the report is "a scurrilous falsehood."

Finally let us return to the Times' amazing omission, neglecting to mention that the Barrett Report as released yesterday has 120 pages
redacted. How do we account for this error? Alas, the Times' leakers
lied to the paper. Its story ends saying, "But after Congressional
Republicans attached a rider to a Department of Housing and Urban
Development spending bill requiring publication of the full report, the
judicial panel in November ordered a full disclosure." That was not the
end of it. Had a fact checker from the Times called me, I would have
pointed out that later, in December, legislation was snuck through
Congress that allowed the redactions to stand.

As Novak reports, those 120 pages can be seen by any member of Congress, who can then make them public. The drama continues.

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." - Franklin D. Roosevelt