December 15, 2005
Protecting the IRS
By Robert
Novak
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The last remaining U.S. independent counsel,
David Barrett, after spending $21 million over 10 years, on Jan.
12 finally will close down his investigation of former Housing
Secretary Henry Cisneros' lying to FBI investigators about hush
money paid to an ex-mistress. The political significance is that
the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption
in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely
to be concealed from the public and from Congress.
A recently
passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this
report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically
combustible elements never saw the light of day. But if that happens,
Republican Sen. Charles Grassley will still try to force its release.
As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee with oversight of
the IRS, he wants the first real investigation of the tax agency.
That investigation
would be a long walk into the unknown, with possibly far-reaching
consequences. Prominent Democrats in Congress have spent much
of the last decade in a campaign, successful so far, to suppress
Barrett's report. Its disclosures could dig deeply into concealed
scandals of the Clinton administration. These vital considerations,
not the mere continuation of a $58-an-hour independent counsel
position, is why Republican lawyer Barrett for a decade would
not close down his prosecutor's office.
If this
were just about one politician's illicit love life ruining his
political career, Barrett would have ended his operation long
ago. But an IRS whistle-blower told Barrett of an unprecedented
cover-up. The informant said a regional IRS official had formulated
a new rule enabling him to transfer an investigation of Cisneros
to Washington to be buried by the Justice Department. Barrett's
investigators found Lee Radek, head of Justice's public integrity
office, determined to protect President Bill Clinton.
That triggered
intensive efforts to get rid of Barrett and suppress his report
by three of the toughest Democrats in Congress: Sen. Carl Levin,
Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Henry Waxman. At the same time, the
powerhouse Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly -- representing
not only Cisneros but also the Clintons -- was filing multiple
suits with federal appellate judges supervising the independent
counsel.
The sympathetic
judges sealed everything concerned with the case, including the
report. Barrett was instructed to remain deathly silent on pain
of criminal prosecution. Yet Levin, as ranking Democrat of a Senate
oversight committee, eight years ago gained access to the raw
data of Barrett's prosecutorial effort after requesting it in
a Nov. 20, 1997, letter to the judges.
Barrett's
densely packed 120-page report is followed by a 500-page appendix
with more than 2,500 footnotes. Grassley thought he had an agreement
with Dorgan to amend the Treasury appropriations bill to close
down Barrett's office and publicly release "all portions
of the final report" except for any "clearly unwarranted
invasion of privacy."
But Grassley
is not an appropriator, and Democrats in the Senate-House appropriations
conference slipped through a critical change. The final language
authorized the judges "to protect the rights of any individual
named" in the report. With two out of three judges on a three-judge
panel inclined to the Democrats, that means hardly any of Barrett's
allegations will remain in the report made public. The bill was
passed by Congress on Nov. 18 and signed into law Nov. 30.
Republican
congressional sources expect Section B of the report, dealing
with the allegations of IRS-Justice corruption, to be eliminated
in its entirety. The rest of the report will be so heavily redacted
to obey the new congressional language that it will be of scant
interest to either ordinary citizen or legislator. This long,
tendentious battle to keep David Barrett away from opening a probe
into what really happened in the Clinton administration then will
have appeared to have been concluded with an unconditional victory.
But maybe
not. Chuck Grassley is a stubborn Iowa farmer who often drives
the White House and Republican leaders to distraction. He has
said that if the Barrett report finally emerges as a mutilated
remnant in order to protect the IRS, he will press for legislation
to change that. It may be the last hope for the truth to emerge.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
