July 11, 2000
Radek's deputy doubts FBI story
Says accounts of 'pressure' meeting
'don't jibe,' challenges Freeh to testify
By Paul Sperry
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- It was no routine meeting. In late 1996, four top
prosecutors convened at FBI headquarters to figure out how to
investigate perhaps the biggest presidential scandal in American
history.
The meeting is now more controversial than ever, thanks to a
previously unreleased FBI memo and recent sworn testimony
suggesting Justice Department officials felt they were under
"pressure" to bury the case.
Now, in an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily, one of the
Justice officials at the meeting contends the FBI's account of
what was discussed 'doesn't jibe' with what he remembers.
He questions the FBI officials' motives, calling their testimony
"gratuitous" and "sinister." And he challenges the FBI director
to tell his story under oath.
First, rewind to the last campaign.
Just weeks after the November 1996 election, Congress, along with
Common Cause and other government watchdog groups clamored for a
criminal probe of illegal foreign fund-raising by the
Clinton-Gore camp. They demanded an independent counsel.
The Justice Department had to do something in short order. So the
FBI called the high-level meeting.
A key participant was Lee Radek, chief of Justice's public
integrity section, the central authority on election crimes as
well as on the independent counsel statute.
He sat in a winged-back chair across from his deputy, Joe
Gangloff, who sat on a sofa with deputy FBI director William
Esposito. Assistant FBI director Neil Gallagher took a seat
nearby.
The meeting, held in Esposito's office, lasted about 30 minutes.
The four debated how to handle the probe of what the FBI referred
to at the time as the "Democratic national campaign matter."
At the end of the meeting, according to Esposito, Radek got up
from his chair and remarked that "there's a lot of pressure on
him, and that the attorney general's job could hang in the
balance, based on the" recommendation he would make to her
regarding an independent counsel. Gallagher heard Radek say the
same thing.
"I'm sure you'll do the right thing, Lee," Esposito said.
About a half hour after the meeting, Esposito reported what he
heard to FBI Director Louis Freeh, who in turn met with Reno on
Dec. 6, 1996, to urge her to turn the case over to "junkyard dog"
prosecutors outside of main Justice.
"Those comments (by Radek) would be enough for me to take him and
the criminal division off the case completely," Freeh told Reno.
(Reno swears she doesn't remember the meeting.)
Over the next three-and-a-half years, Radek denied requests for
an outside investigation so many times that line prosecutors
nicknamed him "Dr. No."
Radek swears he never made the remark, though he can't remember
the meeting -- even though President Clinton was a potential
target, the FBI's national-security division chief (Gallagher)
was called in, and it was the only meeting the four officials had
in Esposito's office.
His deputy, Gangloff, recalls the meeting, but doesn't remember
his boss making the remark.
Adding to tensions between the FBI and main Justice, Gangloff in
a recent interview impugned the testimony of the FBI officials
and cast suspicion on their motives.
He said he thought it was "amazing" that Esposito could remember
that Gangloff could overhear Radek's remark.
"I was surprised when he put me so clearly within hearing range,"
Gangloff said. "I thought that was a little bit gratuitous."
"I was surprised by the level of detail of his recollection," he
added.
He also doubts Esposito's story that he was so alarmed by Radek's
remark that he rushed to brief Freeh.
"The notion that he (Esposito) went running down the hall to
Freeh is wrong," Gangloff said. "I think they already had set up
that he was going to give him a report."
How does he explain Esposito reacting to Radek's comment by
reminding him to "do the right thing"?
He says prosecutors normally wrap up such meetings with that
line, the prosecutor's equivalent of "break a leg."
"That particular phrase is one that we use all the time,"
Gangloff said. "When we send a lawyer out in the field, we always
say, 'Look, I've got one piece of advice for you: Do the right
thing.'"
Then he questioned the other FBI official's statements.
"Gallagher's testimony was very perplexing," Gangloff said,
adding that he seemed to "change positions."
In his House testimony, he said he didn't know what Radek meant
by the "pressure" comment, Gangloff pointed out. But in the
Senate, Gallagher read a "sinister" meaning into it. And yet "he
didn't report" it to Freeh, he added.
What's more, Gangloff speculated that Freeh made more of
Esposito's report to him than Esposito intended.
"My own kind of gut feeling on this is that Esposito probably
said something that was more along the lines of,
'Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, and as we were leaving, Lee said x,'"
he said. "And I wouldn't be surprised if Freeh was the one who
put the two things (pressure plus Reno's job) together."
"I want to hear what Freeh has to say," Gangloff said.
Freeh has turned down requests by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to
testify before his Senate subcommittee investigating Justice's
handling of the Chinagate probe.
Gangloff said that if Radek ever referred to pressure, it was in
the "atmospheric" sense of working in a high-stress office, one
charged with going after public corruption. It was not in the
political sense, he asserts.
Asked his role in the meeting, Gangloff said it was that of "an
observer."
Did he take any notes?
"I don't recall taking any," he said. "I'm not really much of a
note taker."
"I made an effort, I'll tell you, to look for notes," he went on.
"But frankly, there wouldn't be any. The meeting would not be a
note-taking meeting, because it was at a very initial stage" of
the investigation.
"To me it would not have been a big deal of a meeting," Gangloff
said.
Radek also says he didn't take any notes and didn't keep a
calendar that would have noted the meeting back then. "I don't
save my calendars," he testified. Esposito, however, saved his.
In 1993, Gangloff was the acting chief of Justice's public
integrity section. In fact, he decided on May 14 of that year
that there was sufficient basis for the FBI to begin a criminal
investigation of Billy Dale and other career White House Travel
Office officials.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
