-Caveat Lector-
September 30, 1999
The Obstruction
Of Justice Department?
Congressional veterans couldn't recall ever seeing
anything like it. Last Wednesday, four current or retired
FBI agents appeared before a Senate oversight
committee to testify in detail how Justice Department
officials had blocked and subverted their efforts to
investigate the campaign finance scandals of the 1996
Clinton-Gore ticket.
The country can't rule out that it might be dealing with
an "Obstruction of Justice Department," was Chairman Fred
Thompson's conclusion after the agents had finished, and
their Justice supervisors had their chance to respond.
FBI agents testifying in public against their superiors in
the Department of Justice is explosive stuff. But with a
few notable exceptions, such as the Washington Times
and Fox News Channel, press coverage of the story has
been minimal or nonexistent. So we're going to take
some space here to tell this fascinating tale.
The tension traces back to the Justice
Department's investigation into the
sources of the Clinton-Gore campaign
fund-raising abuses. FBI agent
complaints about the limits that
Justice's Public Integrity Section
placed on them date back some two
years. "I am convinced the team at DoJ
is, at best, simply not up to the task,"
said I.C. Smith, a now-retired 26-year
Bureau veteran who ran its Little
Rock, Ark., office, discussing an August 1997 memo he
had written to Director Louis Freeh. "The impression
left is the emphasis is on how not to prosecute matters,
not how to aggressively conduct investigations leading to
prosecutions." Mr. Freeh didn't respond directly to
Agent Smith's letter, but within three months he
unsuccessfully urged Janet Reno to appoint an
independent counsel to probe the Clinton-Gore
campaign.
Still, there had to be some reason to account for the
agency's sense of non-movement in the Justice
Department. A strong illustration of it emerged from the
agents' testimony last week.
The agents testified that Laura Ingersoll, then head of the
campaign finance task force set up by Justice, and Lee
Radek, the head of Public Integrity, for four months
blocked their request to ask a judge for a warrant to
search the Little Rock office of Clinton fund-raiser
Charlie Trie. Agents sifting through Mr. Trie's trash
found that vital records subpoenaed by Senator
Thompson's committee were being shredded. But their
request to main Justice for a warrant was turned down
for four months. It wasn't granted until Charles La Bella
replaced Ms. Ingersoll; by then newspapers were
uncovering the relevant evidence first. Eventually Mr. La
Bella himself was sidelined and forced to leave Justice
after he joined Mr. Freeh in recommending an
independent counsel.
Agent Smith said he was "astounded" by the torn-up Trie
documents. According to the agents' search-warrant
affidavit, they included torn photocopies of six checks
from Asian contributors to President Clinton's legal
defense fund, travel records for Ng Lap Seng, the
mysterious Macau tycoon who wired $1 million to Mr.
Trie, statements from Chinese banks, Democratic
National Committee donor lists and a Federal Express
record showing that Mr. Trie had sent two pounds of
documents to the White House in May 1997. Some of the
documents indicated that the White House was keeping
Mr. Trie informed of the investigations against him.
However, the Asian checks to the legal defense fund
were dismissed by Justice. "Ingersoll indicated, in so
many words, 'we will not pursue this matter'," Agent
Smith told Director Freeh on a separate occasion.
Ms. Ingersoll also refused the FBI's request to seek a
search warrant, saying the agents hadn't found "a
smoking gun." In July 1997, the Little Rock agents
convinced Public Integrity attorneys to approve a "car
stop" after an unidentified man was seen removing
documents from Mr. Trie's home and taking them to the
home of Maria Mapili, Mr. Trie's business manager. But
Ms. Ingersoll withdrew approval for the search after
learning that the man was W.H. Taylor, Mr. Mapili's
lawyer. Mr. Taylor was also a personal attorney for
chicken tycoon Don Tyson while he was under
investigation by an independent counsel.
FBI agent Daniel Wehr testified that he was
"scandalized" when he was told at a briefing by Ms.
Ingersoll they should "not pursue any matter related to
solicitation of funds for access to the President." He
said, "The reason given to me was that that's the way the
American political process works." Ms. Ingersoll says
she must have been misunderstood.
Agent Roberta Parker testified that she became so
frustrated that she kept three, 200-page spiral notebooks
documenting her complaints about Justice. She turned the
notebooks over to FBI officials in response to a House
subpoena. Ms. Parker said the notebooks were not turned
over to the House and when they were returned to her
last month, 27 pages covering the Trie search-warrant
controversy had been ripped out of one of them. Senator
Thompson says the notes are "the only detailed,
contemporaneous record" of the disputes between FBI
and Justice and he will conduct his own investigation
into what happened to them.
Today, Justice's campaign finance probe remains
technically active, though Senator Thompson thinks that
may be only so Justice can deny him access to certain
documents. The major players from John Huang to
Charlie Trie to Ms. Mapili have all struck plea bargains
with Justice. "After all the wrongdoing, nobody's going
to jail," Senator Joseph Lieberman dryly noted. Senator
Lieberman, the only Democrat to attend the hearing, said
the search warrant refusal was clearly an "error" and
"arouses so much suspicion." Senator Thompson
concluded that Justice officials have "done everything in
the world at every juncture and every step to direct the
finger of suspicion toward them."
The agents' remarkable testimony in fact elicited an
angry public response from the President last Friday. At
the annual White House press picnic, he fell into an
extraordinary 10-minute interview with Paul Sperry, the
bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily. Mr. Sperry
asked Mr. Clinton on a rope line when he was going to
hold his next formal news conference. Mr. Clinton asked
why, and Mr. Sperry said "the American people have a
lot of unanswered questions." When Mr. Clinton asked
"Like what?" Mr. Sperry told him "questions about
illegal money from China and the campaign finance
scandal." President Clinton exploded in anger over the
agents' testimony and told the reporter that "the FBI
wants you to write about that rather than write about
Waco."
According to an account of the incident by James
Grimaldi of the Seattle Times, Mr. Clinton "blew up"
and claimed "the only person who has been linked to
money from China" is former Republican National
Committee head Haley Barbour. He said his campaign
had given Justice's campaign task force "every shred of
evidence, and they haven't found a thing." Photos taken of
the incident show a red-faced Mr. Clinton wagging his
finger about a foot in front of Mr. Sperry. On Monday, a
White House spokesman said, "The President does not
regret making those comments" and Mr. Sperry says
Press Secretary Joe Lockhart personally told him he
would never be invited back to the White House.
The White House's touchiness on the campaign finance
probe has to be seen in the context of other developments
this month--the unpopular clemency for the Puerto Rican
terrorists, the revival of the controversies surrounding
Waco, and even the difficulties over the Clintons' New
York mortgage. Senator Arlen Specter, for instance,
announced he will lead a bipartisan probe of the Justice
Department's handling of high-profile cases such as the
Waco disaster and its refusal to wiretap the phone of
suspected Chinese nuclear spy Wen Ho Lee.
What these revelations demonstrate is that Senator
Thompson is showing some Congressional initiative,
precisely the form of oversight we hoped would emerge
in the wake of the independent counsel statute's
expiration. There isn't going to be another impeachment,
but it's clearer than ever that the most significant
institutional damage to result from this period is the
subversion of Justice.
The formation of serious policy, for example on China,
can't proceed because of this rot. What emerges from
these FBI accounts is a portrait of not merely a botched
investigation but of an active coverup.
=================================================================
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.
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