More on the Barrett Report


Just what is in those missing 120 pages that President Clinton does not want the public to see?
If you haven't heard of the Barrett Report, you should have. The scary part is that even though all special prosecutor reports are supposed to be public record, at the moment this one has been heavily redacted. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. writes in the American Spectator.

People familiar with the Barrett Report claim that during his investigation of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, Barrett came across illegal IRS and Justice Department activity in the Clinton years that involved corruption and infringements on the civil liberties of private citizens. A whistle-blower in the IRS, John Filan, delivered up an 18-page blueprint sketching out the illegal activities and perhaps identifying the victims. Sources claim it contains some of the most illuminating revelations of IRS misconduct ever. Lawyers at the Clintons' ever-reliable Washington firm of Williams and Connolly have bottled the report up since it was finished in August of 2004. Democrats and a couple of incompetent Republicans have seen to it that the report is gutted. This month the gutted report will be made public. The date is January 19. Safire seems to want investigative journalists to get the rest of the report out. Frankly I would like to see our elected legislators on Capitol Hill get the whole, unredacted report out.

If Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had his way, the unredacted report might get out. His committee has oversight of the IRS and he thought a month or so back that he had the agreement of the three-judge panel overseeing Barrett to allow him to receive the unredacted report and make it public for the citizenry to see. Unfortunately Democrats on the Hill led by Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Dick Durbin, and Congressman Henry Waxman have thwarted Grassley's wishes by late-night legislative subterfuge. They were assisted in this project by two easily confused Republicans, Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Joe Knollenberg. Now the 120 pages of the report that outline illegal behavior by the IRS and Justice Department during the Clinton Administration will be suppressed unless the investigative journalists Safire hopes for get to work on the January 19 release. Of course Republican leaders Bill Frist and Denny Hastert could weigh in too. They head both houses of Congress.

Admittedly, the American Spectator is a right wing publication. Townhall.com, not much better, provided the basis of this entry. So why should you care what some right wing conservatives think?

Because Mr. Clinton's lawyers have spent millions of dollars and years of effort to make sure it never sees the light of day or gets any public attention, violating every precedent.

No matter what your politics, that should worry you.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - January 5, 2006 at 05:25 PM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved