The Most Political Justice Department Ever: A Survey
Olson, Theodore B.
The Department of Justice thus both implements and symbolizes the rule of law in the United States. It is imperative, therefore, that its immense powers be exercised carefully,...
...Justice lawyers had refused for four months to allow agents to ask for a search warrant for Trie's home...
...attorneys in Illinois and Connecticut...
...Space permits only a limited review, but what follows is a partial evaluation of Janet Reno's tenure according to commonly accepted standards for measuring the work of her department...
...In her most recent rejection of calls for an independent look at Gore's role in raising hard money from government telephones, Reno managed to levitate above indisputable evidence that the vice president had attended a lengthy meeting at which that subject was discussed, handwritten notes by a top Gore staffer that showed that hard money fundraising was an important subject during the meeting, and testimony by Clinton's Chief of Staff Leon Panetta that Gore had been listening attentively during that portion of the meeting...
...Justice lawyers then filed briefs endorsing the White House claim that communications between Hillary Clinton and government lawyers were shielded from Kenneth Starr's subpoena, on behalf of the government, because of a government attorney-client privilege that could be asserted-against the government...
...The first instance was one of the most egregious...
...attorney was in aborting federal investigations into Clinton involvement in the looting of federally insured Arkansas thrifts...
...I don't believe he did a thing wrong...
...These files then became accessible by White House political functionaries including people later found to have been 24 September 2000 _9 The American Spectator involved in creating a White House database, a favorite Hillary Clinton project...
...The New York Times has said that "Attorney General Janet Reno has consistently failed to enforce the law against top Clinton Administration officials...
...The Times reported that "the Justice Department took extraordinary steps to enhance the chances for clemency" for the Puerto Rican terrorists "after receiving...expressions of interest from the White House...
...He worked his way to the top and was uniformly wellliked by the White House press corps, whom he helped to serve...
...Janet Reno filled that particular post with a former Bill Clinton student, someone who had worked in ever}, one of his gubernatorial campaigns and the Clinton-Gore 1992 election effort...
...OLC has long been considered the departments legal conscience, and its proximi~ to the attorney general reinforced that office's abiIig, to insure that legal considerations trumped politics at the Jusrice Department...
...RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW The attorney general's most important responsibility is to insure that the White House and the administration respect the rule of law and live up to the highest legal and ethical standards...
...Hubbell was installed as the Clintons' eyes, ears, and voice in the department before Janet Reno even arrived...
...By this measure, it is difficult to assign to Janet Reno anything other than a failing grade...
...A federal judge has found him in contempt of court for willful obstruction of justice...
...For example, when it came to clemency for imprisoned Puerto Rican terrorists, an issue of potential significance to the first lady's New York Senate campaign, the Department of Justice forwarded a pardon report concerning the 16 terrorists to the president despite strong and unanimous opposition by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S...
...After the fundraising scandal had been on the front pages of the nation's papers for months, New York Times columnist William Satire reported that one of the central figures in the illicit fundraising, John Huang, had never been interviewed, asked to testify, or required to produce any records...
...Finally, Robert Conrad, the current head of the fundraising task force, is now known to have recommended appointing a special counsel to investigate these matters...
...Although the independent counsel law prevented Reno from any direct interference in Starr's investigation, she would do so indirectly by investigating Starr himself...
...And an attorney general who has not only turned a blind eye to lawlessness in government, but who seems utterly unable to prevent the Department of Justice from being used to accomplish political ends...
...Vhen Ingersoll learned that the search had somehow finally been approved, she aborted the search and recalled the agents from Little Rock...
...An FBI agent said that Ingersoll had told him that agents were "not to pursue any matter related to solicitation of funds...for the President.., because that's file way the American political process works...
...The independent counsel law in place during most of the years in question required the attorney general to seek the appointment of an independent counsel if she found a reasonable basis for investigating whether "covered persons," including the president, vice president, and certain top White House and campaign officials, had committed federal crimes...
...He moved immediately into the office adjacent to the attorney general's quarters, space traditionally occupied by the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel...
...It is imperative, therefore, that its immense powers be exercised carefully, even-handedly, and with restraint...
...S]he has an uncanny instinct for ignoring or misreading the evidence and the law when top offidals are credibly accused of misconduct...
...Even the criminal division's Robert Lift, described as a Democratic Party loyalist and "friend of Bill," twice urged that an independent counsel be appointed to investigate whether Vice President Gore had lied to FBI agents in connection with his fundraising...
...No person in American history has held more law enforcement authority for such a long period...
...Judicial Watch is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) foundation...
...attorney in Little Rock, the location of so many Clinton family skeletons bursting to get out of their respective closets...
...A1 Gore's brother-in-law was handed the all-powerful civil division...
...The non-prosecution of the Defense Department officials who opened Linda Tripp's classified personnel files to a Clinton-friendly New Yorker reporter, and the Justice Department vendetta against Kenneth Starr press aide Charles Bakaly, are other incidents that scream out for scrutiny...
...It was later learned that FBI Director Louis Freeh and other top FBI officials had urged in writing in the strongest possible terms the appointment of an independent " t counsel...
...Only days after she took office, she ordered the removal of all 93 of the nation's United States attorneys...
...On instructions from the White House, (she claimed it was a "joint" decision...
...And iris one of the most important responsibilities of the attorney general to insist that the line between national policy and personal advantage never be crossed...
...The department's reputation for nonpartisanship became a quaint memory...
...A law that required an independent investigation was deftly transformed into a shield against any serious scrutiny...
...Hubbell, she declared, "has been a tireless crusader for Justice, for doing the right thing...
...As a result, any time the investigation seemed to be getting near the president, vice president, or top White House or Democratic Party officials, the investigators turned their attention elsewhere...
...When the first lady decided to remove White House Travel Office employees and replace them with cronies from Arkansas and Hollywood, the career workers were given two hours to get out...
...Attorney General Reno did neither...
...The evidence atthe trial was so contrived, flimsy, and laughable that the jurors could not figure out why the charges had been brought...
...It will take a strong and principled attorney general and determined efforts to root out the contamination that has occurred and restore the Justice Department to the vital and proud position in government which it once occupied...
...In July 1997, Laura Ingersoll, head of the fundraising investigation, actually quashed FBI efforts to search the home of notorious Clinton fundraiser Charlie Trie in Little Rock despite reports that Trie was destroying key documents...
...In October of 1999, the suit was filed...
...The curious inability of the Justice Department to examine the government-owned computer of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, and the strange investigation and prosecution that have followed is another important piece of the mosaic, as is the near-tragic, prolonged humbling of the Elian Gonzalez case...
...In fact, the applications for clemency were processed by the department even though the terrorists did not personally submit applications...
...The attorney general not only did not raise a finger in protest, she allowed the investigation to be conducted, not by her department and the FBI, but by the National Park Service...
...In 1997, Attorney General Reno told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no federal legal basis for suing the tobacco companies...
...The president manipulated witnesses, lied to his cabinet, including the attorney general, and set in motion a massive and meticulously coordinated campaign to destroy a duty appointed, lawfully empowered, independent counsel...
...Its norreal standards for launching a criminal investigation were tossed out the window as Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder put public pressure on Start to launch a criminal probe that would require scrutiny of the magazine that reported on so many Clinton scandals...
...The American Spectator _9 September 2000 25 Unfortunately for Gore, evidence continued to seep out...
...When Hubbell resigned a year later, under investigation for stealing from his former clients and law partners, Attorney General Reno demonstrated her acute judgment of character and her utter obliviousness of what was going on around her...
...no one believes that) Reno ordered all 93 to leave in ten days...
...No problem...
...That impression was underscored when Reno went offto give a trivial speech as the Waco disaster unfolded...
...Janet Reno has now served seven , , t , , and one-half years as attorney general, longer than all but one of her prede- Theodoz cessors, an individual who held office in the early nineteenth century when there was no Department of Justice, when the attorney general's staff was tiny, and the responsibilities of the office were quite limited...
...There could not have been a clearer signal that the Clinton campaign war room had taken over law enforcement in America, And few observers missed the point that Reno's house cleaning served the important ancillary objective of removing the incumbent U.S...
...The DOJ task force was accordingly told to stop investigating...
...Not satisfied with a simple purge, the White House then manipulated the FBI to make it appear that the Travel Office employees were under criminal investigation for embezzlement...
...Under five administrations going back to Richard Nixon, executive privilege could not be asserted by the president without the written endorsement of the attorney general...
...Mthough a storm of bad publicity ultimately forced the White House to back down and find jobs for most of the disgraced and humiliated workers, the Department of Justice went after the head of the office with a vengeance...
...The government's case against the tobacco industry is another example of the department throwing its legal principles out the window in response to the president's political desires...
...But the mysterious death of a top White House official was sent elsewhere...
...The message of the Hubbell move was not lost on department officials...
...And Charles La Bella, Reno s hand-Dcked replacemen for Laura Ingersoll, advised the attorney general that Reno "had no alternative but to seek an [appointment of] an independent prosecutor...
...A wife of a Democratic senator took over antitrust policy...
...According to the Now ~brk Times, the Justice Department report "suggested a diversity' of views within law enforcement agencies that did not exist...
...Whenever that barrier has been breached in the past, whenever politics has permeated the decision-making or the atmosphere at the Department of Justice, as occurred in Watergate, the consequences for the nation have been grave...
...And Justice fiercely supported claims that Secret Service agents could not be made to testify about things they may have heard or seen based upon an unprecedented claim of a "protective service" privilege...
...The Office of Counsel to the President has been dedicated in substantial part to the obstruction and delay of lawful investigations under the leadership of the president's longtime friend and accomplice Bruce Lindsey...
...Janet Reno's Justice Department has proved particularly solicitous respecting matters of political interest to the White House...
...Conference Registration...
...Reno initially decided that Gore's telephone calls from government property to raise campaign funds were not illegal because there was "clear and convincing evidence that he was only seeking 'soft' money," and that soft money fundrais{ng was somehow not prohibited by the statute...
...Janet Reno had the title, but the White House would be running things...
...The public record can be searched in vain for a single word of protest by Attorney General Reno concerning these, and many, many other abusive acts by the president of the United States, the first lady, and White House confidants and attorneys, which not only eroded respect for the rule of law but weakened the department's ability to do its job...
...That defense mechanism requires information-and the Justice Department has information...
...DOJ officials also debriefed Secret Service officials after their grand jury testimony in the Starr investigation and the gist of that testimony was circulated to the Clinton defense team...
...Governmental prosecutorial power was there to be used, even against the press, and the First Amendment be damned...
...Satire also reported that after Laura Ingersoll was removed as head of the investigation, for what was widely perceived both inside and outside the department as an incompetent, at best, investigation, Reno gave her a special departmental commendation praising her dedication and the thoroughness of her work...
...The first lady has, to put the most charitable possible spin on it, made false statements under oath and concealed evidence from Congress and criminal investigators...
...But the message had been sent...
...The department and its officials traditionally have been held to a standard of independence and non-partisanship not expected at other federal agencies...
...Justice investigated him for 18 months and then prosecuted him for embezzlement...
...Finally, as Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate, Reno sent Starr a letter informing him that the department was opening an investigation of his handling of the Monica Lewinsky matter and "potentially unethical contacts with the [lawyers pursuing] Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against Clinton...
...The world was to learn later how helpful the new U.S...
...Looming over all these appointments, including Janet Reno, herself, was the now-infamous Webster Hubbell, yet another former Hillary Clinton law partner...
...Sacking the nation's front-line prosecutors was just the beginning...
...In order to maintain continui~ ~ in thousands of pending prosecutions, and as a statement to the public that elections do not influence routine law enforcement, the nation's top prosecutors are traditionally replaced only after their successors have been located, appointed and confirmed by the Senate...
...But these events, and a long litany of others, combine to tell a story of a Department of Justice that was captured in early 1993 and has been directed by an intensely political and singlemindedly partisan White House...
...In October 1997, Washington Post reporters Susan Schmidt e ' " " and Robert Suro disclosed that th department s mveshgators had been instructed that the independent counsel law "prohibited ki . . . . . them from Ioo ng at the achwtms of covered persons, and not to "ask [anyone] whether a covered person committed a crime...
...Nor has this account examined the numerous sweetheart plea bargains that resulted in the surrender of leverage over key witnesses in that investigation...
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...The Clinton-Gore re-election campaign finance "investigation" is the most outrageous example...
...Corporate contributions are z:'elcome...
...When Deputy Counsel to the President Vincent Foster was found dead of a gunshot wound, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum prevented Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann from conducting a proper investigation...
...These and other White House delaying tactics were ultimately rejected by the courts, but the Justice Department support added valuable credibility to the White House arguments, and served to gain the president valuable time in his fight against impeachment...
...The Billy Dale incident showed Washington not only how ruthless the Clintons could be in using government power to further their own ambitions, but also, sadly, that the immense power of the Justice Department could be used and abused to destroy a career just to make a Clinton point...
...Janet Reno failed this test and succumbed to political pressures before the ink was dry' on her appointment...
...Manipulation by the Clinton administration of the Justice Department has repeatedly blemished Reno's tenure...
...Reno nonetheless bounded to the astonishing conclusion that "there is no evidence that he heard the statements [about the hard money] or understood their implications...
...While the president has the prerogative to set broad law enforcement policies, and occasionally to participate directly in those DOJ decisions that influence the nation's direction and priorities, the president must never interject his personal or partisan political impulses into individual DOJ decisions...
...The press has often commented how quickly the Clinton political machine is able to respond to an attack with a savage and personally damaging counterattack against any accuser...
...Much of the story remains concealed behind the iron doors of Main Justice in Washington, and some of it may never be known, especially if Janet Reno is succeeded by an A1 Gore Department of Justice...
...It may be some time before an authoritative judgment is made concerning Janet Reno's stewardship of the Department of Justice...
...If the attorney general cannot stop the subversion of the nation's laws by the president under whom she holds office, she must resign...
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...On numerous occasions, Reno insisted that her periodic decisions not to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the Clinton-Gore fundraising abuses were based on recommendations from career prosecutors...
...Bill Clinton's worst nightmare is a George W. Bush-appointed attorney general who will have the courage to pry open the secrets that the Clinton administration has kept during its corrupt reign and a Congress that will keep the Justice Department shredding machines out of operation between November and the inauguration...
...In January of 1999, President Clinton announced in his State of the Union address that he had instructed the Department of Justice to sue the tobacco companies...
...N 26 S ep t e m b e r ~ o o o _9 The American Spectator Tom Fitton and La,ry Klayman in the Fight for TRUTH and JUSTICE in America Invited Speakers Include: Gary Aldrich Congressman Bob Barr Judge Robert Bork Matt Drudge Dr...
...Nearly a thousand highly sensitive background files of Reagan and Bush administration officials were requisitioned by the White House from the FBI...
...The investigation was expensive and prolonged...
...When this unsubstantiated charge from a manifestly unreliable source reached Janet Reno's Department of Justice, it reacted as if the Attorney General's Office had been tire-bombed...
...They acquitted in two hours...
...This vital check on the exercise of presidential power was snatched from Janet Reno's department and handed over to White House lawyers working for Bruce Lindsey...
...pace has not permitted a discussion of the unaccountable delays and inexplicable decisions in the campaign finance investigation that allowed witnesses to flee the country, evidence to disappear, and potential defendants to coordinate their stories...
...Early on, her department filed a brief in the Supreme Court supporting the president's assertion that the Paula Jones civil suit should be suspended for the duration of the Clinton presidency...
...Jerry FalweU Bill Gertz John Grisham Charlton Heston Chris Hitchens Brit Hume Alan Keyes Rabbi Daniel Lapin Judge Roy Moore Peggy Noonan Bob Novak William Safire David Schippers Phyllis Schlafly Ben Stein Justice Clarence Thomas and many more Join Judidal Watch Chairman Larry Klayman and President Tom Fitton at JUDICIAL WATCH'S Ethics in Government 2000 Conference October 20-21, 2000 HILTON WASHINGTON, WASHINGTON, D.C...
...Billy Dale had started in the office 3 ~ years earlier under President John F. Kennedy...
...But the public record already tells enough to portray an unattractive story of a Clinton political takeover of the Justice Department...
...Janet Reno has served longer than all of them combined...
...The attorney general managed to turn this law on its head into a barrier precluding her investigators from looking into any evidence that covered persons might have violated federal laws...
...To put her tenure in perspective, Richard Kleindienst, Elliot Richardson, William Saxbe, Ed Levi, and Griffin Bell held the position of attorney general in the 197o's...
...Robert Kennedy's daughter and a key Senator Ted Kennedy staffer were placed in important positions, as was a former chief of staff of the Democratic National Committee...
...Attorney General Reno rejected every one of these recommendations from experienced, career prosecutors at the very highest levels of the investigations...
...During the Kenneth Starr independent counsel Whitewater investigation, rmnors surfaced from the teenage son of an Arkansan tarot card reader that Clinton Little Rock accuser David Hale had received financial assistance from this magazine...
...Abuse or misuse of those powers has devastating and lasting consequences, not just for the individuals directly affected, but, more fundamentally, for the nation's integrity and for the confidence that citizens must have in their government if they are to honor and respect its laws and institutions...
...Webster Hubbell, not the attorney" general, was the department's liaison with the White House during this tragedy...
...The American Spectator - September 2000 23 Attorneys general are iudged in substantial part by the quality and integri~ of their subordinates, and by their insistence that the}: be selected on their merit and for their commitment to the rule of law...
...Janet Reno watched as Hillary's WeIlesley roommate and close friend was placed in charge of the department's legal policy apparatus and the selection of judges...
...Janet Reno thus sent yet another message, this one quite blunt...
...While the Reno Justice Department has been quick to investigate those who find themselves on the Clintons' enemies list, the president, the first lady, the vice president, and senior White House staffhave been treated as if coated with an invisible plastic shield...
...There is ample evidence that cannot be ignored that, from the beginning, Janet Reno allowed her department to be overwhelmed by partisan politics and that she readily submitted to the personal and private interests of President Clinton and his partner in running the department, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...Perhaps the harshest indictment that can be levied against the Reno Justice Department is that it allowed itself to be misused, again and again, to pursue and punish those whom the Clinton White House perceived as enemies, or merely obstacles...
...When the media subsequently found proof that Gore's calls were, in fact, raising hard money, Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation based on her freshly-minted conclusion that the vice president did not know that he was raising hard money...
...Her president has lied under oath in both civil and criminal proceedings...
...The department of Justice has recently announced that it would investigate an apparent suicide of an African-American teenager in Mississippi...
...The Supreme Court rejected the argument 9-o...
...Unfortunately, this is only a part of Reno's sad legacy...
...Although Janet Reno repeatedly, albeit reluctantly, approved expansions of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's jurisdiction to investigate President Clinton, she ultimately came to join forces with the White House campaign to delay and impede Starr's investigation and to discredit his efforts...
...It led nowhere...
...The sister of Hillary's close friend and former law partner, Vince Foster, took over the department's relationships with Congress, the better to prevent unpleasant departmental leaks to congressional investigators...
...While Reno defenders point to the number of independent counsel appointments she did seek, it is simply impossible to frame a rational explanation for why the biggest and most potentially devastating scandal of the Clinton-Gore years was never permitted to be investigated by persons not appointed by and working for Bill and Hillary Clinton...
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Vol. 33 • September 2000 • No. 7
