Dirty Tricks and the Clinton Enemies List

Back in 1994, when my office was burglarized in what local police characterized as a professional job and, strangely, nothing was stolen, I thought maybe--just maybe--the break-in might have something to do with our news agency’s high-profile investigative reporting into Clinton administration scandals. I didn’t make any accusations, however, because I wasn’t even certain that the White House knew we existed.

Last year, after congressional investigators released memos written in the White House counsel’s office in 1994 that specifically targeted my group, my suspicions deepened.

A few months later, when I learned that the White House had been circulating to select journalists a 331-page report targeting me personally, my Western Journalism Center and a handful of other media outlets, my concerns grew.

When an Internal Revenue Service agent announced that my group was going to be audited and demanded to know why we had embarked on an investigation into the death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr., I became even more convinced that this pattern was more than coincidence.

When that same agent declared that the audit was “political” and that the decision about our fate would be made “at the national office,” I thought even more about the break-in, the way our voice mail system was hacked and about surveillance experts’ recent disclosure that my home and office phones had been tapped during the previous two years.

Any remaining doubts I had that the Clinton administration was both capable of and willing to resort to such dirty tricks and illegal activity were erased in recent days by two stunning developments.

The first was the IRS response to the Western Journalism Center’s Freedom of Information Act request for our case file. The IRS gave us a heavily redacted file missing all IRS paperwork save the final report clearing us of any wrongdoing and extending our tax-exempt status. The agency enclosed a cryptic letter explaining that other documents were being withheld because they involved “interagency” memos and “government privilege.”

Government privilege? What about our rights? And why on earth were other agencies involved in our audit?

The second development was what I learned about the experiences of Cindy Hays, director of the Paula Jones legal fund. In objecting to a request from President Clinton’s lawyer, Bob Bennett, for a list of donors to the fund, Hays explained that “confidential donors to the Paula Jones legal fund reasonably can fear reprisal if its discovery is had.” Why would they have such fears?

In her sworn declaration filed in court about two weeks ago, Hays described what her group has been through--break-ins, wiretaps, stolen files and tampering with the office burglar alarm system. She also described the way her phone lines would go dead for five or 10 seconds at a time--an unexplained phenomenon identical to one we experienced in our office for months beginning more than a year ago.

In addition, I can back Hays’ concern about the intimidation of donors as well-grounded. At least one of our major contributors was threatened by no less than a Cabinet secretary for supporting the center.

I’ve got news for anyone who believes that police state tactics are impossible in 1997 America. Not only is evidence accumulating that they are being used at the highest levels of the federal government, but the abuses are going unpunished. It’s as if they never happened. There’s no accountability.

We have entered an extremely dangerous time. Abuse of power is rampant. The very character of our country is threatened. And almost no one is talking about it.

Only now--more than 20 years later--are we learning the extent of President Nixon’s Watergate-era abuse of power. If today’s abuses continue to go unchecked, 20 years from now we may not recognize this country.