-Caveat Lector-
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/13/164837.shtml
This is what makes uneasy about George W along with the media (Public Enemy #
1) picking him as nominee for president of the Republican Party 2 to 3 years
before election! -- Bill
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Bush Shields Clinton Scandals
NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, Dec. 14, 2001
WASHINGTON â The Bush administration, citing executive privilege for the
first time, refused Thursday to honor subpoenas from a House committee
investigating campaign finance violations in the Clinton administration and
the use of informants in organized crime investigations.
Justice Department officials said the refusal would keep investigations "free
from political influences."
Republicans and Democrats alike excoriated the decision, suggesting Bush was
creating a ``monarchy'' or ``imperial'' presidency to keep Congress for
overseeing the executive branch and guarding against corruption.
The House Government Reform Committee claims the decision to reject the
subpoenas reflected a policy of the Bush administration to refuse cooperation
with Congress on criminal investigations, even when the cases are closed.
The panel released previous public statements from Attorney General John
Ashcroft's tenure in the Senate in which he defended similar congressional
oversight.
``Everyone is in agreement you guys are making a big mistake,'' Rep. Dan
Burton, R-Ind., told Justice lawyers at a hearing after the announcement.
``We might be able to go to the [House] floor and take this thing to court."
Burton said in his opening statement: "What we've been told is that the
Justice Department will not provide any deliberative memoranda from any
criminal investigation to any congressional committee, ever. It doesn't
matter if the case has been closed for 20 years.
"This new policy is utterly unprecedented. And if this new policy stands, it
will be virtually impossible for any congressional committee to conduct
meaningful oversight of the department."
Extending executive privilege to Justice Department decisions isn't new.
During the Reagan years, the privilege was cited as the reason the department
did not tell Congress about memos in a high-profile environmental case.
Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, advised Clinton in 1999 that he
could invoke the privilege to keep from disclosing documents detailing
department views on 16 pardon cases.
Among the documents requested of the Bush administration by Burton's
committee: those relating to the decision not to pursue an independent
counsel to investigate Clinton-era campaign finance violations, a former
Clinton White House official and a former federal drug enforcement agent.
The Mob Case
Most of the documents requested by Burton's committee focus on a 30-year span
of investigations into organized crime figures in New England. The committee
has been investigating how the Federal Bureau of Investigation oversaw the
use of several informants in Boston organized crime that used their position
as "agents" of the FBI to better manage their criminal empires.
The two top informants in the probe, Stevie 'The Rifleman" Flemmi and James
"Whitey" Bulger, continued to manage and expand a criminal operation
throughout Boston while under the supervision of FBI agents, who allegedly
falsified records and ignored procedure in allowing them to continue
operating as mobsters. Those operations included as many as two-dozen murders.
Flemmi and Bulger began working with the FBI in the early to mid 1970s.
Flemmi is awaiting trial on a litany of charges. Bulger fled before his
indictment in 1995 and continues to elude capture.
The investigation into Bulger and his handlers also led congressional and
Justice Department investigators to discover that an even earlier case
involving infamous Mafia assassin Joe "The Animal" Barboza and Stevie
Flemmi's brother, Vincent. Both men are suspected of helping the FBI solve a
1965 murder outside Boston, but apparently supplied intentionally false
information that convicted four innocent men for the crime.
Documents uncovered by the committee earlier in the year determined that
then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew that the informants had given
misleading information about the participants in the murder and that the men
convicted most likely did not commit the crime.
Committee investigators have said that freeing the men would have cast doubt
on Barboza's credibility as a witness in several other cases against
suspected members of La Cosa Nostra in the 1960s. Because Barboza was the
first major witness to help the FBI convict La Cosa Nostra members, Hoover
appears to have been unwilling to free innocent men if it meant damaging the
other cases made by Barboza's testimony, committee investigators found.
The committee decided to continue investigating the situation relating to not
only the earlier murder, but also the handling
