The Corruption Chronicles

Obama's Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government

Tom Fitton

• Publisher: Threshold Editions
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781476767055
• eBook ISBN: 9781451677898
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

WASHINGTON’S MOST CORRUPT:  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

FLOUTING OF FEDERAL LAW * CORRUPTION * VIOLATING CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATIONS * TERRORIST TIES * VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD * GOVERNMENT CON GAMES * EXTORTION

BECAUSE NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!

In 2008, Barack Obama made a promise to have the “most transparent administration” of any U.S. president; it was the very cornerstone of his campaign. No secrets. No masks. No smoke and mirrors. No excuses. But over the next four years, President Obama’s administration would prove to be one of the most guarded and duplicitous of our time.

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, America’s largest nonpartisan government watchdog (challenging George W. Bush as well as Bill Clinton), has been investigating Obama ever since he splashed onto the national scene in 2006. Now Fitton exposes devastating secrets the Obama administration has desperately fought—even in court—to keep from the American public. For a while, the Obama stonewall seemed to be holding. Until now. And the revelations are astonishing.

Judicial Watch has unearthed the truth behind such high-profile issues as the bailouts, Obamacare, Guantanamo, Obama’s true ties to Bill Ayers and to the Black Panthers voting intimidation scandal, and the Constitution-defying government czars. He reveals Obama’s personal war against FOX News, his real link to ACORN, and his radical Chicago connections. Through scores of smoking-gun government files, some replicated here and many unearthed after lengthy court battles, Fitton also discloses the facts of the Obama-backed $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra, promoted by the president as a model for economic recovery—only months before its disastrous bankruptcy filing. Here too is the truth behind the gunrunning scandal, code-named Fast and Furious, which was a program generated in secrecy by the U.S. government that supplied thousands of firearms to murderous criminals in Mexico—an unconscionable act, and only one in a series of historical lows for an administration that few, if any, major media in this country dare to expose. This book details how the Obama machine is aggressively employing Chicago-style tactics to steal, if necessary, the 2012 elections. And how Judicial Watch is prepared to go to court with historic lawsuits to make sure the elections are fair and honest.

Why do Obama supporters turn a blind eye to his astoundingly unethical and abusive approach to governing this country? The Corruption Chronicles boldly, honestly, and factually makes the case that the federal government is now off the rails and out of control, and has literally built its foundation on broken promises, fatal miscalculations, and a cynical manipulation of its trusting public. But it’s not over. Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch are proof that the Tea Party approach to government corruption can make a difference. A grassroots group can take on the president, the Congress, and the judiciary, and finally force the government to be held accountable. The uncontestable facts are here, in The Corruption Chronicles. To see what is true, you only have to look.

 THE FULLY DOCUMENTED FACTS BEHIND:

• The Solyndra Debacle

• Obama’s Watergate: Operation Fast and Furious

• The Obama Administration’s $20 Billion Government Extortion Scheme

• The Unprecedented Threat to the Integrity of the 2012 Elections

• The Czar Investigation Stonewall

• The Undermining of Our Nation’s Immigration Laws

• 9/11 Secrets

PART 1

JUDICIAL WATCH BEFORE OBAMA

1.

THE CLINTON MACHINE

To understand our current crisis of government in these times, it is useful to go back to the 1990s. The liberal media constantly lectures Americans about the alleged crimes of the Nixon administration. They would have you think that Richard M. Nixon was the first and last corrupt president of the twentieth century.

Far from it. It is certainly ironic that one of the young prosecutors on the congressional impeachment team was Hillary Rodham, who would later become Hillary Rodham Clinton, the First Lady, U.S. senator, and current secretary of state—yet Nixon’s hallmarks, including dirty tricks, abuse of office, misuse of the FBI, crony politics, intimidation, and cover-ups, became hallmarks of the Clinton presidency. While the heart of this book lies in the secrets of the Obama administration, I want to be clear from the outset: corruption and secrecy didn’t start with President Obama.

Judicial Watch was established in 1994, in the aftermath of the election of President William Jefferson Clinton. Judicial Watch became nationally known during the Clinton administration for its use of FOIA requests and other legal actions to hold corrupt politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton to account. Of course, if the Clinton administration had been full of misunderstood innocents, we’d have gotten no attention. But because the Clinton administration was the most corrupt since Nixon’s, our watchdog group, the first from the right to take on government corruption in a serious and sustained way, gained a national following.

Every day seemed to bring new information linking the Clinton administration to abuse of power. Undergirding the corruption was cover-up culture that gave new meaning to the term made famous by Nixon: stonewalling. We made it our mission to hold the Clinton administration accountable to the law—we weren’t afraid of the Clinton administration, and we wouldn’t be intimidated.

Abuse of Power

President Bill Clinton was, above all, a bully. He used the power of his office to intimidate those who disagreed with his political agenda, and he wasn’t shy about doing it—and he couldn’t do it without the cover of secrecy. If the public had known about the tactics the Clinton administration was using to silence its critics and opponents, the public could have held Clinton accountable, which was the last thing he wanted. As always, the more powerful the person—or the more power he or she seeks—the more they are interested in avoiding transparency. The goal of law is to be both regular and proper; bypassing rules, abusing the law, is neither regular nor proper.

In 1996, the Internal Revenue Service audited Joseph Farah’s Western Center for Journalism (WCJ), which had led the way in investigating the death of Clinton deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. In 1998, we helped the WCJ sue the IRS for what we alleged was its retaliatory audit—the audit itself, by the way, came to nothing, and the WCJ was found to be in total compliance. “When IRS field agent Thomas Cederquist first visited our accountant in 1996 to announce the audit, he told us that this was a ‘political case’ and the decision about our fate would be made ‘at the national level,’” reported Farah. “In America, things like this are not supposed to happen—especially to journalists simply doing their job reporting on corruption in government.” Farah said that by early 1996, he was hearing rumors that WCJ had been fingered by the IRS. Farah stated that the IRS was asking why WCJ had been investigating White House corruption, why they were working on the Vince Foster case, and what the center was doing to “balance” their stories.¹

Sure enough, we found that the audit originated with a complaint forwarded to the IRS by the White House. The White House had forwarded it after Bill Clinton himself received it from a California resident. According to the Treasury Department, “the audit originated from a taxpayer who faxed a letter to the White House expressing his concern over a one-page advertisement paid for by WCJ [Western Center for Journalism] that asked for contributions to investigate Foster’s death. The fax was forwarded to the EO (Exempt Organizations) National Office and then to the respective Key District Office for appropriate action.”²

Other Clinton enemies felt the brunt of the administration’s secret manipulation of the IRS, too. Juanita Broaddrick’s nursing home business was audited in 2000, just after she filed a lawsuit against the White House. Broaddrick, a Judicial Watch client, had alleged that Bill Clinton had raped her. Gennifer Flowers, too, was audited by the IRS following a lawsuit we helped her file against James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, Little Brown & Company, and Hillary Rodham Clinton based on the Clinton administration’s ongoing attempts to defame her. Carville had famously told the press, “you all are more interested in putting some bimbo on the air than in getting at the truth. And the truth is that this is just sleazy tabloid trash and you all should be ashamed of yourselves.” In the book he wrote with his wife, Mary Matalin, Carville bragged, “I was the first surrogate to go after her. By going with the Star, taking the money, playing the aggrieved lover, she put herself in the line of fire, she was fair game. I thought, ‘Just don’t call her a whore—but short of that, let ’er rip.’”³

Paula Jones, too, was audited by the IRS, shortly after announcing her historic lawsuit against Clinton and then rejecting a settlement. In fact, the White House actually declined to comment when the Washington Post asked if they had any role in the IRS audit.⁴ Former White House Travel Office director Billy Dale was audited shortly after Travelgate came to light—a White House lawyer apparently told friends that the IRS commissioner was “on top of it.”⁵ Elizabeth Ward Gracen, an actress who had an affair with Clinton, was audited. So was Katherine Prudhomme, a concerned citizen who at a public forum in New Hampshire grilled Vice President Al Gore about Clinton’s Broaddrick assault.

When it came to conservative 501(c)(3) organizations, Clinton’s IRS was even more active with regard to his perceived enemies. During his tenure, the Heritage Foundation, Concerned Women for America, National Rifle Association, and National Review, among others, were all audited.⁶

One reason we were so determined is that we knew that IRS-gate was real, since it had happened to us. Judicial Watch felt the sting of IRS-gate directly in 1998, when the IRS sent us an audit letter. The letter told us to provide “the names and addresses of the directors and their relationship to any political party or political groups.” Was this a politically motivated siccing of the IRS on one of the president’s political opponents? The answer came just a few months later, in January 1999, when a senior IRS official admitted to me and my colleagues during a meeting at IRS offices, “What do you expect when you sue the president?”

It turns out that our claims that the IRS’s moves against us were politically motivated weren’t just speculation—in July 2002, after the IRS finally responded to our FOIA requests, columnist Robert Novak reported that the Clinton White House had received an email in September 1998 from an unspecified sender stating, “[Judicial Watch has] obviously targeted you and the vice president. My question is how can this obviously partisan organization be classified as tax-exempt.” One month later, the White House sent the message on to the IRS, and two weeks later, Judicial Watch found itself on the receiving end of the IRS audit. Several Democratic politicians, including Representatives Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Martin Frost (D-TX), Jim Moran (D-VA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Lewis (D-GA), and Richard Neal (D-MA), were linked to requests that the IRS check out our nonprofit status. “The mystery surrounding Internal Revenue Service tax audits against critics of President Bill Clinton during his administration has been cracked,” Novak announced. “The unmistakable evidence is that the supposedly nonpolitical tax agency responds to complaints by prominent politicians.”⁷

Former commissioner of the IRS Donald Alexander stated, “the circumstances surrounding the IRS’s audit of Judicial Watch are unusual and deviate from the procedures and practices normally followed by the IRS when investigating and auditing 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations.”⁸ In the end, we were given a clean bill of health. So now the IRS is going after Tea Party organizations. Executive branch corruption never dies—it just fades in and out.

The Clinton Payoff Administration

When it came to secrecy and corruption, the Clinton administration didn’t limit itself to tracking down its political opponents—they also used the instruments of government to both create and cover up completely inappropriate deals designed to bulk up Clinton’s campaign finance coffers. Nowhere is it more important for the American people to know about the actions of their politicians than with regard to campaign finance, since the potential for abuse of office is so high. That’s why Judicial Watch made it one of its key missions during the Clinton administration to rip the cover off any campaign finance improprieties. The most famous of these cases was Chinagate.

As David Limbaugh wrote in Absolute Power, “Of the innumerable scandals of the Clinton administration, none is more shocking and disturbing than the campaign finance scandal. None is more far-reaching or complex.”⁹ During the 1996 election cycle, according to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee report, Clinton spent endless amounts of time campaigning; in the ten months before the 1996 election, Clinton attended no fewer than 230 campaign functions, bringing in almost $120 million. In order to end-run around campaign finance regulations, Clinton softened the line between hard money (which generally meant contributions made specifically to a candidate) and soft money (more lightly regulated expenditures by political parties and entities “independent” of the candidate) by taking control of Democratic National Committee operations.¹⁰

The worst sort of corruption started in 1995, however, when former Commerce Department official John Huang, who had worked for the huge Indonesian finance company and Clinton donor the Lippo Group, joined the DNC. At Commerce, Huang was a regular at the Clinton White House—visiting seventy-eight times between July 1, 1995, and October 3, 1996. With Huang at the DNC, his top-secret clearance should have been revoked, but it wasn’t. Huang was in charge of Asian outreach for the 1996 Clinton campaign. He funneled immense sums to the Clinton campaign, and seemingly in return, the Clinton administration shifted its positions on issues ranging from Taiwan to Indonesia. Meanwhile, Clinton was also fund-raising from a Miami drug kingpin (who had a picture taken with Hillary) and from a front company for the Russian KGB.¹¹ Judicial Watch deposed Huang five times in the course of FOIA litigation that investigated cash for seats on Commerce Department international trade trips, and this deposition testimony remains Huang’s most detailed account of his close ties to Clinton (which went back to Clinton’s tenure as Arkansas governor).

Through Huang’s testimony, we exposed that the scandal was bipartisan. In fact, Republican senator Mitch McConnell (now the leader of the Senate Republicans) was forced to return a contribution from Huang as a result of our discovery.

That was just the beginning. In December 1996, it came out that the head of a weapons company owned by the Chinese military was invited to have coffee with Clinton. The meet-up was brokered by Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, a “Friend of Bill,” an American citizen who had raised in excess of $600,000 in illicit money for Clinton’s legal defense fund. That was only the beginning: in February 1997, Bob Woodward reported that the Justice Department was looking into information that the Chinese embassy had tried to fund Clinton’s reelection effort. The Chinese had already funneled cash to the campaign accounts of several major congressional leaders who oversaw trade standards with China. It turns out that the contacts between the Chinese and the Clinton administration ran wide and deep, and the cash flowed freely—as did the policy promises. Eventually, the Democrats were forced to return $3.2 million in tainted cash.¹² Meanwhile, Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, with the full-throated supported of her then-deputy Eric Holder, did everything in her power to stonewall a serious investigation by refusing to appoint an independent counsel.

Another key player in the Clinton-China fund-raising scandal was Johnny Chung, a contributor who signed checks worth $360,000 to the DNC while visiting the White House in excess of fifty times. Chung, who became Judicial Watch’s client, rocked Washington when he testified that an officer in China’s military and an executive for a Chinese government–run aerospace company had arranged for a $300,000 donation to the DNC. “I see the White House is like a subway,” Chung told the Los Angeles Times. “You have to put in coins to open gates.”¹³

Chung’s turning state’s evidence changed the entire complexion of the case. He said that the DNC knew full well what was going on, and that a DNC finance director asked him personally for a $125,000 donation, already aware that Chung was a middleman for the Chinese. As for that $300,000 donation, Chung now testified that China’s military intelligence chief was behind it, and quoted him as saying, “We really like your president.” Chung also said that after turning state’s evidence, his life was threatened.¹⁴

The most deeply troubling element here was the Clinton administration’s lackadaisical approach to national security and the Chinese government. Loral Space and Communications CEO Bernard Schwartz was the single biggest individual contributor to the DNC in 1997, and had opened up his wallet to the tune of over $1 million since 1995. Loral had an interest in having the Chinese launch its satellites into space, but such business had to be approved by the State Department, which had to approve sensitive exports under law. The State Department, with the support of the Defense Department, wanted to make sure that sensitive technology on U.S. commercial satellites did not fall into the wrong hands. At Loral’s request, Clinton overruled his national security establishment by transferring satellite licensing authority from State to a more export friendly Commerce Department. Another law designed to punish the Chinese after the Tiananmen Square massacre required Clinton to also approve waivers for the Loral satellite launches with the Chinese regime. Clinton signed the necessary waivers. When one of these Clinton-approved Chinese launches failed, Loral tried to help the Chinese figure out what went wrong. In 1996, Loral and another company allegedly gave the Chinese assistance that could have been used to make Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles more accurate. This assistance was a potential violation of law and a Justice Department criminal investigation was launched. Nevertheless Clinton approved another waiver allowing Loral to launch another communications satellite a Chinese missile—even as his own Justice Department was investigating Loral for its alleged earlier illicit assistance to China.¹⁵ A special congressional investigation, the results of which was published as the Cox Report, disclosed that government reviews concluded that Chinese ICBM’s were made more reliable thanks to Loral’s help and were “likely to lead to improvements in the overall reliability of [Chinese rockets] and ballistic missiles and in particular their guidance systems.”¹⁶ In other words, the Chinese could better aim their nuclear missiles at us.

This is where Judicial Watch came in. We came up with a creative strategy to uncover the corruption that had resulted in the transfer of crucial missile assistance to the communist Chinese: we filed a lawsuit seeking to hold Schwartz and the Clinton administration accountable under federal racketeering law, arguing that the campaign contributions from Schwartz were a sort of bribery. As far as Schwartz’s China mission went, he told the Washington Post that meetings Ron Brown (the former head of the DNC that Clinton installed as commerce secretary) had put together for him “helped open doors that were not open before.” Schwartz also told the Wall Street Journal, “I think that political involvement does enhance the visibility of a corporate executive, and to the extent that visibility is enhanced, access is enhanced as well.” Schwartz went even further with BusinessWeek: “I can open any door I want as chairman of a $6 billion company.” No wonder Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold Ickes told Clinton to call Schwartz for donations, explaining, “I have it on good authority that Mr. Schwartz is prepared to do anything he can for the administration....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Introduction: The Mission of Judicial Watch
• Part One: Judicial Watch Before Obama
• Part Two: Judicial Watch and the Obama Administration
• Part Three: Watching the Future
• Epilogue: Maintaining Transparency
• Appendix: The New Millennium’s Ten Most-Wanted Corrupt Politicians
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About Tom Fitton
• Index
• Copyright