Post helped kill obstruction probe
FBI agents say DOJ leaked info to paper to 'smear' whistleblower, blunt criticismWednesday, July 25, 2001
By Paul SperryEditor's note: This is the last in a series of exclusive WorldNetDaily investigative reports on the Justice Department's still-active criminal probe of 1996 Clinton-Gore fund-raising abuses.
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – The Washington Post was used by political operatives at the Justice Department to kill an investigation into the disappearance of sensitive notes taken by a lead FBI agent during the campaign-finance investigation, FBI agents charge.
The notes were kept by veteran FBI agent Roberta Parker to record the FBI's struggles with Justice prosecutors, particularly Public Integrity Section chief Lee Radek.
In the missing 27-page section, which covered a key period in the investigation, Parker detailed how she and other agents were denied a warrant to search the Little Rock home of Clinton-Gore fund-raiser Charlie Trie, even as he was destroying subpoenaed evidence, and were blocked from pursuing leads back to the former president and vice president.
The notes – which included the dates, times and participants of meetings – offered a rare contemporaneous glimpse of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering at Justice, and as such, provided potential evidence to support the widely held suspicion that former Attorney General Janet Reno and Radek, who ran the campaign-finance task force, were protecting the White House.
They turned up missing just after Parker and three other career FBI agents were called to testify before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in September 1999.
GOP Sen. Fred Thompson, the chairman of the committee then, opened a separate investigation to see if the department obstructed justice by destroying the notes.
Meanwhile, the department's Office of Professional Responsibility started its own probe.
But an unusually generous leak to the Washington Post stopped the probes dead in their tracks.
On March 9, 2000, the Post reported that an FBI lab analysis showed that "nothing of significance was noted to indicate attached pages containing writing were removed" from one of the three spiral notebooks that Parker had turned over to her superiors.
The story went on to say that Parker had failed a polygraph test by the FBI.
An embarrassed Thompson effectively dropped his investigation after the news.
But agents, silent on the matter until now, assert that the leak to the Post came from main Justice and was designed to "smear" Parker and blunt growing accusations of a department cover-up in the so-called Chinagate probe. As proof, they offer the following:
A copy of the lab report was leaked to two Post reporters, Lorraine Adams and David A. Vise, who regularly cover the Justice Department. The sharing of an internal FBI lab document, particularly one involving an agent, is practically unheard of. Oddly, the department still has not conducted an internal investigation to find out who leaked the sensitive report to the Post, WorldNetDaily has learned. The leak instantly took the heat off Justice officials like Radek, and allowed the Post – which has consistently underplayed the Chinagate story – to dismiss charges of a cover-up as fantasy. Indeed, a broader purpose is revealed just four paragraphs into the story: The Thompson "hearing was one in a series of episodes in which Republicans and some FBI officials portrayed the Justice Department as shielding Clinton and Vice President Gore from investigative scrutiny and then covering up prosecutors' actions," Adams and Vise wrote.
What's more, the lab and polygraph results were leaked to the Post the day before the Los Angeles Times revealed the contents of the long-sealed "LaBella memo," which accused Radek and other senior Justice officials of engaging in legal "contortions" to avoid turning over the Chinagate probe to an outside prosecutor. Agents charge that the Post story was planted by the department to take away the sting of the Times bombshell on March 10, 2000.
"It came one day before the Los Angeles Times story about the LaBella memo," one agent who worked on the campaign-finance task force told WorldNetDaily. "It was done to send up some chaff to try to get the rockets off the trail of that L.A. Times report."
Parker "was used to take the heat off of Radek and other officials at main Justice," the agent added.
More maddening to agents, though, is how the Post jumped to conclusions in reporting the lab results.
It said they showed "the pages were never missing." In fact, the report draws no such conclusion.
"The lab report – and you have to look at these things very carefully if you've been around a lab – basically said there's no indication that these things were torn out," said I.C. Smith, who, as the special agent in charge of the FBI in Arkansas, worked with Parker when she was the lead agent on the Trie case.
"But it doesn't conclude that there was never any pages there," he said. "It draws a distinction."
And, the reason the notebook was sent to the lab in the first place was to find out who in the department handled it. Yet a fingerprint exam was never conducted.
Odder still, the department failed to polygraph anyone but Parker in its investigation of the missing notes, WorldNetDaily has learned. No FBI or Justice personnel who handled her notebook were tested for their truthfulness.
Further, the Post neglected to report that Parker was tired, distraught and under extreme stress at the time she took the polygraph, which likely affected her test results, sources close to Parker say. The bureau called her down for the exam the morning after her husband asked for a divorce (they've since reunited). In reporting the test results, the Post cited "two sources familiar with the test."
"It was absolutely a smear story," said another FBI agent who worked on the Chinagate case.
Also, Parker was demoted after she testified before the Thompson committee in 1999, even though she was a reluctant witness. She and other agents were subpoenaed to testify. Still, the department punished Parker and other agents who were critical of the task force probe.
Parker, an 18-year veteran of the FBI who is also a lawyer, went from working the hottest criminal case in the bureau at the time to working background investigations. Based in the Baltimore field office, she now interviews references and neighbors to help clear applicants for White House and other federal jobs.
Her partner on the Trie case, FBI special agent Kevin Sheridan – who in 1999 also complained about Justice officials putting "many stumbling blocks" in their way – has since been transferred to El Paso.
Parker, who fears for her job and won't talk to the press, kept copious notes from the first day she started on the task force in January 1997, according to her Sept. 22, 1999, Senate testimony. Her notes of every interview, phone call and meeting – including contemporaneous accounts of conversations with Justice prosecutors on key decisions – filled up nearly three, 200-page red spiral notebooks.
Parker was the primary case agent on the Trie case, so most of the notes were limited to that part of the task force's investigation.
She kept the notes in her possession throughout the field investigation of Trie and during the preparation for his trial. (Trie was convicted of felonies but given no jail time. He's supposed to be cooperating with prosecutors in further investigations.)
Then, in June 1999, Parker was asked to turn over her notes to the task force in response to congressional subpoenas.
She says she gave them to Wayne Corpening, the FBI's supervisory special agent on the task force. Corpening put them in his office for later review by task force lawyers, and then went on vacation. When he came back, he noticed the missing section of notes, Parker learned later.
After Parker was subpoenaed to testify, she asked for her notes back to refresh her memory, and got them back in August 1999 from FBI special agent C.S. Kim. On Aug. 13, she discovered the missing pages that covered the most controversial period in her dealings with Justice prosecutors. It was the only part of her notes missing.
She said she noticed the gap immediately, because she kept her notebooks in chronological order. The first notebook was the earliest, starting in January 1997.
It was in this notebook that she found notes missing covering the period from June 24, 1997, to July 17, 1997 – during which time agents were arguing with Justice lawyers over the Trie search warrant. That was also a politically sensitive time for the Clinton administration, as Thompson was kicking off his Chinagate hearings.
The chain of custody after Corpening took possession of the notebooks is unclear. But the notebooks are still at the task force office at main Justice – along with boxes containing thousands of other notes that Parker turned over. Parker did not make copies of her notes.
The missing section of notes "was very incriminating toward [former task force supervisor] Laura Ingersoll and Lee Radek," who hand-picked Ingersoll, said one agent familiar with the notes.
Radek has sworn under oath that he was "unaware" that Parker kept notes and has said he doesn't know who in the department handled her notebook.
"I have never seen those notes," he added in his Sept. 22, 1999, Senate testimony. "I have no idea what was contained in them."
Ingersoll, likewise, said she knew nothing about the notes.
"The notes record how decisions were made," the agent said. "And that's pretty important, because if you listen to Laura Ingersoll's testimony, there were certain times and dates that didn't jibe with what everyone's recollection was."
Previous stories:
Bush FBI pick tied to Reno cohort
FBI agents claim DOJ fixed probe
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Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.