Still more evidence—15 volumes in all—poured from the House Judiciary Committee last week, covering the far-flung aspects of the impeachment proceedings. The evidence documented the misuse of the IRS to intimidate political opponents, the widespread surveillance of Government officials and newsmen and the raising of milk prices after the promise of a $2 million campaign contribution from dairymen. But the President seemed to be cleared of charges that he had forced a settlement of an antitrust suit against ITT in return for a pledge of up to $400,000 contribution to the G.O.P. National Convention. He tried to order the Justice Department to drop the suit, however, because businessmen were unhappy about the Administration's temporarily aggressive antitrust policy. Buttressing a narrative of events was an impressive array of documents, including previously undisclosed transcripts of White House tapes, grand jury and congressional testimony, memos from the White House and federal agencies, letters, logs and phone conversations. It all added up to the most massive case made against any political figure in the history of the nation.
Using Taxes as Weapons
The Judiciary Committee's 440-page book of evidence on the Nixon Administration's repeated attempts to use the nation's tax-collecting machinery to harass political opponents and reward political friends shows an unprecedented abuse of the Internal Revenue Service. The White House targets for tax punishment ranged from such respected organizations as the Ford Foundation and Brookings Institution to such radical groups as Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers. A variety of individuals selected for special scrutiny included Lieut. General James M. Gavin, Washington Lawyer Clark Clifford, Economist Walter W. Heller and Actress Shirley MacLaine (all were Democrats). The intended harassment, which began early in the Nixon Administration, was often blocked by the men Nixon himself had appointed commissioners of the Internal Revenue Service or by Treasury Department officials. Though bullied by top White House aides, these men often insisted that the integrity of nonpartisan application of tax laws must be protected and that political use of tax information on individuals not only violated privacy but also violated federal law governing the IRS. Non-political audits are of course commonplace. Many taxpayers are routinely audited in random checks of their returns, or because some part of their filing does not fit normal patterns and is detected and flagged by computers.
Nixon's first two IRS commissioners both felt so strongly about the White House pressure that they threatened to quit rather than carry out the orders of his aides. The first, Randolph W. Thrower, objected in 1970 to one White House scheme on the ground that it might create "a personal police force" within IRS. His successor, Johnnie M. Walters, protested late in 1972 that another White House proposal would have been "disastrous for IRS and for the Administration and would make the Watergate affair look like a Sunday-school picnic." Obviously out of favor with the President, both commissioners finally quit.
Thrower's warning about a personal police force was in response to the President's attempt to appoint a secret investigator for the White House, John Caulfield, as the top