Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999 | 9:54 a.m.
All independent counsel David Barrett had to show Tuesday for his four-year, $10 million investigation was a single misdemeanor conviction of former Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. An independent counsel was appointed after a former lover of Cisneros alleged in 1994 that he did not disclose to FBI agents who conducted a background check of him after President Clinton nominated him to the Cabinet the full amount of money he had paid to her before his nomination as secretary of HUD. The prosecution's case rested on secretly recorded telephone conversations that the ex-lover, Linda Jones, had with Cisneros.
The tapes hardly were flattering to Cisneros. Not only did he belittle Clinton, he also acknowledged on the tapes that he withheld from the FBI the actual amount he had paid Jones. Despite telling agents he paid her $60,000 over the years, he actually paid her about $250,000. But a key problem with the tapes -- and Barrett's case -- is that Jones initially told prosecutors they were originals when actually she had edited them in an effort to diminish her role. In fact, it was her lying that in part led the independent counsel to indict her on numerous charges, resulting in her being sentenced to more than three years in prison.
So Barrett was left with a weak case, where the government's chief witness -- Jones -- had been convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice. Barrett plunged ahead anyway, indicting Cisneros in 1997 on 18 felony counts of obstruction, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators. But before jury selection began on Tuesday, Barrett agreed to let Cisneros plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI -- a damaging admission by Barrett that he likely would lose if the case went to trial. Instead, Cisneros will not serve any jail time, but will pay a $10,000 fine.
Barrett was an odd selection to prosecute an HUD secretary in a Democratic administration. In a New York Times story Monday recounting the history of the investigation, it noted that Barrett was a high-profile Republican fund-raiser who had done well lobbying HUD in previous Republican administrations. And while Barrett never was accused of wrongdoing himself, a 1990 House subcommittee report characterized him as a lobbyist who used his connections at HUD to win government grants. If that wasn't enough to raise eyebrows, the Times also reported this information: it was Barrett who asked a friend to forward his name to the chief federal judge of the panel that appoints special prosecutors.
Those who mention the need for an independent counsel to uncover wrongdoing by high-level federal officials often ignore the past partisanship of those who lead these investigations, including Barrett. There is no way Barrett should have been appointed, and this shows that even an independent panel of judges can make a terrible mistake. Congress chose the right path when earlier this year it killed the independent counsel statute after hearing repeated cases of prosecutorial abuse. The only misgiving is that Congress should have pulled the plug on all the other useless cases still going on, whether it was Barrett's investigation or Kenneth Starr's seemingly never-ending probe.
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