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Charles Chien of Houston, TX, asks:
Why is it so difficult for Reno to provide Congress the Justice Department's internal memo about appointing an independent counsel?
Michael Carvin,
former Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, responds:
It is important for criminal law prosecutors to preserve the confidentiality of internal communications in order to foster frank discussions and avoid tipping off potential targets.
Professor Doug Kmiec of Pepperdine Law School responds:
Here, Attorney General Reno is on solid ground. As Assistant Attorney
General for the Office of Legal Counsel to President Reagan, I had more than
one occasion to defend the prosecutorial memos of the department from early
disclosure. Early disclosure cripples a criminal investigation -- risking
the disclosure of methods or sources of information, tipping off targets and
thereby prompting the destruction of evidence, and sometimes wrongly
implicating the innocent who just happened to be mentioned in an
investigation file.
In a normal presidency, that is, one not weakened by
personal scandal, one would fully expect the president to back up an
attorney general when Congress pries into an open investigatory file. Of
course, the problem here is that the president may well be the target. All
the more reason for Mrs. Reno to refer to an independent counsel. As the
FBI Director has noted that statute contemplates this kind of conflict of
interest directly, and this -- far more than even Whitewater or Lewinsky --
is exactly the kind of case for which some kind of outside investigator --
not beholden directly to the president -- is warranted. Referral would
accomplish what Ms. Reno cannot -- it would allow an independent counsel to
fend off Congress' intrusion into a criminal investigation.
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