Senator Accuses Justice Officials of Obstructing Probe

A Republican member of the Senate committee investigating alleged campaign-finance abuses accused the Justice Department on Sunday of undermining the probe by preventing the FBI, the CIA and the department’s own officials from giving the committee frank and uncensored information.

“There has been an obstruction of the free flow of information from the intelligence community to the committee and from the Department of Justice investigators to the committee by people in the Department of Justice,” Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said.

Interviewed on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” Cochran said the situation “certainly raises the suspicion” that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and other Democrats in top posts are playing politics with the investigation by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

His accusation, like so much else surrounding the investigation, immediately sparked a partisan row. Two Democrats on the committee suggested that Cochran may be the one who is playing politics.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said on CNN’s “Late Edition”: “That’s another serious charge just shipped out there without the supporting evidence.” And Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said the Justice Department had withheld information only when it believed that the committee’s action might compromise a criminal investigation.

“With all respect to Thad, I have no evidence that the Justice Department is obstructing justice or limiting the flow of information to the committee except insofar as limiting that flow helps their investigation,” Lieberman said.

One of Cochran’s Republican colleagues on the committee, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), stopped short of endorsing his charge. She said “some agencies” were cooperating with the committee while others were not.

Cochran accused the Justice Department of censoring a letter from FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), chairman of the panel. He also said the department was stonewalling the committee’s request to grant immunity as a tool to obtain the testimony of four Buddhist nuns who participated in a controversial 1996 Democratic fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights.

“We had an official from the department admit that he modified language in a transmittal letter from Freeh to the committee,” Cochran said. “That’s been established. Somebody is letting that happen or directing that that happen. . . . Freeh would tell us one thing, and then that would get changed by the Department of Justice.”

He was apparently referring to a flap over Thompson’s accusation that the Chinese government was illegally trying to influence the U.S. political system. Thompson had said Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet endorsed the statement, but a Justice Department official later suggested that Thompson had imposed his own conclusions on the evidence.

Another Justice Department official said Sunday that Freeh wrote the first draft of the letter to Thompson, other department officials added suggestions, and Freeh approved the final submission.

The Buddhist nuns are suspected of donating money that was not their own, a criminal offense. The committee wants to give the four immunity from prosecution so that they can answer lawmakers’ questions without giving up their 5th Amendment rights.

Cochran said it was inconceivable that the Justice Department would prosecute the four, and so there was no reason to withhold immunity.