Big Brother In America

If you were called down to the office of the district attorney in your home town and were asked by him where you ate lunch on a certain date three years ago, with whom and for what business purpose, you would probably tell him politely that it was none of his business--and he would be powerless to do anything to you for taking this attitude. If a police officer, or indeed the police chief himself, walked into your office and asked to see your business records, you could with equal impunity refuse to show them to him. It may therefore come as a sobering thought to consider that there are over 15,000 employees of a single Federal agency, earning salaries of $5000 a year and up, each of whom can not only force you to reveal such information but who can arrange to send you to Federal prison if you refuse.

When such awesome investigative power is entrusted to so many individuals, it is extremely important that they wield it with a proper regard for your constitutional rights, especially your right to privacy. The agents of the Internal Revenue Service, who possess this, the broadest investigative power of any law-enforcement agency in the United States, generally do (continued on page 255) Big Brother In America (continued from page 127) respect these rights. They are human beings like the rest of us--despite what many taxpayers who have had their returns audited may think. The IRS has its share of bad apples, too, and I suppose that even the best of them have their bad days. But the least the American people should expect is that the officials of the IRS who supervise these agents countenance no abuses of the taxpayers, or at least exercise proper control to ensure that abuses are kept to a minimum. After all, they are your servants, and it is your money they collect.

Unfortunately for all of us, some IRS officials have during the past several years developed an attitude that makes me wonder if they have lost sight of who is the master and who is the servant. The investigation by my subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure during the past two years has revealed an arrogance within the Service that to me represents Big Brother at his oppressive worst. It has demonstrated his deep entrenchment, his remarkable strength; but more important, it has for the first time shown the strange way Big Brother reacts when he himself is under investigation. I can assure you from firsthand experience that he is a formidable opponent to take on, but now that we've been through several skirmishes with him, I'm beginning to discern a soft spot in his tough hide through which he can be dealt a severe and, I hope, a mortal wound.

Before examining the many interesting facets that we discovered about Big Brother's personality, let me explain how our investigation came about and what we were looking for. In the fall of 1964 we noted certain unusual budget items in the Executive Department that indicated that large sums of money were being spent for electronic snooping devices--wire-tap, bugging and surveillance equipment. While we realized that our espionage and counterespionage agencies needed these devices for national security purposes, the amount of money involved seemed unusually large, and in view of the fact that we had received complaints from people alleging invasions of their privacy by nonsecurity agencies, we decided to find out, if we could, how much of this snooping equipment was being purchased by these agencies and just how it was being used.

In November 1964, we sent several agencies a questionnaire designed to indicate the extent of their use of this electronic equipment. Most of the agencies responded within a reasonable length of time. The last reply we received was from the Internal Revenue Service, and it was phrased in a fashion that we considered deliberately evasive and misleading. So we decided to take a closer look at this agency.

Meanwhile, we had opened our public hearings on violations of the privacy of the mails by Post Office Department sleuths. A great deal of testimony was heard involving such offensive practices as maintaining peepholes in ladies' locker rooms and rest rooms in post offices throughout the country. During the course of these hearings, we discovered that IRS agents had utilized mail covers, and in fact had in some cases opened first-class mail.

One thing I've learned in the course of these hearings on the invasion of privacy is that once an oppressive practice on the part of Government officials is revealed, public reaction is swift and dramatic. Letters came to us from all over the country complaining of similar abuses by IRS agents, as well as some abuses we hadn't even dreamed of.

I would group these letters into three categories: the anonymous and obviously crank letters that are part of the mail of all legislators; letters from disgruntled taxpayers whose only grievance seems to be that they just don't enjoy paying taxes; and, lastly, letters whose tone and content convinced us that their writers were responsible citizens whose rights might indeed have suffered serious infringements at the hands of Revenue agents.

Especially disturbing to us were the letters we received from tax attorneys and accountants complaining that their phones and those of their clients had been tapped and that their offices had been broken into for the purpose of planting electronic listening devices. We further received a tip that some Revenue offices maintained specially equipped conference rooms where confidential conversations between taxpayers, their attorneys and accountants were not only surreptitiously monitored and recorded but in some cases filmed from behind two-way mirrors.

As I view these complaints in retrospect against the background of our investigations to date, one theme seems to come through: The people who reported the most flagrant violations of their rights were those who by their own reports had fought these abusive tactics--taxpayers who had refused to compromise when presented with what they considered unjustified assessments; lawyers who had brought suit in Federal court to enjoin illegal and improper treatment of their clients; in short, people who had stood up to Big Brother. This penchant for revenge was to prove far more prophetic in our probe than we then realized.

We sent our one investigator to make some preliminary inquiries to see if the complaints we had been receiving had substance. What he reported back has already been widely recorded in the press: IRS wire tapping and eavesdropping were widespread, bugged conference rooms could be found in Revenue offices in almost every large city in the country, and the Treasury Department maintained a school in Washington where its agents were taught how to break and enter and how to install illegal wire taps.

Our next step pointed up the first of Big Brother's remarkable qualities:

His Ability to Make Himself Invisible. In March 1965, I invited the then-Secretary of the Treasury, C. Douglas Dillon, to my office to discuss our findings. Secretary Dillon had had a long and distinguished career in Government, having served the Eisenhower Administration as Undersecretary of State, and the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations as Treasury Secretary. Dillon told me that he and his top advisors knew of no wire tapping by his agents and that he didn't even know of the existence of the snooper school. It became disturbingly clear to us then that Big Brother was extremely adept at concealing himself and that his activities transcended political considerations. Quite obviously, he can and did operate with equal facility under Republican and Democratic regimes, and--as we shall see--he appears peculiarly indifferent to whoever happens to head his Government agency. It was not long after that we discovered the first chink in his armor:

His Mortal Fear of Exposure. The fact that the abuses we had discovered had been hidden from the head of the Department made us all the more anxious to find out just what had been going on. We were determined to find out to what extent wire tapping and other invasions of taxpayer privacy had occurred and, more particularly, to discover as best we could how this had come about. Certainly these things didn't just happen; someone must have purchased the electronic equipment, trained the agents to use it and authorized them to use it.

We continued to ask questions in correspondence and conferences with officials of the Service, and it was soon made clear to us that not only were we not going to be overwhelmed with cooperation but that our investigation was deeply resented and would be fought bitterly whichever way we turned. Here we were, a duly authorized subcommittee of elected officials, and we had the nerve to question appointed public servants about how they were abusing the people they were supposed to be working for!

When we asked to see the Manual for Special Agents, which is the book of instructions given to each of the 1800 agents of the Intelligence Service who are responsible for the investigation of criminal tax frauds, we were told that it was a classified document and was not to be shown outside the Service. We certainly had no intention of revealing its contents to unauthorized sources, but simply wanted to ascertain what instructions it set down for the agents regarding such matters as wire tapping and eavesdropping. Months elapsed before we finally received a copy, and we noted that it specifically prohibited wire tapping. How, then, had the agents come to engage in this illegal act?

After much prodding, we managed to pry loose a copy of the curriculum of the snooper school and a list of the agents who had attended it in the previous four years. Since the courses included such interesting subjects as "Surreptitious Entry," "Microphone Installation" and "Amplifiers and Recorders," the next logical step was for us to find out just how the graduates had put their training into operation.

At this point we were still being assured by Revenue officials that wire taps were absolutely prohibited by them and that if, in fact, any had occurred, they were isolated cases and totally unauthorized. Since this information varied considerably from the information we had obtained ourselves, we asked that we be permitted to send questionnaires to the agents, asking them for the benefit of their firsthand information. It was at this point that Big Brother displayed one of his favorite poses:

His Pretense that His Prime Concern Is to Protect Others. We were told that IRS couldn't possibly permit us to receive direct answers from its agents, because, among other things, this would jeopardize confidential information that IRS received from taxpayers. The fact that in the cases that interested us the taxpayers themselves were the ones who initiated the complaints and inquiries, and were perfectly willing to let us see the information, was somehow considered irrelevant. The hypocrisy in Big Brother's explanation was later made clear when we learned that IRS has for many years been showing so-called confidential tax returns to 23 other Federal agencies, to agencies of all 50 states and, believe it or not, to over a dozen foreign countries!

Big Brother's protector-of-the-people pose seems to crop up in all of our investigations. When we take the Post Office to task for entrapping individual users of the mails, Big Brother calls up his image as protector of American youth from panderers of smut, although the individuals who complained to us all seemed to be well over 21 and not at all interested in having the Post Office do anything for them other than deliver their mail. When we caught Food and Drug investigators sending eight agents into a supermarket with electronic equipment to entrap two schoolteachers who were selling dairy replacement products, the FDA proclaimed it was only acting to protect the American consumer. How the mantle of protector of the masses was assumed by the IRS was brought home to us on the first day of public hearings, for just as the hearings began, Big Brother exhibited:

His Mastery of the Art of Double Talk. In view of the fact that we were denied access to the answers of the agents who obviously could supply the best evidence of widespread abuses, we scheduled public hearings beginning on July 13, 1965, to which we summoned some of them as witnesses.

We had been assured, meanwhile, that the IRS was conducting its own investigation, that it was gathering affidavits from the agents and that the matter was well under control. We had good cause not to be impressed with this assurance: The 200 agents of the IRS Inspection Service, which has the responsibility of policing the activity and conduct of the agents, had never in all the years of its existence come up with one case of wire tapping. Our subcommittee, operating for a few months with a single investigator, had unearthed evidence of wire tapping from coast to coast. In fact, many of the agents whom we interviewed admitted to us that they had engaged in such activity, and we were anxious to compare the answers they had given us with the answers in the affidavits we were led to believe they had submitted.

Sheldon Cohen, the newly appointed Internal Revenue Service Commissioner, asked to appear as our first witness, and we were happy to grant his request. The Commissioner's opening remarks in response to my questions seemed to indicate that we were going to receive full and frank cooperation from him. They bear repeating:

Senator Long: It is my information and my recollection that you have secured from many of your agents--whether all of them or not --affidavits dealing with wire tapping and with snooping here?

Mr. Cohen: Yes, sir.

Senator Long: Now, do you have those documents in the possession of your Department?

Mr. Cohen: Yes, sir.

Senator Long: We have asked you that the committee be furnished with those documents or copies of them. Are you prepared to comply with that request this morning?

Mr. Cohen: Not at this time, sir.

Senator Long: Do you indicate by that that you either will or will not furnish them to us?

Mr. Cohen: As I explained to the chairman and his counsel on a number of occasions, there are many instances in running the Revenue Service or any other executive department, where a superior must call on his subordinates for full and frank information, daily reports, critical analyses of proposals. In order to have full and frank discussion within the Department and in order to elicit information on which to operate a department, one must have complete confidence in members of the staff expressing themselves in the fullest, and to the extent that such documents are allowed outside of the Department one cannot rely on the future of full and frank discussion, because everyone at that point will be looking over his shoulder to say, if I say it this way, how will it look in public, if I say it that way, how will it look in public? We feel it is in the interest of good government all the way up and down the line that this type of information not be discussed in public.

However, as I have indicated to the chairman and to the counsel and your staff, I am willing to discuss all of these affairs fully and frankly and I have made available to your staff and to you each of the individuals that you have requested involved here, so that you might fully and frankly discuss any of these matters with them.

Senator Long: But, Mr. Commissioner, these affidavits that I requested are affidavits that your agents in the field furnish to you in direct response to inquiries from you as to whether or not they have used wire tapping in various activities in their field; is that not true?

Mr. Cohen: This is a current investigation, sir, in which we are seeking to find the depth and responsibility of these particular problems. As I have mentioned to you, the only way we can get at this is if we have the full and fair cooperation of all of our employees, and in doing that, we have to have them level as completely as they can with us, be frank, be full, and I feel that in asking them to do that with me, I have to respect the confidence which they have placed in me. [Emphasis added throughout.]

You don't have to be an expert in reading between the lines to gather the extent of the fullness and frankness we would get from the Commissioner. When I asked him if we were going to receive the affidavits of the agents, his answer, fully and frankly translated, was "No." Over a year has passed since the Commissioner's refusal, and his answer has not changed.

In view of the fact that we had called as witnesses several agents who would testify that they had been trained to use wire-tap equipment, that they had been supplied with it together with expert assistance from the Washington office and been given verbal approval by officials in the office of the Chief of Intelligence for the installation of taps, it was time for Big Brother to throw up a smoke screen, and it was here that he showed us:

His Craftiness in Conducting a Subtle Smear Campaign. The mimeograph machines in the Treasury Department had been busy grinding out a news bulletin timed for release immediately prior to the opening of our first public hearing. It, too, bears repeating in part:

Washington, D. C.--Sheldon S. Cohen, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, today stated that a few special agents in the Pittsburgh district may have "overstepped prescribed bounds" in investigating criminal tax evasion in the Government's drive on organized crime.

Appearing before the Senate subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, Mr. Cohen said he had been disturbed to learn that in a few instances there had been departures from IRS policy.

He described four cases "where devoted and courageous agents acted in a misguided and unauthorized effort to abate some of the terror of organized crime."

The implications of this and subsequent releases by IRS were clear: Whatever violations had occurred were few in number, were unauthorized and were all in an effort to protect us from the horrors of organized crime. We, the members of the subcommittee, were thus cast in the role of the villain, for after all, weren't we interfering with these devoted and courageous agents in their fight against organized crime?

Each time we schedule public hearings on IRS abuses, Big Brother sends his advance men into the field to spoon-feed this same message to newsmen--many of whom swallow it whole. It might, therefore, be interesting for us to lay the message out on the table and examine each portion of it carefully, so that we can see how digestible it really is.

Let's begin with the one that says "a few special agents in the Pittsburgh district may have 'overstepped prescribed bounds'" and "in a few instances there had been departures from IRS policy." (Emphasis added.)

According to figures supplied to us by the Commissioner, between the years 1961 and 1965, 128 special agents from all over the country were brought into Washington and were trained to tap phones and to pick locks. Could any of us be expected to believe that, except for four cases in Pittsburgh, the agents proceeded to forget their newly acquired skills?

Let's move on to the allegation that these "agents acted in a misguided and unauthorized effort." A directive sent to the special agents in February 1961, dealing with the organized crime project, signed by former IRS Commissioner Mortimer M. Caplin, stated in part:

"In conducting such investigations, full use will be made of available electronic equipment and other technical aids, as well as such investigative techniques as surveillance, undercover work . . ." (Emphasis added.)

The sworn testimony of IRS agents clearly establishes that not only did high-ranking officials in the IRS authorize the purchase of wire-tap equipment but that the Treasury Department maintained a shop in Washington to manufacture it.

The contention by the IRS that these departures from policy were in an effort to combat organized crime has some basis in truth, for it appears that it was in connection with the organized-crime project that invasions of privacy were not only countenanced but encouraged. But surely the fact that the intended victims were racketeers cannot excuse unlawful practices. Racketeers have the same rights as the rest of us; the fact that a wire tap is put on the phone of a gangster doesn't make it legal. In my considered opinion, it is shameful and outrageous for public officials, who are sworn to uphold the law, to excuse the illegal acts of their subordinates by attempting to delude lawful citizens with the assurance that the only victims of these acts are organized criminals.

As our investigation progresses, Big Brother continues to throw up roadblock after roadblock. When we scheduled hearings in Pittsburgh, all of the agents in the area were brought together and advised by their chief that unless they cooperated with the Service, they might find themselves suddenly transferred to the boondocks. When we ask to interview individual agents, we can do so only if they are accompanied by an attorney employed by the Service. Now we surely have no objection to a witness being accompanied by an attorney of his own choosing, but how can we expect the "full and frank" discussion we were promised by the Commissioner if these agents are escorted and advised by a lawyer who is not employed by them and who is not working in their best interest but in that of Big Brother?

When we talk to witnesses who were formerly employed by the IRS but who have left Government service, we sometimes get a fuller picture, but then the word is passed to the newspapers that it's a distorted picture, because it comes from "disgruntled former employees." When we receive complaints from taxpayers who have suffered flagrant violations of their rights at the hands of IRS agents, we're said to be listening to "crackpots" and "malcontents." What citizen wouldn't be malcontent if he were treated like the Missouri farmer who testified that the IRS slapped a jeopardy assessment against him for over half a million dollars and seized his crops and equipment, forcing him out of business? What lawyer wouldn't be malcontent if during the course of representing a client he--like a Boston attorney who testified--was himself subjected to a tax-fraud investigation and had his clients notified by mail that he was under criminal investigation?

When present employees of the IRS have cooperated with us, they have suddenly found themselves subjected to disciplinary proceedings. On the other hand, the official who was Chief of Intelligence during the period that the privacy invasions of taxpayers were at their peak was promoted to the office of District Director in Pittsburgh--which, coincidentally, was the office where our investigation started.

Yes, Big Brother knows how to fight back, and at times his arrogance is almost beyond belief. Consider the language of one of his internal memorandums that we recently came across. It indicates just how far afield a Federal agency can get. The memorandum outlines a public-information program for the IRS Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division and demonstrates an almost total contempt for the American press and the American people:

A dramatic radio program based on A&TT closed case histories will be made available after "Operation Dry-Up" is in progress in your state. At the present time, we have 30 weeks programing available. The programs are 30 minutes in length, and are not only entertaining, but are used to brainwash the citizenry and to escalate the image of the A&-TT special investigator. Your first impression of the program will be that it is corny and over-dramatic. Experts have evaluated the program, and they tell us that it is of excellent quality, and does the job it was originated to do. We stand second only to Batman. [Emphasis added.]

The memorandum also gives advice on the news media, and I would like to quote from this section, too:

A great number of people engaged in the profession of news writing are of odd make-up. The majority are individualists with egos that need to be pumped up each time they do a job for an organization. The media personnel are usually "hams" and delight in making a public appearance, receiving applause and recognition.

The memorandum rates the A&-TT case-histories radio series second only to Batman. As one reads it, he might imagine he is reading from a script of the make-believe world of Batman. Unfortunately, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division is real, this memo is real and the public-information program spelled out in it is real. You and I, in effect, are paying tax dollars to have ourselves brainwashed.

We asked Big Brother to provide us with the name and title of the memo's author. Characteristically, he refused. We were told by the IRS Public Information Officer that the Commissioner was of the opinion that this public servant, who had displayed such a contemptible attitude toward the people he was hired to serve, shouldn't be held up to public ridicule. In ordinary circumstances and times, one might sympathize with the desire of an agency head to protect a subordinate from such ridicule. But on the basis of what our investigation has revealed, I'm afraid I must conclude that in our time and in these circumstances, this role of protector amounts to misdirected loyalty. One of the principal sources of nourishment for Big Brother has been the fact that the Government agents who have been his most dangerous bully boys have been operating with the comforting knowledge that they themselves won't be held responsible for their actions. This was certainly the case when the Commissioner of Internal Revenue refused to identify the author of the "brainwash" memorandum

When reporting the events of wars, historians quite often refer to a certain battle or a certain decision as the turning point. While I do not lay claim to the authority of a historian or the ability to predict the future, I will venture a guess that one of the turning points in the battle against Big Brother came when we informed the White House about the Commissioner's refusal. I am happy to say that Commissioner Cohen was promptly ordered to reveal the name of your brainwasher to your elected officials

This investigation has been but one small battle in the campaign against Big Brother, but it is my earnest hope that it has demonstrated that the only way to beat him is by constant exposure of his bully boys and agents, and by forcing them to realize that, like the rest of us, they are going to be held responsible for their actions.

It may well take us until 1984 to destroy him, and we should expect to lose a few battles along the way; but with the help of an enlightened and aroused American public, Big Brother may finally have met his master.