Levin Proves He Is More Of A Politician Than A Senator

Carl Levin, one of our Senators from Michigan proved that he would rather wordsmith than to really find out the facts. We hate that from our representatives.  How can we trust what they say when we know they are not looking out for our interests but rather their own.
We expected more of Levin, since he has announced that he will not run when his term expires in 2014. It could not be soon enough for us! He has not been a supporter of Michigan, the military or Israel (even though he is Jewish). Instead he has walked the Democratic line dutifully.  Good riddance.
The following post shows how out of touch he is. Instead of asking straight forward questions, he pre-determines the answer by the question he asked.  Then he promotes the answer as it it came down from on high. What a fraud.
Conservative Tom 

Playing word games while Iran builds bombs

By Rebeccah Heinrichs - 06/17/13 02:00 PM ET

  

Politicians sometimes use word games and bureaucratic trickery to stop initiatives they disagree with. The most recent example: Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) June 6 letter to the head of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, ardently opposes building a missile defense facility on the East Coast.  Disturbed that the House is considering a proposal to develop an East Coast site, Levin fired off a letter to Vice Admiral James D. Syring asking if there exists a “validated military requirement” for the missile defense site.

Syring, the director of the MDA, dutifully responded, “No.”  Levin then triumphantly posted the letter on his website, under a headline screaming, “Senior officers: ‘No validated military requirement’ for East Coast missile defense site.”

Understandably, this presentation led many lawmakers and members of the press to believe that there is no military justification for the site.  But that’s not at all what the “senior officers” were saying.

The simple fact is: there is no “validated military requirement” supporting any missile defense program. Even President Obama’s “European Phased Adaptive Approach” for European missile defenses lacks such validation. Why?  Because the MDA is officially excused from having to go through the time-consuming, bureaucratic rigmarole of producing “validated military requirements.” 

Levin knows this. It’s why he used that terminology in his query.  It was bound to elicit a “no,” which could then be used to mislead people into thinking that an East Coast missile defense site would serve no valid purpose.

But the reality is this: Intelligence assessments have found repeatedly that Iran is moving forward in developing long-range missiles.  A recent IAEA report confirmed Tehran is making great progress on its nuclear program as well. Clearly, a capability to intercept Iranian missiles is more crucial than ever.

Even President Obama, no friend of missile defense, recognizes that we need a missile defense site to mitigate the Iranian threat. This was the mission of the SM-3IIB, the missile defense system he planned to deploy in Europe. The administration later cancelled this program for several reasons: technical problems, Russian objections, and the State Department’s desire to reach an arms control agreement with Moscow. But the security rationale behind erecting that defense remains wholly valid.

Admiral Syring’s response acknowledged that an East Coast site would provide “operational capability”—something we really need.  But his letter noted there could be more “cost-effective near term” alternatives to an East Coast site.

Again, lawmakers must read between the lines. Would more interceptors in the California and Alaska sites we already have be helpful? Yes. Would improving the systems we already have in place be helpful? Undoubtedly. And the U.S. should do them. But the U.S. should not implement the cheapest options in place of the option that would provide significantly increased security.

Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering III (USAF, ret.), a former MDA Director, and other senior military officers have made it clear an additional site would be uniquely helpful.  As Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, commander of the U.S. Northern Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “What a third site gives me, whether it’s on the East Coast or an alternate location, would be increased battle space; that means increased opportunity for me to engage threats from either Iran or North Korea.”

When it comes to national security, there’s no place for word games and petty partisanship. Lawmakers should work together to fund and ensure deployment of a third site as quickly as possible.
 
Heinrichs, an expert on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, is a Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/305739-playing-word-games-while-iran-builds-bombs#ixzz2WVOywbi9 
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TSA Is Now In The Fashion Police Business

TSA Agent Offers Harsh, Creepy Critique Of Teen Girl’s Outfit

June 17, 2013 by Sam Rolley 

BOING BOING

A TSA officer at the Los Angeles International Airport allegedly offered an inappropriate, and pretty creepy, critique of a 15-year-old girl’s traveling attire while she was en route to a college tour with a group of high school students over the weekend.

Blogger Mark Frauenfelder, recounted the incident on a blog he edits called Boing Boing: “Here’s what happened, as my daughter described it in text messages to us: she was at the station where the TSA checks IDs. She said the officer was ‘glaring’ at her and mumbling. She said, ‘Excuse me?’ and he said, ‘You’re only 15, COVER YOURSELF!’ in a hostile tone. She said she was shaken up by his abusive manner.”

The blogger also included a picture of the outfit his daughter was wearing at the time of the incident. The outfit is demure in comparison to many of the fashions on the right side of legal public decency.

And unless indecency laws are being broken, the government employee has no right to comment on how a person is dressed as they travel.  That’s why the incident underlines bigger problems: TSA agents have been given power that they are often unqualified for and frequently abuse.

As Frauenfelder notes, “It doesn’t matter what she was wearing, though, because it’s none of his business to tell girls what they should or should not wear. His creepy thoughts are his own problem, and he shouldn’t use his position of authority as an excuse to humiliate a girl and blame her for his sick attitude.”

But as with most all government-enabled positions of authority, TSA actions that would be deemed unacceptable for private sector security employees are often met with impunity, or excused, because Americans have been instructed by government to fear terrorists more than sexual harassment or assault. This is why there are so many incidents of TSA officials acting surprised, even hostile, when travelers refuse to have genitals groped in order to board an airplane.

Is Snowden An FBI Failure?

Is the FBI responsible for missing Snowden as a potential leaker? Or does this agency have responsibility only after the crime has been committed? Should they have pre-empted the leak? 

Since the crime occurred in the US and the FBI investigates such events should they also have been responsible for not catching Snowden's actions at the NSA? Or is that department off limits to the FBI?

Is anyone responsible for security at the NSA?  If so, they blew it by letting Snowden walk around with a thumb drive and by allowing computers into this facility with a port that would accept such a device. We expect excuse will be that there is no one  "could have seen this coming"  at the agency.  Poor excuse as corporations already have taken preventative actions to preclude this type of activity. One would think that they would be hyper-vigilant due to the nature of the information they had in their possession, but hey, it didn't involve their families!

We are beginning to feel that the government is after Snowden for only one reason. He told the truth and revealed that the "king did not have clothes on." If so, he should be congratulated rather than spurned.  But we are continuing our position of waiting until we get more information before making our final statements.

Conservative Tom

FBI Director: Snowden Leaks Made Nation 'Exceptionally Vulnerable'

Thursday, 13 Jun 2013 12:09 PM

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FBI Director Robert Mueller on Thursday defended a pair of controversial government surveillance programs, telling Congress that leaking information on them harms national security.
In his last appearance as FBI director before the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller said that terrorists track leaked information "very, very closely" and that because of leaks "we lose our ability to get their communications" and "we are exceptionally vulnerable."

"As to the individual who has admitted making these disclosures, he is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation," Mueller said without naming Snowden.
Mueller added: "We are taking all necessary steps to hold the person responsible for these disclosures."
Responding to questions by committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Mueller said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved the surveillance programs and they have been conducted in compliance with U.S. law and with oversight from Congress.
The revelation that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of U.S. phone records along with digital communications stored by nine major Internet companies has touched off a national debate over whether the Obama administration, in its efforts to thwart terrorism, has overstepped proper bounds by using intrusive surveillance methods.
Rep. John Conyers, the committee's ranking Democrat, expressed concern that the two programs were too far-reaching.
"It's my fear that we are on the verge of becoming a surveillance state," said Conyers.
Mueller is nearing the end of his 12 years as head of the law enforcement agency that is conducting high-profile investigations of the Boston Marathon bombings, the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans and leaks of classified government information. Mueller's last day on the job is Sept. 4.
On Wednesday, Goodlatte said that when it comes to national security leaks, it's important to balance the need to protect secrecy with the need to let the news media do their job.
The Justice Department revealed last month that it had secretly gathered phone records of The Associated Press and emails of Fox News journalist James Rosen in an effort to crack down on leakers of classified information.
In the past week, a 29-year-old contractor leaked National Security Agency documents on the agency's collection of millions of U.S. phone records and the NSA's collection of emails and other information that people transmit online to and from foreign targets.
That has touched off a national debate over whether the Obama administration, in its efforts to thwart terrorism, has overstepped by using intrusive surveillance methods.
"Over the past few years, we have witnessed troubling national security leaks and have learned that the Obama administration seems to be bending the rules in place that protect the freedom of the press in its investigations," Goodlatte said.
On Benghazi, Republicans accuse the administration of misleading the public about an act of terrorism in the heat of the presidential campaign by saying the Sept. 11, 2012, assaults on the U.S. diplomatic post grew out of spontaneous demonstrations over an anti-Muslim video. In the immediate aftermath, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice described it as a "horrific incident where some mob was hijacked, ultimately, by a handful of extremists." The White House says Rice reflected the best information available while facts were still being gathered.
Goodlatte said the committee planned to find out more about the status of what the congressman called the FBI's "stalled investigation" in Libya.
GOP lawmakers also have questioned why the military couldn't get aircraft or troops to Benghazi in time to thwart a second attack after the first incident that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Four Americans, including Stevens, died in the attacks that took place several hours apart.
Regarding the Boston Marathon bombings, committee members want to know whether there was a breakdown in information-sharing between federal agencies, preventing the FBI from thwarting the explosions that killed three people and injured more than 260.
Russia's internal security service, the FSB, sent information to the FBI about now-deceased bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011. The Russians told the FBI that Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen Russian immigrant living in the Boston area, was a follower of radical Islam and had changed drastically since 2010. Because of a subsequent FBI inquiry, Tsarnaev's name was added to a Homeland Security Department database called TECS that is used by U.S. officials at the border to help screen people coming in and out of the U.S.
In January 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia and returned to the U.S. in July. Three days before he left for Russia, the TECS database generated an alert on Tsarnaev. That alert was shared with a Customs and Border Protection officer who is a member of the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. By that time, the FBI's investigation into Tsarnaev had been closed for nearly six months because the FBI uncovered no evidence that he was tied to terror groups.
Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police four days after the April 15 bombings. His brother, Dzhokhar, was charged in the bombings and is recovering from gunshot wounds at a federal prison hospital in central Massachusetts.
© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Are Americans Waking Up To The Tragedy Named Obama

It appears as if Americans are starting to realize that the Messiah has not arrived in the body of Barack Hussein Obama and that he is just a mortal like you.  With his approval numbers dropping faster than the Hindenburg, can he get anything done in his second term. We hope not!

Obama is quickly becoming a second run of the Nixon Administration where one after another scandal erupts. In both situations, the answer was to stonewall the press, Congress and anyone who asked a question.  "It will all pass, if we just don't say anything" seems to be the mantra.  We can see how well that worked for Tricky Dick.

Even throwing certain people under the bus like Lois Lerner, does not stop the drumbeat that everyone is hearing.  Layer on top of that, even non politicians like Edward Snowden of NSA fame or infamy are getting into the mess which now has turned international.

Yes, it is going to be a long summer for the White House, but don't worry the President will love his $100 million vacation to Africa, at taxpayer expense! We hope he enjoys it, it might be his last!

Conservative Tom

Two sources:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/17/cnn-poll-obama-approval-falls-amid-controversies/
 

CNN Poll: Majority Doesn't Trust Obama, Approval Rating Suffers Severe Drop

Monday, 17 Jun 2013 06:13 AM

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President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped a shocking 8 percentage points over the last month — one of sharpest, fastest plunges in his presidency, according to a new CNN poll released early Monday morning.

For the first time in Obama's time in office,  more than half of the public doesn’t feel that the president is honest and trustworthy, the CNN/ORC International poll showed.

Specifically, Obama's approval rating stands at 45 percent, down from 53 percent in mid-May, CNN reported. A shocking 54 percent of respondents told pollsters they disapprove of how Obama is handling his job. That was up nine points in just a month.



It's the first time in CNN polling since November 2011 that a majority of Americans have had a negative view of the president, CNN reported.

The severe drop in Obama's approval rating was fueled by a sharp 17-point drop among Americans under 30, according to the poll. That's particularly discouraging heading into 2014 because Democrats have felt they have a lock on the youth vote after the 2012 elections.

"The drop in Obama's support is fueled by a dramatic 17-point decline over the past month among people under 30, who, along with black Americans, had been the most loyal part of the Obama coalition," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

The president also dropped 10 points among independent voters, from 47 percent last month to 37 percent. Obama's disapproval among independents jumped 12 points to 61 percent. Again, more bad news for Democrats because those independents are especially important in mid-term elections in which older, more conservative Americans predominate.

The network pointed to several major scandals as evidence for the drop.

"The White House has been under siege over telephone and Internet surveillance, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, its handling of the terror attack on the U.S. consular post in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department’s collecting journalists’ phone records as part of the government’s investigation into leaks of classified information," CNN reported.

"It is clear that revelations about NSA surveillance programs have damaged Obama's standing with the public, although older controversies like the IRS matter may have begun to take their toll as well," Holland told the network.

The poll also found:

• A slight majority disapproves of the actions of the man who leaked the NSA documents. A majority of respondents also believe Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong, should be brought back to the United States and prosecuted.
• Six in 10 disapprove of how Obama is handling government surveillance of U.S. citizens. That's higher than the 52 percent who disapproved of George W. Bush on the same issue in 2006, when government surveillance was also in the headlines.
• Obama's approval rating on terrorism, although still above 50 percent, has taken a 13-point hit since mid-May.
• The president's approval rating on domestic issues like the economy, immigration and the deficit dropped by two to four points, within the poll's sampling error.

© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Are You On Obama's Enemies List? If You Are Patriotic, Hardworking, Gun Owners Or Religious --Probably Are

y Victor Davis Hanson

The New American Enemies List

June 17th, 2013 - 12:14 am

 

The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides.

No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in Mexico for selling lethal semi-automatic weapons to drug cartels. But so far, the only identifiable purveyor of illegal weaponry is the president’s own attorney general, whose subordinates in the Fast and Furious operation sold hundreds of guns illegally to Mexican drug lords.

Suggestions to encourage greater incarceration of the mentally unstable, to jawbone Hollywood about its profitable (and gratuitous) gun violence, to regulate extremely violent — and extremely well-selling — video games usually fall on deaf liberal ears. In short, the stereotyped camouflaged, weekend gun enthusiast is not the problem that leads to Columbine, or the nearly 532 murders last year in Chicago. But because we can’t or won’t address the causes of the latter, we go after the former. He is not the unhinged sort that shoots a Gabby Giffords or innocents in an Aurora, Colorado, theater; but somehow is the supposed red-neck yokel that a journalist like ABC’s Brian Ross assumes does.

If the Department of Homeland Security, as is rumored, really did wish to stockpile hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, then why did it begin such repository buying right in the middle of a hysterical national debate about limiting access to various rifles and semi-automatic weapons? Was it not to create a climate of fear and panic buying that has emptied America’s shelves of the most popular types of ammunition? If the homicide rate in Philadelphia and Chicago is any indication, murderers still have plenty of access to bullets. Those who want to target practice or shoot a varmint on their property do not.

The CIA and FBI knew of the suspicious activity of the Boston bombers, of Major Hasan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki. And they did nothing to preempt their violence. The FBI is said to be carefully avoiding monitoring mosques, although all of the above terrorists were known by many fellow Muslim worshipers to be either disturbed or extremist or both. In contrast, the NSA monitors, we are told, nearly everyone’s communications rather than focusing on Middle Eastern male Muslims, even though Middle Eastern male Muslims have been involved in the vast majority of post-9/11 terrorist plots. The NSA is the electronic version of the TSA, which feels it is noble and liberal to stop an octogenarian in a wheel chair for special frisking as proper compensation for every focused look at a West Bank resident or Pakistani visitor on his way into the United States.

The words “Tea Party” and “patriot” in a non-profit’s name would more likely earn a negative appraisal from the IRS than would “Islam” or “Muslim.” One wonders how Lois Lerner’s IRS division would treat a hypothetical “Sarah Palin Foundation” versus “The Dr. Zawahiri Charity.”

The IRS is not worried at all about 47% of the nation who pay no federal income taxes. The vast majority of those whom it focuses on are instead the 10% who pay over 70% of all taxes. These are the would-be proverbial “fat cats” who did not build their own businesses. They are reluctant to spread their wealth. They certainly did not know either when to stop making money or when the age of profit altogether had passed. Sometime around 2009 success was deemed failure, and failure success — at least if we collate the president fat-cat rhetoric with the vast expansion in the disability, food-stamp, and unemployment-insurance rolls.

Note that the IRS is not interested in leaking to Democrat senators or former administration official rumors about George Soros’s income or the details of the tax returns of Warren Buffett, Steven Spielberg, or Bill Gates. Instead, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate bragged that he knew (falsely as it turned out) that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes. And former high administration official Austan Goolsbee claimed (also falsely as it turned out) that he too knew that the Koch brothers were shorting the IRS.

Note that only liberal groups like ProPublica leak information about the confidential donor lists of conservative activists, apparently given their familiar arrangement with the IRS. So far IRS chiefs are not looking at prominent Democrat politicians for tax violations, although for a time — cf. Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Hilda Solis — that might have been a fruitful profile for inquiry. (One encouraging side note: if you are a suspect white, mature, well-off, conservative, heterosexual, Christian male, you can still obtain exemption from federal suspicion by loudly announcing that you also are enthralled by Barack Obama.)

We know who was not an administration suspect in the killing of four Americans in Benghazi — hard-core, al Qaeda-related Islamic terrorists. Instead a  supposedly right-wing unhinged video-maker was the object of vitriol from the secretary of state, the UN ambassador, and the president of the United States. He currently sits in jail. The known perpetrators of the murders walk free.  In contrast, Lisa Jackson, the former EPA director, just got a fat inside job from Apple, despite creating not just a fictitious name (e.g., “Richard Windsor”) to avoid scrutiny when she communicated official business, but also an entirely made-up alter ego: “Richard Windsor” became an ideal employee lauded by the unethical EPA for his supposedly “ethical behavior.”

We also know who in the media is not a target. Not the CBS or ABC News presidents who have siblings working in the White House. Not ABC’s Good Morning America, given that one of its stalwarts is married to Press Secretary Jay Carney. Instead, there are two sorts of suspicious reporters that are considered hostile to the administration and worthy of having their communications monitored. One group are those journalists who leak information that the administration wished to preempt and leak first or who refuse to only leak favorable classified information — the bin Laden trove, the cyber war against Iran, the drone targeting protocol — that makes the president look as if he were a competent commander in chief.

The other target, of course, is Fox News, whose staff, in a variety of ways and on a number of occasions, the Obama administration has previously attacked as in some way illegitimate.

Again, who fits these profiles that our current, vastly expanding big government does not like? If you are an operator of a coal plant that creates needed energy at a profit, then beware that the EPA is after you. If you are a shady insider who wants tens of millions of government dollars to subsidize a money-losing wind and solar plant, you hit the jackpot. Ditto the suspect people who build guitars, loan money to Chrysler, or wish to locate a jet airliner plant in South Carolina. Profits create suspicion; failures earn subsidies.

Then there are the clingers, whom the president long ago blasted as religious zealots and gun-toting xenophobes. These are the sorts whom the attorney general calls “cowards”  (not “my people”) — the “enemies” whom the president advises Latino activists to “punish” at the polls, the sorts that the president apologizes for abroad as guilty of sundry sorts of past class, race, and gender oppression.

In contrast, who is not so worried about government surveillance or audit? The New Black Panthers who turned up at a polling station in Philadelphia to intimidate voters; the “farmers” who, according to the New York Times, filed bogus claims to cash in on the government’s ill-advised and poorly administered Pigford settlement; the Secret Service agents who routinely visited prostitutes while on duty protecting high government officials abroad; and the assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who used her office to enhance her private consulting business.

Americans wonder whom would the immigration services more likely wish to deport: the German Romeike family that was “guilty” of homeschooling their children; Obama’s aunt Zeituni, who lied about her immigration status to illegally obtain state and federal subsidies; or Onyango Obama, who likewise is here illegally (for 21 years) and was recently charged with ramming a police car while driving intoxicated? Is the U.S. so short of DUI offenders and frauds that we must deport homeschoolers to make room for them?

There is currently a climate of fear growing throughout the United States. Millions of Americans are terrified of the IRS, the Department of Justice, the EPA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even perhaps the FBI, CIA, and State Department.

Why?

These government agencies have never been bigger, more powerful, and more ideologically driven. Citizens fear them for understandable reasons: those who do nothing wrong, whether in filing tax forms or trying to buy a rifle, are considered suspect and deserving to be the target of either federal scrutiny or presidential slurs.  But those who do a great deal of wrong, either by illegally entering the country, disrupting polling, trafficking in weapons in Mexico, eavesdropping on American citizens, pulling tax information for partisan purposes, subverting a government agency, or lying to the public about government activity, seem exempt from punishment — and, more chillingly, sense that they are so exempt.

Ask who now is sitting in prison — a shyster video-maker who had nothing to do with the deaths of four Americans, or their five known terrorist killers lounging about in North Africa? Apparently, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, like EPA director Lisa Jackson, was guilty of creating a fake persona. Like Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, he had a lien on his business. Like former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he had some unpaid taxes. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been visited by government investigators. Like Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, he lied to federal authorities — although they were not quite as high as those in the U.S. Congress. And unlike all of the above, he was therefore jailed.

Of all the legacies of Barack Obama, the most pernicious will be the creation of a rogue government that has cut off and terrified half the population — and for no other reason than that they seem to represent things that Mr. Obama simply does not seem to understand.

The IRS Gang Who Can't Keep Their Stories Straight

If it was not so scary, it would be humorous. Supervisors giving instructions but not knowing what they underlings were doing. Applications languishing for a year without action as Cleveland waited for Washington instructions. No one knowing what anyone is doing until there is an IRS Inspector General inspection and the revelations come out.

These bureaucrats are literally the gang who can't keep their stories straight. At first it was a few "rogue" Cleveland agents, Washington was not involved and now we see that the instructions came from IRS headquarters. If we wait long enough we might find that the marching orders came from the West Wing or maybe even the Oval Office.  Don't we tape the conversations in the Oval office anymore?

What Congress must do is to immunize Lois "I did nothing wrong" Lerner and Holly Paz and find out who they give up. Their "get out of jail free" card must be accompanied by names, dates and information about those who instructed them to take the actions they took. Otherwise, they should be punished for their crimes. As far as we are concerned, these are criminals and must be treated as such. The mantra of "I was just following orders" does not fly with us and it should not allow them to escape justice.

Conservative Tom

IRS Supervisor in DC Scrutinized Tea Party Cases

The John Weld Peck Federal Building in Cincinnati houses the main offices for the Internal Revenue Service in the city

Sunday, 16 Jun 2013 07:42 PM

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An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she was personally involved in scrutinizing some of the earliest applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including some requests that languished for more than a year without action.
Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Her assertion contradicts initial claims by the agency that a small group of agents working in an office in Cincinnati were solely responsible for mishandling the applications.
Paz, however, provided no evidence that senior IRS officials ordered agents to target conservative groups or that anyone in the Obama administration outside the IRS was involved.


Instead, Paz described an agency in which IRS supervisors in Washington worked closely with agents in the field but didn't fully understand what those agents were doing. Paz said agents in Cincinnati openly talked about handling "tea party" cases, but she thought the term was merely shorthand for all applications from groups that were politically active — conservative and liberal.
Paz said dozens of tea party applications sat untouched for more than a year while field agents waited for guidance from Washington on how to handle them. At the time, she said, Washington officials thought the agents in Cincinnati were processing the cases.
Paz was among the first IRS employees to be interviewed as part of a joint investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.
Congressional investigators have interviewed at least six IRS employees as part of their inquiry. The Associated Press has reviewed transcripts from three interviews — with Paz and with two agents, Gary Muthert and Elizabeth Hofacre, from the Cincinnati office.
The IRS declined comment for this story.
A yearlong audit by the agency's inspector general found that IRS agents had improperly targeted conservative political groups for additional and sometimes onerous scrutiny when those groups applied for tax-exempt status.
The audit found no evidence that Washington officials ordered or authorized the targeting. But the IRS watchdog blamed ineffective management by senior IRS officials for allowing it to continue for nearly two years during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Since the revelations became public last month, much of the agency's leadership has been replaced and the Justice Department has started a criminal investigation. Both Paz and her supervisor, Lois Lerner, who headed the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, have been replaced.
Agency officials told congressional aides that Lerner was placed on administrative leave. They did not disclose the status Paz, other than to say she was replaced June 7.
Lerner is the IRS official who first disclosed the targeting at a legal conference May 10. That day, she told The AP: "It's the line people that did it without talking to managers. They're IRS workers, they're revenue agents."
On May 22 — the day after Paz was interviewed by investigators — Lerner refused to answer questions from lawmakers at a congressional hearing, citing her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.
Paz told congressional investigators that an IRS agent in Cincinnati flagged the first tea party case in February 2010. The agent forwarded the application to a manager because it appeared to be politically sensitive, Paz said. The manager informed Paz, who said she had the application assigned to a legal expert in Washington.
At the time, Paz headed a technical unit in Washington that provided guidance to agents who screened applications for tax-exempt status. The agents worked primarily in Cincinnati. One of their tasks was to determine the applicant groups' level of political activity.
IRS regulations say tax-exempt social welfare organizations may engage in some political activity but their primary mission cannot be influencing the outcome of elections. It is up to the IRS to make that determination.
"It's very fact-and-circumstance intensive. So it's a difficult issue," Paz told investigators.
"Oftentimes what we will do, and what we did here, is we'll transfer it to (the technical unit), get someone who's well-versed on that area of the law working the case so they can see what the issues are," Paz said. "The goal with that is ultimately to develop some guidance or a tool that can be given to folks in (the Cincinnati office) to help them in working the cases themselves."
By the fall of 2010, the legal expert in Washington, Carter Hull, was working on about 40 applications, Paz said. A little more than half had "tea party" in the name, she said.
IRS agents in Cincinnati were singling out groups for extra scrutiny if their applications included the words "tea party," ''patriots" or "9-12 project," according to the inspector general's report. Paz said she didn't learn that agents were targeting groups based on those terms until June 2011, about the time Lerner first ordered agents to change the criteria.
Paz said an IRS supervisor in Cincinnati had commonly referred to the applications as "tea party" cases. But, Paz said, she thought that was simply shorthand for any application that included political activity.
"Since the first case that came up to Washington happened to have that name, it appeared to me that's why they were calling it that as a shorthand," Paz told congressional investigators.
Paz said she didn't think the agents in Cincinnati were politically motivated.
"My impression, based on, you know, this instance and other instances in the office is that because they are so apolitical, they are not as sensitive as we would like them to be as to how things might appear," Paz said.
"Many of these employees have been with the IRS for decades and were used to a world where how they talked about things internally was not something that would be public or that anyone would be interested in," Paz added. "So I don't think they thought much about how it would appear to others. They knew what they meant and that was sort of good enough for them."
For several months in 2010, Hull worked closely with Hofacre, the agent in Cincinnati, to review the tea party cases, Paz said. In Hofacre's interview, she complained that Hull micromanaged her work.
Hofacre left for a different IRS job in October 2010 and was replaced by an agent whose name was blacked out in the transcript. Paz said the new agent sat on the tea party applications for more than a year because he was waiting on guidance from Washington on how to proceed. Officials in Washington, however, thought the agents in Cincinnati were still processing the cases, she said.
As a result, many applications languished for more than a year, which, the inspector general said, hurt the groups' ability to raise money.
"I knew they were waiting for guidance," Paz said. "I did not know that they were not working the cases because what had been done previously was, they were working the cases in consultation with Washington. And I was under the impression that that was continuing."
Hull was to be interviewed by congressional investigators on Friday. Efforts to reach Hull and Paz for comment were unsuccessful.


In all, agents singled out 298 applications for additional scrutiny because the groups appeared to be involved in political activity, the inspector general's report said. But IRS agents in Cincinnati weren't given adequate training on how to handle the cases until May 2012, the report said.
Before the training, only six applications had been approved. Afterward, an additional 102 applications were approved by December 2012, the report said.
Of those 102 applications, 29 involved tea party, patriots, or 9-12 organizations, the report said. Many applications are still awaiting action. None has been rejected, according to the IRS.

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