Singing like canaries IRS agents tell Issa their marching orders came from Washington

Singing like canaries

IRS agents tell Issa their marching orders came from Washington

By Dan Calabrese (Bio and Archives) Monday, June 3, 2013

This all reminds me of Benghazi. Remember the initial story - horrible guy who put a Mohammed video on YouTube - and how it soon became, er, inoperable as the real truth became obvious? The original story of the two rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati is starting to seem a little like that. Did they really try to tell that one? Eh, just forget they ever said it.

Especially now, when IRS agents are singing like a canary to Darrell Issa and his congressional investigators, and it’s clear the initial story was absurd and impossible. CBS News reports:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., citing the testimony of IRS employees who spoke to his committee behind closed doors, argued Sunday that the tax agency’s targeting of conservative groups was not the result of a few “rogue agents” in the Cincinnati field office, as the IRS and the Obama administration have insisted, but the product of a direct order from IRS headquarters in Washington.

“As late as last week, the administration’s still trying to say there’s a few rogue agents in Cincinnati,” Issa said on CNN. “When in fact the indication is they were directly being ordered from Washington.”

As evidence, Issa pointed to the testimony of IRS employees from the Cincinnati office who spoke to his committee and indicated that IRS headquarters in Washington requested a sample of applications from conservative groups for tax exempt status.

As to whether a couple of rogue agents could have pulled off such a stunt if they had wanted to, one IRS agent told Issa’s committee it would have been impossible:
“It’s impossible,” the employee explained. “As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen.”

The interrogator followed up, asking, “With respect to the particular scrutiny that was given to Tea Party applications, those directions emanated from Washington, is that right?”
“I believe so,” replied the IRS employee.

So the administration’s story is falling apart by the day. On Saturday, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey noted that the IRS locked down computers that might have information about the scandal. Just those couple of rogue agents, right? Uh, not exactly, as Ed notes that no less than 88 IRS employees had their computers locked down:

The IRS says that the number simply reflects their desire to be responsive, which would be a first, but that doesn’t pass the laugh test. If the practice was contained to just “a few” people working on their own without orders, there is no way that you’d haveeighty-eight peopleconnected to it. Unless the IRS wants to argue that it’s supervision is so poor and ineffective that 88 employees can conspire to target people for their political beliefs and no one in authority would have the first clue about it, that’s an absurd posture to take. Don’t bet against that argument getting rolled out at some point, though.

The attempt to blame low-level employees is classic Obama, and the quick collapse of the cover story is just as classic. The information Issa is getting from employees testifying under oath is going to become public eventually. The media will focus on whether there is evidence of direct involvement by Obama, but such evidence is not needed for this to be a huge scandal. It shows that an agency with a frightening degree of power over the lives of individual Americans is completely out of control, and abusing its power to serve the political interests of its bosses.

Whether Obama is directing this or is merely failing to prevent it, he is culpable either way. Rather than serving the people, under Obama the government is serving itself at the expense of the people. He is responsible for that, by definition.