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Chemical Weapons Still in Syria

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‘The road to Damascus is a road to peace.” Those were damning words. When Nancy Pelosi embraced Bashar al-Assad in April 2007, she wasn’t simply challenging the commander-in-chief during a war; she was propagandizing for a dictator who was killing Americans.

Years later, Syria is a failed nation with millions that have fled their home country and chemical weapons by the order of Bashir al Assad kills thousands of those remaining in the country.

Barack Obama and John Kerry made impassioned speeches about taking on Syria after the use of chemical weapons crossed the ‘red-line’ imposed by the president.

In typical style, the red-line threat fell flat and was deferred to Russia to handle. Announcements were made that the process was complete and Assad complied to the disposals, well….not so much.

Mission to Purge Syria of Chemical Weapons Comes Up Short

WSJ: Key excerpts
International inspectors rid nation of many arms, but Assad didn’t give up everything

In May of last year, a small team of international weapons inspectors gained entry to one of Syria’s most closely guarded laboratories. Western nations had long suspected that the Damascus facility was being used to develop chemical weapons.

Inside, Syrian scientists showed them rooms with test tubes, Bunsen burners and desktop computers, according to inspectors. The Syrians gave a PowerPoint presentation detailing the medical and agricultural research they said went on there. A Syrian general insisted that the Assad regime had nothing to hide.

As the international inspectors suspected back then, it was a ruse, part of a chain of misrepresentations by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to hide the extent of its chemical-weapons work. One year after the West celebrated the removal of Syria’s arsenal as a foreign-policy success, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the regime didn’t give up all of the chemical weapons it was supposed to.

An examination of last year’s international effort to rid Syria of chemical weapons, based on interviews with many of the inspectors and U.S. and European officials who were involved, shows the extent to which the Syrian regime controlled where inspectors went, what they saw and, in turn, what they accomplished. That happened in large part because of the ground rules under which the inspectors were allowed into the country, according to the inspectors and officials.

The West was unable, for example, to prevent Mr. Assad from continuing to operate weapons-research facilities, including the one in Damascus visited by inspectors, making it easier for the regime to develop a new type of chemical munition using chlorine. And the regime never had to account for the types of short-range rockets that United Nations investigators believe were used in an Aug. 21, 2013, sarin gas attack that killed some 1,400 people, these officials say.

Obama administration officials have voiced alarm this year about reports that Mr. Assad is using the chlorine weapons on his own people. And U.S. intelligence now suggests he hid caches of even deadlier nerve agents, and that he may be prepared to use them if government strongholds are threatened by Islamist fighters, according to officials familiar with the intelligence. If the regime collapses outright, such chemical-weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic State, or another terror group.

“Nobody should be surprised that the regime is cheating,” says Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria under President Barack Obama. He says more intrusive inspections are needed.

The White House and State Department say last year’s mission was a success even if the regime hid some deadly chemicals. Western nations removed 1,300 metric tons of weapons-grade chemicals, including ingredients for nerve agents sarin and VX, and destroyed production and mixing equipment and munitions. U.S. officials say the security situation would be far more dangerous today if those chemicals hadn’t been removed, especially given recent battlefield gains by Islamists. Demanding greater access and fuller disclosures by the regime, they say, might have meant getting no cooperation at all, jeopardizing the entire removal effort.

“I take no satisfaction from the fact that the chlorine bombs only kill a handful at a time instead of thousands at a time,” says Thomas Countryman, the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation. “But it is important to keep a perspective that the most dangerous of these inhumane weapons are no longer in the hands of this dictator.”

The following account of the inspectors’ efforts on the ground is based on interviews with people who were involved. Syrian officials in New York and Damascus didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.

Inspectors from The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, together with U.N. personnel, arrived in Damascus in October 2013 to an especially difficult work environment. They were in a war zone, and rebel forces viewed them with hostility because the inspection process forestalled U.S. airstrikes, which the rebels were counting on to weaken the Assad regime.

Suspected gaps
The new team flew into Damascus once a month to meet with Gen. Sharif and Syria’s leading scientists. As inspectors pressed the Syrians about suspected gaps in their initial weapons declaration, new details about the program began to emerge.
U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies had long suspected that there were research facilities in Damascus run by the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, or SSRC. In a bombing run in early 2013, Israeli warplanes had struck a convoy of trucks next to one of them. Israel believed the trucks were carrying weapons for Hezbollah.


At first, the Syrians told the new team they had no research facilities at all because they had developed their weapons in the field using what they described as “pop-up” labs. The inspectors had seen intelligence that suggested otherwise.
During an informal dinner in April 2014, inspectors half-jokingly suggested that the Syrians should allow them to visit an SSRC facility.
“If you are so interested, why don’t you just come along?” a Syrian official responded, according to Mr. Smith.

One Saturday the following month, the inspectors’ motorcade entered one of the SSRC compounds in Damascus. The facility’s director told the inspectors that no chemical weapons had been developed there. The facility had done research on detecting chemical agents and on treating people exposed to toxins, he said.
Gen. Sharif attended the presentation, which included an Arabic-language PowerPoint. The slides explained the SSRC’s work in areas including oncology and pesticides. The skeptical inspectors urged the Syrians to come clean about all their research and development facilities.
Last October, the Syrian regime added several research facilities to its official declaration of chemical-weapons sites, including the one in Damascus visited by inspectors that May. That gave inspectors the right to visit them for examinations. Western officials say samples taken by inspectors at the sites found traces of sarin and VX, which they say confirms that they had been part of the chemical-weapons program.


Earlier this year, American intelligence agencies tracked the regime’s increasing use of chlorine-filled bombs. The weapons-removal deal didn’t curtail the work of Syria’s weapons scientists, allowing the regime to develop more effective chlorine bombs, say U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence. The regime denies using chlorine.
The CIA had been confident that Mr. Assad destroyed all of the chemical weapons it thought he possessed when the weapons-removal deal was struck. In recent weeks, the CIA concluded that the intelligence picture had changed and that there was a growing body of evidence Mr. Assad kept caches of banned chemicals, according to U.S. officials.
Inspectors and U.S. officials say recent battlefield gains by Islamic State militants and rival al Qaeda-linked fighters have made it even more urgent to determine what Syria held back from last year’s mass disposal, and where it might be hidden. A new intelligence assessment says Mr. Assad may be poised to use his secret chemical reserves to defend regime strongholds. Another danger is that he could lose control of the chemicals, or give them to Hezbollah.
The team that visited the SSRC facility in Damascus recently asked the regime for information about unaccounted for munitions. Officials say there has been no response from Damascus.
“Accountability?” asks Mr. Cairns, the inspector. “At this point in time, it hasn’t happened.” Full story is here.

Hillary’s Team Denies Classified Emails

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As the probe continues on Hillary Clinton’s email history and her private server, one must question how a Secretary of State in four years never electronically interacted in classified communications.

If this is accurate when it comes to her private email server, then where did classified communications occur?

Hillary was a lawyer and so is Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and he too used a private email for official business and did the former Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, who also created an alias.

Clearly there is a real pattern in the Obama administration where abuse and waivers are the culture of corruption and obstruction of procedures and law. Imagine how many others use non official communications systems.

Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account

NYT’s

WASHINGTON — Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.

The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton’s private account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” The memo was written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.

It is not clear if any of the information in the emails was marked as classified by the State Department when Mrs. Clinton sent or received them.

But since her use of a private email account for official State Department business was revealed in March, she has repeatedly said that she had no classified information on the account.

The Justice Department has not decided if it will open an investigation, senior officials said. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign declined to comment.

At issue are thousands of pages of State Department emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account. Mrs. Clinton has said she used the account because it was more convenient, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests.

She faced sharp criticism after her use of the account became public, and subsequently said she would ask the State Department to release her emails.

The department is now reviewing some 55,000 pages of emails. A first batch of 3,000 pages was made public on June 30.

In the course of the email review, State Department officials determined that some information in the messages should be retroactively classified. In the 3,000 pages that were released, for example, portions of two dozen emails were redacted because they were upgraded to “classified status.” But none of those were marked as classified at the time Mrs. Clinton handled them.

In a second memo to Mr. Kennedy, sent on July 17, the inspectors general said that at least one email made public by the State Department contained classified information. The inspectors general did not identify the email or reveal its substance.

The memos were provided to The New York Times by a senior government official.

The inspectors general also criticized the State Department for its handling of sensitive information, particularly its reliance on retired senior Foreign Service officers to decide if information should be classified, and for not consulting with the intelligence agencies about its determinations.

In March, Mrs. Clinton insisted that she was careful in her handling of information on her private account. “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email,” she said. “There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”

In May, the F.B.I. asked the State Department to classify a section of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that related to suspects who may have been arrested in connection with the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The information was not classified at the time Mrs. Clinton received it.

The revelations about how Mrs. Clinton handled her email have been an embarrassment for the State Department, which has been repeatedly criticized over its handling of documents related to Mrs. Clinton and her advisers.

On Monday, a federal judge sharply questioned State Department lawyers at a hearing in Washington about why they had not responded to Freedom of Information Act requests from The Associated Press, some of which were four years old.

“I want to find out what’s been going on over there — I should say, what’s not been going on over there,” said Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court, according to a transcript obtained by Politico. The judge said that “for reasons known only to itself,” the State Department “has been, to say the least, recalcitrant in responding.”

Two days later, lawmakers on the Republican-led House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks said they planned to summon Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff to Capitol Hill to answer questions about why the department has not produced documents that the panel subpoenaed. That hearing is set for next Wednesday.

“The State Department has used every excuse to avoid complying with fundamental requests for documents,” said the chairman of the House committee, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina.

Mr. Gowdy said that while the committee has used an array of measures to try to get the State Department to hand over documents, the results have been the same. “Our committee is not in possession of all documents needed to do the work assigned to us,” he said.

The State Department has sought to delay the hearing, citing continuing efforts to brief members of Congress on the details of the nuclear accord with Iran. It is not clear why the State Department has struggled with the classification issues and document production. Republicans have said the department is trying to use those processes to protect Mrs. Clinton.

State Department officials say they simply do not have the resources or infrastructure to properly comply with all the requests. Since March, requests for documents have significantly increased.

Some State Department officials said they believe that many senior officials did not initially take the House committee seriously, which slowed document production and created an appearance of stonewalling.

State Department officials also said that Mr. Kerry is concerned about the toll the criticism has had on the department and has urged his deputies to comply with the requests quickly.

Wheels up on the Crowded Obama Plane to Kenya

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On Africa trip, Air Force One will be crowded for once

WaPo:

Twenty House and Senate members will accompany President Obama on this week’s trip to Africa, according to White House officials, the latest sign of the White House’s effort to build a closer rapport with Congress.

The group — which includes 19 Democrats and one Republican, Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) — will be evenly divided between the outbound and return flight. Flake and two of his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Affairs subcommittee on African affairs, Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), will join seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday night’s flight to Nairobi. The Democratic House members include Karen Bass (Calif.), G.K. Butterfield (N.C.), Eddie Bernice Johnson (Tex.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Charles B. Rangel (N.Y.) and Terri Sewell (Ala.)

[READ: Why Sen. Jeff Flake is the one Republican journeying to Africa with Obama]

On the return flight from Ethiopia, the president will host 10 CBC members: Democratic Reps. Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.), John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), Marcia Fudge (Ohio), Al Green (Tex.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Tex.), Robin Kelly (Ill.), Gwen Moore (Wis.), Donald Payne (N.J.), Cedric Richmond (La.) and Bennie Thompson (Miss.).

Asked Wednesday about why the president was bringing along such a large congressional contingent to Kenya and Ethiopia, his national security adviser Susan Rice told reporters, “Well, obviously we want to strengthen and sustain what I’ve referred to repeatedly as a strong bipartisan consensus around support for Africa, Africa’s development, peace and security there.”

Rice added that last month the administration was focused on renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a trade bill that received overwhelming support in the House and Senate. “But obviously we have many, many issues that are important that we need Congress’s support on — legislation that will support and codify some of the most significant initiatives, including in the health and agriculture and power sectors, as well as we have a nominee on the Hill that very much needs to be confirmed for USAID administrator,” she said.

***     

He will become the first sitting president to be hosted by Kenya or Ethiopia, his second stop on a four-day trip beginning on Friday.

Though the visit aims to boost US security and economic ties, many Kenyans view his arrival as a native son’s homecoming.

Mr Obama will spend private time with family members, say White House officials.

But his itinerary does not include travel to the village of Kogelo where his father is buried, despite a local witchdoctor’s predictions otherwise.

Mr Obama last visited Kenya – an important US ally against Somali Islamist group al Shabaab – while serving as a US senator in 2006.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, he will preside over the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and pay tribute to the victims and survivors of the 1998 US embassy bombing.

He will also dine with President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Those charges were dropped in March, but the case prevented Mr Obama from going to Kenya.

Mr Obama will also give a speech to the Kenyan people in Nairobi.

Valerie Jarrett, an Obama aide, said: “Just as anybody is curious about their heritage, visiting Kenya provides him an opportunity to make that personal connection.”

The Kenyan authorities have filled potholes, repaired pavements and planted greenery along the route where the presidential motorcade will pass.

Street vendors’ stalls are creaking with Obama memorabilia such as T-shirts, portraits and DVDs.

In the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa he will become the first US president to address the African Union.

Activists have raised concerns in a letter to Mr Obama about his trip to East Africa because of alleged human rights violations.

US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the US President wouldn’t hesitate to raise human rights concerns during the trip.

Mr Obama has chided African countries over gay rights, but Mr Kenyatta says it is a “non-issue” that won’t be on the agenda for the visit.

Mr Obama’s critics say he has done less for Africa than his predecessor, George W Bush, whose Aids relief programme made him a hero on the continent.

But Mr Obama’s advisers point to his own initiatives on electricity, agriculture and trade.

The US President wrote about his Kenyan roots in his best-selling 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father.

Debunked “birther” conspiracy theories once held he was actually born there, and ineligible to be US President.

Mr Obama will spend private time with family members, say White House officials, per Sky News

 

But his itinerary does not include travel to the village of Kogelo where his father is buried, despite a local witchdoctor’s predictions otherwise.

Mr Obama last visited Kenya – an important US ally against Somali Islamist group al Shabaab – while serving as a US senator in 2006.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, he will preside over the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and pay tribute to the victims and survivors of the 1998 US embassy bombing.

He will also dine with President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Those charges were dropped in March, but the case prevented Mr Obama from going to Kenya.

Mr Obama will also give a speech to the Kenyan people in Nairobi.

 

What the Hell is the Army Thinking? Bergdahl Picked up at Pot Farm

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OMG, this man, a deserter got a pass from the Army to go to Mendocino County, California and well there was a raid. Then the Army, yes the Army sent a plane to go get him. WHAT???

US Army confirms to @FoxNews that Bowe Bergdahl was up in Mendocino County at Pot Farm, released back to his command at Fort Sam Houston. 8:10 PM, EST July 23, 2015

Fresh details here.

From NBC, Bay Area:

Bowe Bergdahl — the once-missing U.S. soldier in Afghanistan who was accused of desertion — was spotted hanging out at a Mendocino County marijuana farm during a raid.
According to the The Anderson Valley Advertiser, Bergdahl was an “unexpected visitor” in Mendocino County, where he was visiting old friends when the “local dope team arrived on a marijuana raid.”
Bergdahl arrived Friday at the farm, which is located in a remote part of Redwood Valley.
Bergdahl, who is awaiting military court martial, had an Army pass allowing him to be in Mendocino County, the Advertiser reported, adding he was “not connected to the dope grow in any way.”
The Mendocino Sheriff Department confirmed the report to NBC Bay Area, stressing Bergdahl was not arrested during the raid.
However, the Advertiser reported that military officials were notified and, after “calls all the way up to the Pentagon,” Bergdahl was escorted by military personnel sent to Ukiah. The sheriff told the Advertiser that Bergdahl was “above politeness” and even produced his military ID when people from the house he was visiting were being arrested.
The Sheriff’s Department was able to confirm that Bergdahl was on authorized leave to visit his friends and was not involved with the production of marijuana.
At the request of the Pentagon, Bergdahl was transported to Santa Rosa by the sheriff’s department. An Army major was expected to take him to his duty station near Washington.

As a side note, when Bergdahl as picked up from the Haqqani network, he was stoned then as well.

IRS Against You, They Redact, Encrypt, Lose or Destroy

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It is broken, you know that most transparent administration in history. Barack Obama, the ‘not a smidgeon of corruption’ line he used, now blames the Republicans for the corruption within the IRS when he appeared on the Jon Stewart show.

Let us take a look at one incident when the IRS responded to a Freedom of Information Act request.

IRS Encrypts An Entire CD Of Redacted Documents In Response To FOIA Request

from the how-nice-of-them dept

Muckrock has a story of Alex Richardson, seeking information on the IRS’s Whistleblower Office, which has been receiving some scrutiny lately. Richardson filed a bunch of FOIA requests and discovered that the IRS apparently would like to make his life as difficult as possible. First he got an infamous GLOMAR “neither confirm nor deny” response — which was supposed to be limited to national security issues. However, with at least one request, a package with a CD just arrived… and Richardson was dismayed to find the contents of the CD encrypted.
That seems a bit strange for a response to a FOIA request, since whatever is being delivered is supposed to be public, but whatever. The letter accompanying the CD explains, for reasons unknown, that while the IRS was only returning 6 of the 23 pages that had been located, it was doing so with encryption, and it would send the key separately.
Again, this seems like weird operational security for public documents. Now, also, in the response letter, it noted that the reason only 6 pages are included is because the rest were withheld under FOIA exemptions:
So you had to imagine that in those 6 pages, there should at least be some relevant information. Nope. It appears that the IRS went through all that to give a final middle finger to Richardson, because when he finally decrypted the documents… they’re all redacted too. Six pages, entirely blacked out. Which makes you wonder why the other 17 were “withheld” in the first place. What difference could it have made? Original Document (PDF) »

 
Judicial Watch: New Documents Show IRS Used Donor Lists to Target Audits

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits.  The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS.  The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220)).

A letter dated September 28, 2010, then-Democrat Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) informs then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman: “   I request that you and your agency survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations …”  In reply, in a letter dated February 17, 2011, Shulman writes: “In the work plan of the Exempt Organizations Division, we announced that beginning in FY2011, we are increasing our focus on section 501(c)(4), (5) and (6) organizations.”

In 2010, after receiving Baucus’s letter, the IRS considered the issue of auditing donors to 501(c)(4) organizations, alleging that a 35 percent gift tax would be due on donations in excess of $13,000.  The documents show that the IRS wanted to cross-check donor lists from 501(c)(4) organizations against gift tax filings and commence audits against taxpayers based on this information.

A gift tax on contributions to 501(c)(4)’s was considered by most to be a dead letter since the IRS had never enforced the rule after the Supreme Court ruled that such taxes violated the First Amendment.  The documents show that the IRS had not enforced the gift tax since 1982.

But then, in February 2011, at least five donors of an unnamed organization were audited.

The documents show that Crossroads GPS, associated with Republican Karl Rove, was specifically referenced by IRS officials in the context of applying the gift tax.  Seemingly in response to the Crossroads focus, on April 20, IRS attorney Lorraine Gardner emails a 501(c)(4) donor list to former Branch Chief in the IRS’ Office of the Chief Counsel James Hogan. Later, this information is apparently shared with IRS Estate Gift and Policy Manager Lisa Piehl while Gardner seeks “information about any of the donors.”

Emails to and from Lorraine Gardner also suggested bias against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  An IRS official (whose name is redacted) emails Gardner on May 13, 2011, a blog post responding to the IRS targeting of political and other activities of 501(c)(4), (5) and (6) organizations:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a 501(c)(6) organization and may find itself under high scrutiny.  One can only hope.

The subject line of the email highlights this anti-Chamber of Commerce comment:  “we are making headlines notice the end regarding 501(c)(6) applicability enjoy.”  This critical comment is forwarded to other IRS officials and shows up attached to another Gardner IRS email chain with the subject line “re: 501(c)(4)” that discusses a pending decision about a tax-exempt entity.

In early May, once the media began reporting on the IRS audits of donors, IRS officials reacted quickly.  One official acknowledges the issue “is a biggy” when a reporter from The New York Times contacts the IRS on May 9.

On May 13, 2011, former IRS Director of Legislative Affairs Floyd Williams discusses compliance with “interest” from Capitol Hill: “Not surprisingly, interest on the hill is picking up on this issue … with Majority Leader Reid’s office, has suggested the possibility of a briefing for the Senate Finance Committee staff on general issues related to section 501(c)(4) organizations I think we should do it as interest is likely to grow as we get closer to elections.”

Later that day, then-Director of the Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner weighs in with an email that confirms that she supported the gift tax audits.  Lerner acknowledges that “the courts have said specifically that contributions to 527 political organizations are not subject to the gift tax–nothing that I’m aware of that about contributions to organizations that are not political organizations.” Section 501(c)(4) organizations are not “political organizations.”  [Emphasis in original]

Lerner’s involvement and support for the new gift tax contradicts the IRS statement to the media at the time that audits were not part of a “broader effort looking at donations 501(c)(4)’s.”  In July 2011, the IRS retreated and soon-to-be Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller directed that “examination resources should not be expended on this issue” and that all audits of taxpayers “relating to the application of gift taxes” to 501(c)(4) organizations “should be closed.”

“These documents that we had to force out of the IRS prove that the agency used donor lists to audit supporters of organizations engaged in First Amendment-protected lawful political speech,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “And the snarky comments about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the obsession with Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS show that the IRS was targeting critics of the Obama administration.  President Obama may want to continue to lie about his IRS scandal.  These documents tell the truth – his IRS hated conservatives and was willing to illegally tax and audit citizens to shut down opposition to Barack Obama’s policies and reelection.”

Judicial Watch had filed a separate lawsuit for records about targeting of individuals for audit in November 2013.  In that litigation, the IRS had refused to search any email systems, including Lerner’s records. A federal court ruled the IRS’ search was sufficient and dismissed the lawsuit earlier this month.

In September 2014, another Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit forced the release of documents detailing that the IRS sought, obtained and maintained the names of donors to Tea Party and other conservative groups. IRS officials acknowledged in these documents that “such information was not needed.” The documents also show that the donor names were being used for a “secret research project.”

The House Ways and Means Committee announced at a May 7, 2014, hearing that, after scores of conservative groups provided donor information “to the IRS, nearly one in ten donors were subject to audit.”  In 2011, as many as five donors to the conservative 501(c)(4) organization Freedom’s Watch were audited, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bradley Blakeman, Freedom’s Watch’s former president, also alleges he was “personally targeted” by the IRS.

In February 2014, then-Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) detailed improper IRS targeting of existing conservative groups:

Additionally, we now know that the IRS targeted not only right-leaning applicants, but also right-leaning groups that were already operating as 501(c)(4)s.  At Washington, DC’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)(4)s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites and any other publicly available information.  Of these groups, 83 percent were right-leaning.  And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100 percent were right-leaning.