[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 155 (Friday, December 15, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2207-E2208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  REPORT ON THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 15, 2000

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, this fall, the House Government Reform 
Committee majority released a report on the Department of Justice that 
contains numerous inaccuracies and that unfairly smears several 
individuals. The minority filed views that discuss the unsubstantiated 
allegations in the majority's report.
  The majority's report prompted letters from one of the individuals 
named in the report, and from an attorney for another of the 
individuals named. Both letters take issue with the majority's 
assertions. In the interest of a complete record on this matter, I 
submit into the Record a December 11, 2000, letter from C. Boyden Gray, 
and an October 31, 2000, letter from Barry B. Langberg.

                                   Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering,

                                Washington, DC, December 11, 2000.
     Hon. Dan Burton, 
     Chairman, Committee on Government Reform, House of 
         Representatives, Rayburn House Office Building, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: We were dismayed to see your Committee 
     Report, ``Janet Reno's Stewardship of the Justice 
     Department,'' made final without providing us with the right 
     to review and comment as promised in response to my letter of 
     September 21, 2000. Accordingly, there is no point in 
     detailing

[[Page E2208]]

     here the errors in that Report that we would otherwise have 
     identified.
       We would nevertheless make the following observations which 
     we would hope you could make part of the record: (1) as the 
     Minority Report makes clear, Rebekah Poston never asked her 
     investigators to do anything illegal (``[I]n fact, contrary 
     to the Majority's allegations, no evidence received in the 
     Committee demonstrates that Ms. Poston instructed private 
     investigators to break the law''); (2) throughout the 
     hearing, the two investigators at issue, Philip Manuel and 
     Richard Lucas, each testified under oath that Ms. Poston had 
     never asked them to do anything which they thought was 
     illegal; (3) the Department of Justice ultimately granted her 
     request for information by informing her that here was no 
     information to provide in any event; and (4) it was entirely 
     improper to hold and structure a hearing for the evident and 
     sole purpose of provoking a claim of Fifth Amendment rights 
     in order to create the impression that Ms. Poston had done 
     something improper.
       Accordingly, we respectfully request that you include this 
     letter as part of the Congressional Record relating to the 
     above-described report.
           Sincerely,
                                                   C. Boyden Gray.

                                  ____
                                  

                                    Stroock & Stroock & Lavan,

                                Los Angeles, CA, October 31, 2000.
     Hon. Dan Burton,
     Committee on Government Reform, Rayburn House Office 
         Building, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Henry A. Waxman,
     Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Burton and Representative Waxman: I represent 
     Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist association with more than 10 
     million members. Soka Gakkai and I are both mentioned in 
     Chapter IV of the Committee's report on ``Janet Reno's 
     Stewardship of the Justice Department.'' Without waiving any 
     applicable privilege, I write to bring to the Committee's 
     attention serious flaws in Chapter IV, which contains 
     numerous demonstrable factual errors, and recklessly accuses 
     private individuals of criminal wrongdoing without any 
     pretense of due process or any substantive evidence. Chapter 
     IV overstates its conclusions and ignores errors and 
     omissions in the investigation.
       The report acknowledges that the issues discussed in 
     Chapter IV relate indirectly to litigation in Japan between 
     Nikken Abe and Nichiren Shoshu, on the one hand and my 
     client, Soka Gakkai, on the other. E.g., p. 161. It appears 
     from various sources, including the report's Exhibit 56, that 
     representatives of Nikken Abe and Nichiren Shoshu have had 
     contact with the Committee staff, in an attempt to have the 
     Committee issue a report that would be helpful to their 
     position in the Japanese litigation. The three-judge panel of 
     the Japanese trial court has already ruled unequivocally in 
     favor of Soka Gakkai in that litigation, finding that the 
     position of Nichiren Shoshu and the testimony of Nikken Abe 
     were not credible. The matter is now on appeal and the 
     efforts of Nichiren Shoshu's representatives to influence the 
     Committee are simply an attempt by the losing side to use the 
     Committee to influence the Japanese appellate process. The 
     Committee should guard against such abuse of its processes.
       More specific errors include:
       1. The report recklessly accuses several private 
     individuals of crimes, including several whom the staff never 
     interviewed. The report accuses several individuals of 
     committing serious crimes. It also accuses others of 
     misleading the Committee. Such charges, cloaked with the 
     authority of the Committee, are outrageous when made with so 
     little concern for fairness or due process. It is significant 
     that the report modifies many of its charges with qualifiers 
     like ``apparently'' or ``possibly'' (e.g., p. 162), but that 
     does not excuse such reckless charges. Simply put, there is 
     no evidence that Soka Gakkai, Jack Palladino or I committed 
     any crime or engaged in any improper activity whatsoever. As 
     the report acknowledges, the staff failed even to interview 
     Mr. Palladino or me about our role in this matter. Id. n. 
     801. These charges are particularly objectionable because 
     they are not even relevant to the report's central thesis, 
     that Ms. Poston and others working at her direction received 
     favorable treatment at the hands of the Justice Department. 
     E.g., pp. 159-60. Thus, these serious attacks are made almost 
     casually, without any claim or relevance to any public 
     purpose.
       In fact, even a preliminary investigation would have 
     revealed that the so-called ``reliable source,'' Richard 
     Lucas, never met with Mr. Palladino or discussed with him any 
     of the facts or issues concerning this matter. Further, an 
     investigation would also have shown that I had no personal 
     involvement with the activity criticized in the report.
       2. The report repeatedly relies on a witness who lacks 
     credibility. Many assertions in the report--including many of 
     the most misleading, erroneous or otherwise objectionable 
     assertions--are cited only to Mr. Lucas. E.g., notes 799, 
     806, 814, 822-24. Mr. Lucas is not a credible witness for 
     several reasons: much of his story to the Committee is 
     contradicted by his own sworn affidavit; he is apparently 
     engaged in a legal dispute with one of the Committee's other 
     witnesses and thus has an incentive to blame that witness for 
     his own conduct; and he committed a conscious and intentional 
     breach of his contractual and ethical obligations to the 
     Steel Hector & Davis law firm. After having been retained by 
     the law firm, he entered into a relationship with individuals 
     hostile to the firm and the interests of its clients, and 
     repeatedly breached his ethical and contractual obligations 
     by secretly and systematically providing the opposing side in 
     a litigation matter confidential information about the law 
     firm's and client's activities.
       A further sign that Mr. Lucas is simply not reliable is 
     that he authored several memoranda under a pseudonym, 
     ``Michael Wilson.'' The report never discloses that fact. The 
     report also frequently relies on these memoranda, without any 
     other corroborating evidence. E.g., notes 831, 832, 837. That 
     Mr. Lucas felt compelled to write memoranda under a 
     pseudonym, in a complete departure from ordinary business 
     practice, seriously undermines his credibility and shows that 
     Mr. Lucas understood there was something about his conduct 
     that needed to be hidden. Moreover, the memoranda themselves 
     demonstrate that Mr. Lucas was violating his contractual and 
     ethical duties to the Steel Hector & Davis law firm, and thus 
     are independently not worthy of belief.
       Significantly, the report itself accuses Mr. Lucas of 
     criminal misconduct. E.g., p. 168.
       3. The report contains sensational charges that it fails to 
     support. The report's headings repeatedly charge individuals 
     or organizations with illegal acts. E.g., p. 162 (``Soka 
     Gakkai Illegally Obtains Information on Nobuo Abe Through 
     Jack Palladino''); p. 163 (``Poston Requests Her Private 
     Investigators To Break The Law''). Those inflammatory 
     headings are not supported by the text. For example, the 
     passage about Mr. Palladino is modified by the word 
     ``apparently,'' and it is sourced only to Mr. Lucas, the 
     tainted witness; as the report concedes in the very next 
     footnote, it did not even bother to discuss this allegation 
     with Mr. Palladino. Mr. Palladino has publicly stated that he 
     had nothing to do with illegally obtaining any information 
     about Nobuo Abe and had no involvement with obtaining 
     information from any federal source whatsoever. Similarly, 
     Ms. Poston testified that she at no time asked her 
     investigators to break the law.
       4. The report lends unmerited credibility to mere 
     speculation. The report seeks to suggest that an employee of 
     the Bureau of Prisons ``planted'' a fabricated record in the 
     NCIC involving an arrest in Seattle in 1963. The report 
     recognizes this as ``speculation,'' and attributes it to some 
     unnamed ``individuals involved in the case,'' p. 162. There 
     is no evidence to support this speculative theory, and again 
     the staff failed to perform any of the investigative work--
     such as interviewing knowledgeable law enforcement officials 
     from the Seattle area--that would have helped clarify these 
     facts. The report's careless presentation of the speculation 
     may be injurious to the parties to the lawsuit in Japan--a 
     lawsuit that, once again, the report specifically 
     acknowledges, p. 161.
       I ask that the report be corrected in light of this 
     information, or, at a minimum, that this letter be made part 
     of any final report issued by the Committee.
           Yours very truly,
                                                Barry B. Langberg.

     

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