JFK Used Audits to Silence His Critics; A new book by a distinguished historian and political liberal details how John F. Kennedy utilized the IRS as a tool to discredit conservatives and settle political scores

Insight on the News, Sept 16, 2003

Byline: John Berlau, INSIGHT

It didn't seem to bother admirers of John F. Kennedy when a new book reported in May that he had an affair with a White House intern only just out of prep school. Robert Dallek, the sympathetic biographer who revealed this detail in his An Unfinished Life, even was blessed with an invitation to speak at the Kennedy Presidential Library hard by Boston harbor. For many liberals, it seemed a way to put the Clinton affairs in perspective.

But there is another revelation in a new book that hasn't been given so much attention by the press and other Kennedy enthusiasts. This is the case even though the book was offered by a respected publisher and written by a distinguished historian and political liberal. Citing a wealth of freshly uncovered documents, the new book charges that the Kennedy administration used the IRS to go after its perceived enemies on a scale perhaps even beyond that charged against Richard M. Nixon.

In Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon, author John A. Andrew III presents new evidence for what he calls "the utilization of the Internal Revenue Service in what became a covert effort to discredit the right and undercut its sources of support" as part of "a broad assault on the right wing by the Kennedy administration."

Although the charge that the Kennedy administration used the IRS to harass its critics has turned up before in books such as Victor Lasky's It Didn't Start With Watergate, Andrew, by years of research including visits to presidential libraries and Freedom of Information Act requests uncovered a paper trail from the IRS to the administration,. Also adding credibility to his findings is that Andrew, a professor of history at Pennsylvania's Franklin & Marshall College who died in November 2000, was a liberal Democrat. According to his friend and colleague David Schuyler, a professor of American studies at Franklin & Marshall who edited the book, Andrew was for years chairman of the Lancaster City Democratic Committee. Noting that Andrew also had impressed conservatives with his book The Other Side of the Sixties, about the rise of conservative groups such as Young Americans for Freedom, Schuyler remarks, "A lot of people who didn't know John as a liberal Democrat thought he was a conservative because his book was so judicious."

And it was through researching that book in the mid-1990s that Andrew first heard about conservative groups being harassed by the IRS under Kennedy and, to some extent, Lyndon B. Johnson. The new book, published by Ivan R. Dee, the prestigious Chicago publisher of serious nonfiction, draws on old and new material to show the lengths Kennedy went to crush his opponents. (Neither the Kennedy nor Johnson presidential libraries returned phone calls for comment on this controversial issue.)

"He was really a very charged political animal, and he didn't brook opposition, and he'd use whatever tools he could to go after them," said Schuyler, who also describes himself as a liberal Democrat. "I think [Kennedy and Nixon] were probably much more alike in terms of their personalities than most people realized. They were ruthless achievers trying to get ahead at whatever the cost."

And Andrew found that the IRS was one of Kennedy's first priorities. "During the Kennedy administration ... officials screened all key IRS appointees for political loyalty," Andrew wrote. "Being a Democrat was not always sufficient; appointees also had to be loyal to the administration." Within the first week of his presidency, Kennedy appointed a new IRS commissioner: Mortimer Caplin, who had been a professor at the University of Virginia and who taught JFK's brothers Ted and Robert, the latter by then attorney general.

The so-called "radical right" was a bete noire to the Kennedys. Likely at the administration's request, liberal activist Joseph Rauh of Americans for Democratic Action and radical unionist brothers Victor and Walter Reuther wrote what became know as the "Reuther memorandum," which was delivered to Robert Kennedy in December 1961. A 24-page guide to "possible administration policies and programs to combat the radical right," the memo said the administration shouldn't hesitate to sic the IRS on tax-exempt, right-wing organizations. "Prompt revocation in a few cases might scare off a substantial part of the big money now flowing into these tax-exempt organizations."

How much the Reuther memorandum influenced the IRS' actions has been the subject of debate for the last 40 years. Robert Kennedy at one point denied he even saw it. But Andrew documents that there was frequent communication between IRS and administration officials about the targeting of conservative groups.

In late 1961, JFK gave a series of speeches on the "discordant voices of extremism." When asked at a press conference about contributions to "right-wing extremist" groups, he said that while he thought the federal government shouldn't interfere with free speech, it should be concerned about "a diversion of funds which might be taxable to for nontaxable purposes." He then added in what appeared to be taken as a directive from the president, "I am sure the Internal Revenue System examines that." In his 1989 IRS history, A Law Unto Itself, journalist David Burnham reports that "within a day or two" of that press conference, "the agency launched a test audit of 22 'extremist organizations.'" Before this, Burnham and Andrew report, the IRS rarely had audited ideological groups because it was time-consuming and didn't produce much revenue.