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

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 16, 2003

The groups the IRS audited ranged from strongly anticommunist organizations such as the John Birch Society to traditional conservative organizations such as the National Education Program of Harding College. Coincidentally or not, the Reuther memorandum had singled out many of these groups. Bits and pieces of this targeting of conservatives have surfaced over the years, but Andrew shows it was an operation similar in scale to Nixon's infamous Special Services Staff. Called the "Ideological Organizations Project," the covert Kennedy scheme lasted through the Johnson years into the mid-1960s. In late 1963, just before Kennedy was assassinated, the IRS was prepared to audit 10,000 organizations.

And the White House was kept apprised. In late 1961, Andrew wrote, Robert Kennedy's assistant John Seigenthaler called Caplin's assistant Mitchell Rogovin "to inquire about the tax-exempt status of four or five right-wing organizations." In May 1962, according to Andrew, "Caplin sent a list of organizations that the agency was auditing to Attorney General Robert Kennedy." Caplin sent a confidential progress report to White House aide Myer Feldman in July 1963 and also went to the White House to review the audit program later that month. "Although investigators later found no evidence linking either the White House or the attorney general to requests that specific organizations be audited, they did reveal that at least one member of the White House staff had reviewed the proposed targets ... and recommended the deletion of two organizations" from the "enemies list," wrote Andrew. Also in July 1963, Caplin received a phone call from President Kennedy himself. A brief note scribbled on the report Caplin sent Feldman read: "President Kennedy called Commissioner re attached. Wants the IRS to go ahead with aggressive program on both sides of center."

Defenders point to the "both-sides-of-center" comment as indicating that the audits were fair. Reached by telephone for an interview, Caplin, who cofounded the Washington law firm Caplin & Drysdale upon leaving the IRS, admitted there was some direction from the administration to look at right-wing groups. But he said he insisted the IRS draw up a list of liberal groups to make sure there was balance. "We did get a communication from someone in the White House pointing out that a lot of these so-called right-wing organizations were abusing their tax exemption," Caplin recalls to Insight. "I knew that if we at the IRS were looking into these so-called abuses and only focusing on the so-called right wing, that we would not be doing our job. So we formed a task force, and we wanted to make it a balanced examination program, both right and left."

Caplin says his IRS was "whistle-clean" in these matters and that Kennedy was "hands-off." He notes that JFK supported his decision not to fire Massachusetts IRS employees who were accused of harassing Democrats. "I really think it was a very clean operation, which became much different during the Nixon years."