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

But Andrew said his research showed the list of liberal groups largely was a cover for strikes against Kennedy's political opponents on the right. He points to an internal IRS report that found "75 percent of the audits completed were of right-wing groups." Furthermore, Andrew argues that the groups were targeted because of their prominence rather than any alleged tax problems. Caplin had written in a memo that "we are not certain any of these organizations or their benefactors are failing to comply with the tax laws." Andrew noted that "both the Birch Society and Robert Welch Inc., moreover, had been examined in 1960 [before Kennedy came to office], but the IRS had been unable to uncover significant problems. They were included for 1961 [quoting the IRS] 'because of widespread interest in the activities of these organizations.'"

Some critics have noted that the auditing of left-wing groups among JFK's enemies served Kennedy's purposes as well. One of the few left-wing groups selected for audit was the Fair Play for Cuba Committee a pro-Castro organization for which Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was an organizer that had attacked JFK for being too hawkish on Cuba.

Andrew's book does not delve into the many stories of Kennedy opponents who were audited. Schuyler explained that because of privacy laws and general IRS barriers it is almost impossible for a researcher to access the personal audits of taxpayers. In his 1977 book, Lasky wrote that Nixon told him that both Nixon and presidential campaign manager Robert Finch were subjected to IRS audits in 1961, just after Nixon had lost the presidency to Kennedy.

And in his 1976 book, Conversations With Kennedy, the Washington Post's then-executive editor Ben Bradlee revealed that Kennedy had shared with him information from the tax returns of billionaires J. Paul Getty and H.L. Hunt and hinted that he had ordered the audit of a steel executive. Donald Alexander, the Nixon-appointed IRS commissioner credited with ending Nixon's politicization of the agency, notes that Bradlee and many other so-called civil libertarians have different standards for Nixon and Kennedy. "It was a terrible abuse of power when Nixon did it, and it was hilariously funny when Kennedy did it," Alexander remarks. "And Kennedy actually did it."

What Alexander means by this last remark is that although Nixon and his aides did pressure the IRS to look at enemies, little evidence of follow-through has surfaced, according to congressional investigators. Of his two predecessors that Nixon appointed, Alexander says, "I don't think they did, and I know I didn't [audit enemies]." Caplin, by contrast, "folded," Alexander says. Whether the Johnson administration also misused the IRS still is unanswered. "Unlike the Kennedy period, no evidence has yet emerged that directly links President Johnson" to political audits. But in Goldwater, his biography of 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, historian Lee Edwards notes a third-party statement from the late Hoover Institution director Glenn Campbell that Johnson had called an unnamed businessman and threatened an IRS audit if the businessman didn't endorse him in the 1964 race.