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

Sheldon Cohen, the Johnson appointee who took the commissioner's post in 1965, acknowledges the existence of an Ideological Organizations Project, but says he ended it. "I disbanded it as soon as I became commissioner," he tells Insight. "We went back to dealing with tax issues in the regular way." (Caplin shot back that Cohen never objected to the project when he was serving as chief counsel under Caplin in 1963 and 1964.) Cohen adds, "I had an agreement with the president from day one never to look at groups for political purposes."

Audits of conservative groups, such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Foundation for Economic Education, did continue through the mid-1960s under Johnson's and Cohen's tenure. But Andrew writes that those audits began in 1964, which was before Cohen became commissioner.

The nearly two-year audit of AEI was particularly suspect, Edwards notes, because its president, William Baroody, had taken leave to become chairman of the Goldwater campaign. "There was nothing AEI was doing in 1964 that it hadn't been doing in 1962 or '63," Edwards, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, tells Insight. He contends that, after the audits, "Baroody was afraid to do any type of legislative analysis." Of the ideological audits of the Kennedy and Johnson years, Edwards concludes, "It did have a chilling effect."

John Berlau is a writer for Insight magazine.