High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton by Ann Coulter

following weekend to see if anything was amiss. Even this eleventh-hour review was not an official audit; a single auditor simply performed an informal review of the Travel Office’s books. He discovered what anyone who had worked with Dale would have known: Dale’s records on about $7 million worth of yearly travel by the press were not in tip-top shape. About $18,000 of the press’s money was unaccounted for, and various other payments were undocumented.
    Dale was not given a chance to respond to the charges.
    On the basis of this slipshod, post hoc rationalization for an FBI investigation that had already been authorized at the “highest levels” of the White House, the White House forced the FBI to investigate. This allowed the White House to justify the firings later as the result of a criminal probe, which resulted from the Peat Marwick review. In fact, however, the events went in precisely the opposite direction: the decision to fire the Travel Office staff was followed by the White House’s demand for a criminal probe by the FBI, which was followed by an informal review of the Travel Office books by Peat Marwick.
    Three days after the firings, the White House released a statement from the FBI stating that Peat Marwick had produced “sufficient information for the FBI to determine that additional criminal investigation is warranted.” Publicizing an FBI investigation this way contravened FBI standing policy of never confirming or denying pending investigations. This much the White House later admitted, saying it was a mistake. 34
    But it was too late for the Travel Office staff: they were already tarred with the publicity of a criminal investigation. As Mrs. Clinton would say of charges against her beleaguered husband, a lie makes it halfway’ round the world before the truth can get its boots on.
    Dale was ultimately brought up on embezzlement charges for depositing $68,000 of the media’s money in his personal account. He denied, and the government was unable to prove, that he had ever used the floating account for his personal use. The prosecution probed the Dale family’s finances in minute detail, but on November 16, 1995—two and a half years after his firing—Billy Dale was acquitted of all criminal charges.

THE TAX MAN COMETH
     
    When Kennedy threatened to call in the IRS if the FBI didn’t gin up an investigation, he wasn’t kidding.
    Precisely eight days after Kennedy issued this threat, IRS officers showed up unannounced at the offices of UltrAir and began an unorthodox audit. If there had been any “kickbacks,” as Thomason had alleged, UltrAir would have been the airline paying them. The auditors asked to see UltrAir’s books concerning flights arranged through the White House Travel Office.
    The UltrAir audit turned out to be highly unusual in many respects. Typically, an IRS audit is performed with respect to a company’s tax returns. UltrAir was formed in 1992; it had not yet had occasion to file a single tax return. 35
    Two years later the IRS concluded that there were no problems with UltrAir.
    The IRS did not stop at auditing UltrAir. Both the former head of UltrAir, Charles Caudle, and Billy Dale himself were personally audited. The IRS must have been sorry Caudle turned up on the White House enemies list: it turned out the IRS owed Caudle nearly $5,000. 36
    In June Kennedy told two other members of the White House Counsel’s Office that he had spoken to the commissioner of the IRS, Margaret Milner Richardson, about Billy Dale and reported that she was “on top of it” and that IRS agents were “aware.” 37 Commissioner Richardson had been a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s since their days at Yale Law School; she had also been a Clinton campaign contributor and an aide on the Clinton transition team.
    Eventually, Billy Dale was personally audited by the IRS. In case this needs to be stated: White House lawyers are not supposed to have advance warning of even random IRS