GAO burned alien arrest records

Now Congress Can't Track Criminals Clinton DOJ Made Citizens

The General Accounting Office (GAO) in early August burned its copies of the arrest records of 75,000 aliens who had been improperly naturalized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the 1996 Citizenship USA (CUSA) project, which aimed at creating a million new citizens in time for that year's presidential election.

The GAO, an investigative arm of Congress, had held the documents for two years on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee. It acted with the approval of Judiciary's Immigration and Claims Subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Tex.).

The Judiciary Committee originally obtained the files to scrutinize what the Department of Justice (DOJ) had done, or not done, to reverse the naturalization of criminals by CUSA (see coverbox story below).

A senior subcommittee aide, who requested anonymity, told HUMAN EvENTs the arrest records were worthless because they were unsorted and identified subjects by FBI case number rather than by name. The aide said the subcommittee previously had denied repeated requests from the GAO for permission to destroy the records, which were taking up space in GAO headquarters, because the Justice Department, at that time, was still conducting an internal review of the breakdown in the INS's system for checking the criminal background of citizenship applicants.

Crimes After Citizenship

In light of a Justice Department inspector general's report issued at the end of July, however, the aide said the subcommittee believed the INS's mismanagement of CUSA had been sufficiently documented and that Congress did not need to launch its own lengthy investigation.

The go-ahead for burning the records came shortly before former House impeachment counsel David P. Schippers released his book Sellout-The Inside Story of President Clinton's Impeachment. In the book Schippers asserts, "Had we been given sufficient time to develop evidence and witnesses, the CUSA matter might have been included in the abuse of power impeachment article [against President Clinton]."

Schippers also revealed that in the days before Independent Counsel Ken Starr delivered his report on President Clinton to Congress, he and his staff on the House Judiciary Committee were investigating the naturalization of criminals by CUSA. An audit of "just a few of the 20 or so boxes" holding the arrest records, Schippers said, turned up 100 applicants who had committed "serious" crimes before they were granted citizenship. A check with the FBI showed that about 20% of those had committed new crimes after being granted citizenship.

In Sellout, Schippers argues that the issue could have become an impeachment article because White House documents obtained by Congress, including e-mails to and from Vice President Gore, implied that one purpose of the naturalization push was to create new Democratic voters for the fall election.

GAO and Immigration subcommittee sources say that the burned documents contained no information that could indicate any administration wrongdoing, only evidence of the extent of INS's failure to prevent violent criminals from being rewarded with U.S. citizenship.

Jim Blume, assistant director of the GAO for audit operations, confirmed that the records had been destroyed. "Once the Subcommittee on Immigration said they no longer needed them, which was about a week ago, we destroyed them," Blume told HumAN EvENTs August 22. A senior aide on Smith's subcommittee said that, after the DOJ inspector general's report was released July 31, the subcommittee approved the burning.

The Justice Department Inspector General (IG) report was sharply critical of the INS, but exonerated the Clinton Administration of any political wrongdoing with CUSA. According to standard INS practices, all citizenship applicants must submit fingerprints, which are run through FBI databases for arrest and criminal records before naturalization can be approved. The INS is supposed to review these records and may deny citizenship to those who have committed serious crimes or lied about prior arrests. The IG report criticized the INS for its "lack of concern for the proper processing of applicant fingerprint checks."

This internal Justice Department report also concluded, despite the evidence Schippers cites in his book (see story below), that CUSA "was not designed to maximize the number of persons who would be eligible to vote in the November 1996 election." The report also "found no evidence" indicating that the CUSA focus on heavily Democratic cities was for political reasons-again a questionable conclusion given the White House memos quoted by Schippers.

In 1997 and 1998, the accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick issued reports on CUSA and INS's efforts to rehabilitate itself. Subcommittee officials are confident that the INS has reformed its procedures, and the agency has begun trying to denaturalize the most violent criminals it made citizens in 1996.