IRS Scandal - As know nothings continue to stonewall until the cows come home , might those low levels employees from Cincinnati blow the whole scandal wide open ?

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/03/treasury-ig-no-irs-employee-interviewed-by-us-would-acknowledge-who-ordered-the-targeting-of-conservatives/

Treasury IG: No IRS employee interviewed by us would acknowledge who ordered the targeting of conservatives

POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON JUNE 3, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

  

Am I understanding this correctly? He’s not saying they didn’t know who gave the order but rather that, quite possibly, some of them did know — and simply refused to say? Here’s the direct quote via Andrew Stiles:

“We did pose that question, and no one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction.”

That “if anyone” is a cute little hedge but obviously someone gave the order. Extra scrutiny for conservative groups isn’t something that began organically among 88 different employees. We already know from a New York Times story a few weeks ago that some “manager” up the chain told them to get cracking on this. Oddly, though, the Times couldn’t nail down which manager it was. Steve Miller, in his testimony before Issa’s committee, claimed that he’d been told once before who was responsible but … had since forgot. And now we find that Treasury’s own inspector general, whose report noted that the targeting began when a specialist in the Determinations Unit “was asked” to take a closer look at conservative groups, couldn’t figure out who did the asking. Which raises two possibilities. One: Collective amnesia. Two: A whole lot of employees are intimidated by the thought of getting on the wrong side of whoever it is who ordered this, a realization that’s doubly interesting given the transcript Issa released suggesting interest among IRS officials in Washington in some of these cases at the time.

Speaking of which, another tidbit from the Corner:

Congressional investigators are probing the highest echelons of the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C., in connection with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, according to documents obtained by National Review Online. Those documents, provided by an IRS employee who asked to remain anonymous, indicates that those being asked to provide computer data to investigators include the agency’s chief counsel, William J. Wilkins, and both of his deputies. The chief counsel is one of just two political appointments at the IRS made by the president.

Investigators asked the IRS to gather all data from the computers of several employees throughout the agency, and their request, according to the source, was broadened late last week to include over a dozen employees in the chief counsel’s office. They include chief counsel William Wilkins as well as his deputy chief counsel for operations, Christopher Sterner and his deputy chief counsel for technical matters, Erik Corwin. Investigators are also mining the computer data of two lawyers in the chief counsel’s office responsible for procedures and administration, and nine others who oversee tax exempt and government entitites. In all, the hard drives of 19 lawyers in the chief counsel’s office are being turned over to investigators.

Does the IRS’s own lawyer know who ordered the targeting or does he have amnesia too?

Update: From Drudge’s editor, Joseph Curl:

Joseph Curl @josephcurl

Hearing from some top Hill sources that IRS scandal about to explode. Low-level agency workers miffed at being blamed. About to return fire.

6:18 PM - 3 Jun 2013

Joseph Curl @josephcurl

One source says there's a paper trail to DC, and some who were worried from the get-go kept a paper trail. Wouldn't say WH, but said 'high.'

6:20 PM - 3 Jun 2013

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/03/fear-begets-anger-on-irs-scandal/

“…I still hear people saying we were low level employees, so we were lower than dirt, according to people in D.C.  So, take it for what it is.  They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.”

-- Unnamed IRS employee in the agency’s Cincinnati office talking to House investigators about claims that the targeting of conservative groups was the result of rogue agents in the office.

When a senior adviser to the president is attacking a House member over being arrested 40 years ago, you know things are starting to get interesting in Washington.

David Plouffe, Democratic sage and architect of President Obama’s successful 2012 community organizing approach to re-election, flipped out on Twitter Sunday after House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa called White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar” in reference to the shifting stories from the administration about the targeting of conservatives by the IRS.

Plouffe called Issa “Mr. Grand Theft Auto,” a reference to Issa’s 1972 arrest for car theft. The charges were later dropped and Issa famously went on to make millions with a car alarm business.

The very fact that such a senior Obama adviser would be dredging up Issa’s youthful arrest record is a strong indicator of how ugly this will get, and how quickly.

Team Obama would very much like to turn Issa into the Ken Starr of this decade and put an embattled president’s chief prosecutor on trial. And Issa certainly gives them some ammunition as a high-profile inquisitor and by using hot words like “liar.”

But it’s going to take more than stoking media skepticism about Issa to shift the focus away from the still unfolding story of abuses aimed at the president’s political enemies. Fear is the father of rage, and the rage against Issa suggests there is fear aplenty when it comes to the IRS scandal.

Appearing on “This Week,” earlier Sunday, Plouffe fiercely denied any connection between the White House and the harassment of conservative groups ahead of the 2010 and 2012 elections. He said that doing so “would be the dumbest political effort of all time.”

Don’t be so sure, Mr. Plouffe. How about hiring burglars to sneak into the rival political party’s headquarters to steal their election plans? That would be pretty dumb, right?

The reason presidents typically steer clear of the IRS is that they like the political insulation that the agency’s semi-autonomy provides. Bill Clinton made hay in his second term by attacking the IRS right alongside Republicans. It wasn’t his IRS, it was the IRS and he was going after it. Clinton wasn’t blamed for the abuses of 20 years ago, he was credited for reforming the agency.

Political wisdom would suggest that the only time a president wants face time with the IRS boss is in either hiring or firing him or her.

But President Obama, who has shown a policy passion for the mechanics of tax enforcement, brought the IRS into the heart of the Executive Branch. The dozens and dozens of White House campus visits by former Commissioner Douglas Shulman show just how close the relationship has become.

Political wisdom would suggest that the only time a president wants face time with the IRS boss is in either hiring or firing him or her. Obama, though, wanted to bring Shulman into the loop.

There is little that Obama has discussed more frequently than taxes. His great policy obsession has been using the tax code to reduce income inequality to help engineer a society with a broader middle class – to take money from top earners and spend it on projects he believes will push poor people into middle-income stability.

And for the president and his political team, the question of who pays what in taxes has been an animating concern. If there was a centerpiece of Obama’s re-election campaign it was Mitt Romney’s tax returns, used as evidence that Romney was not patriotic or moral because he took advantage of tax shelters to protect his vast fortune.

The tax returns of others were of issue too. Romney’s donors, wealthy conservatives funding political action and others on the right were held up as evidence that Republicans want to rig the system to help rich people abuse the poor. The belief has been that if regular Americans knew about the low rates paid by the super rich, the president could defeat his challenger and achieve the long-frustrated liberal goal of winning a tax-rate increase.

Obama did both of those things, but is now reaping some tragic consequences for his taxation fixation. And Obama, ironically, is now the one who has tax secrets to keep from view.

Preliminary reports from House investigators suggest that the field agents designated to be fall guys and gals for the tax scandal are not buying into the part. They say, according to interviews from Issa’s committee, that the orders to target conservative groups cam from Washington, and that high-level officials asked that case files on conservative groups be passed along for extra scrutiny.

Front-line workers bridled at the idea for fear that they would be left holding the bag. Prescient thinking, it would seem.

The idea that this scandal could be contained in Cincinnati was always a little silly, but the effort to shove this down to the Queen City is about to boomerang on the White House.

Plouffe offers as a defense that no one in Obama’s orbit would be so stupid as to have directed the IRS to harass the president’s enemies. That remains to be seen. Seemingly smart people often do obviously stupid things.

But what about tacitly encouraging the harassment? What about getting wind of it but not stopping it? What about finding a helpful, ideologically aligned IRS official to slip you some sensitive tax information to use against a political enemy? Was no one on team Obama so stupid as to have done any of those things?

Team Obama is making a big bet that either none of those things happened, or if they did the wrongdoing can be kept secret until it would be less politically damaging.

As the folks in Cincinnati start to shove the blame back up the organizational chart, the fears will grow. And so will, as Plouffe’s outburst revealed, the anger.