I wonder if SGI lawyers Linda Johnson and Guy McCloskey were sweating bullets?
Internal Affairs A case raises serious issues about the safeguarding of NCIC records. By Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
July 26 — A team of lawyers and private investigators—spearheaded by a friend of Attorney General Janet Reno—may have improperly obtained confidential law enforcement information from a sensitive Justice Department database as part of a wide-ranging effort to tar the reputation of a Japanese religious leader, according to congressional investigators.
THE PREVIOUSLY UNDISCLOSED incident raises new questions about the ability of well-connected outsiders to obtain confidential data stored in the FBI’s central computerized database, known as the National Criminal Information Center (also referred to as the NCIC). It’s an issue of longstanding concern to privacy advocates and civil liberties groups. The case could also prove embarrassing to Justice officials. Internal department records show that a Miami lawyer made repeated phone calls to one of Reno’s senior aides and even obtained a meeting with the Justice Department’s third-highest official, then associate attorney general John Schmidt, to discuss obtaining access to internal department records about the religious leader. The case is potentially serious, according to congressional investigators, because it involves requests for sensitive law enforcement information—in this case, involving records of a decades-old alleged prostitution arrest—by private parties who were conducting no legitimate government business. “Everybody is concerned these days about privacy,” one investigator told Newsweek.
“This exposes the reality of the seeming underbelly of how this really works.” The release of any information about the alleged arrest, which had not resulted in any conviction, was “illegal” and that by failing to investigate the incident, “the Justice Department and FBI have sent the clear message that they do not value the sanctity of law enforcement databases,” the staff of the Hosue Government Reform Committee concluded in a report. The report, entitled “Felonies and Favors: A Friend of the Attorney General Gathers Information,” is due to be released Thrusday at a hearing of the government reform panel. John Hogan, Reno’s former chief of staff, is due to testify. He agreed that any access by outsiders to NCIC was improper. “NCIC should not be used in that way. If this is true, that’s a problem,” Hogan told Newsweek. But Hogan vigorously disputed that senior department officials played any role in the unauthorized disclosure of information and emphasized that Reno had recused herself from any involvement in the matter. Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said: “There’s nothing to suggest that Reno had anything to do with this.” The bizarre case dates back to 1994, when a large Japanese Buddhist group called Soka Gakkai hired lawyers in the United States to obtain criminal justice records about Nobou Abe, the chief of a rival Japanese Buddhist faction. Both Japanese factions, which have millions of members and extensive real estate holdings in the United States and Japan, have been involved in obscure but protracted legal battles with each other for years. Soka Gakkai also controls Komeito, which is the fourth largest political party in Japan, according to the report. Soka Gakkai members had been seeking information that rival Abe had been arrested for solicitatiing a prostitute in Seattle during a trip there in March, 1963. To verify the allegation, one of the
U.S. lawyers hired by Sokkai Gakkai in turn retained the services of Jack Palladino, a flamboyant San Francisco private detective who had been paid over $100,000 by the Clinton presidential campaign in 1992. (Palladino had been hired to investigate women rumored to have had sexual relations with President Clinton.) The congressional report states that Palladino “apparently contacted a source in the Bureau of Prisons who had access to NCIC,” the huge computerized FBI database that stores millions of records of criminal arrests, police reports and property thefts from throughout the country. The source reported that, under Abe’s name, there was a listing that “a bald Oriental male” who spoke no English had been detained by Seattle police in March, 1963, but had been released two hours later with no charges having been filed. Palladino today confirmed that he had been hired in the case, but flatly denied contacting anybody at the Bureau of Prisons. He indeed found information confirming the incident, he said, but he did it through old-fashioned “shoe leather.” He interviewed over 200 Seattle police officers and eventually found the two officers who detained Abe. “I’m proud of my work on this,” he said. Whatever the origins of Palladino’s information, Sokkai Gakkai members were not satisfied, and according to the congressional report, sought additional confirmation. At that point, they retained the services of a Miami lawyer, Rebekah Poston, with ties to Reno. Poston worked for a large law firm, Steel Hector & Davis, where Reno once worked; Poston’s sister had once worked as a secretary for Reno when she was the state’s attorney in Miami. Although Poston has described herself as a friend of the attorney general, Hogan said she is more an acquaintance and she has never socialized with Reno. Poston did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Poston then hired two other private investigators: Philip Manuel, who heads a large Washington D.C. area firm, and his then-Miami associate, Richard Lucas. According to the report, Lucas and Manuel then both contacted their own sources within the Justice Department to check internal NCIC records about Abe.
Barely a week after they had been hired, Manuel wrote a memo to Poston reporting that a “source” had informed him there was a reference to “Solicitation Prostitution, Seattle Police Department, March 1963.” But Poston, concerned that Lucas had come up with less than Palladino, pressed for more details. “Please get answers to as many of these as you can and be specific,” she wrote in a Nov. 11, 1994 memo obtained by the committee. “This is a matter of serious importance.” But Manuel and Lucas were unable to learn anything more; Manuel wrote in a Dec. 22, 1994 memo that a “highly confidential and reliable source” had reported that Abe’s entire file had by then “apparently been purged.” (A lawyer for Manuel denied that his client had sought any information from NCIC.)
This prompted Poston to file a Freedom of Information request with the Justice Department for all records relating to Abe. When the request was denied, Poston made repeated phone calls to Hogan, Reno’s chief of staff. Hogan insisted most of the calls were simply messages left with his secretary and that he only talked to Poston a handful of times. Poston and two of her associates finally obtained a June 15, 1995 meeting with then associate attorney general John Schmidt—the third-highest official in the department—in which they pressed their case for internal department information about Abe. What information the Justice Department actually had about Abe is far from clear. After the June 15 meeting with Poston, Schmidt ordered the FBI and the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorney’s to check all records on Abe—a search that yielded no information. Committee staffers speculate that the Justice Department “sources” who had provided the earlier information to the private investigators were worried that they might get caught and may have deleted the data about the 1963 arrest. Another possibility, they said, was that the information had been improperly “planted” by a Sokkai Gakkai sympathizer in the first place. Either way, the staffers said, the case raises serious issues about the safeguarding of NCIC records. It also may raise questions about the revolving door between the Justice Department and a loose network of private investigators who often make their living touting their access and knowledge of internal department records. One of the officials the committee is investigating is Ben Brewer, the FBI official who supervised the NCIC at the time of the incident. Questioned today on the eve of the hearing, Brewer flatly denied to a staff investigator that he had authorized the release of any confidential NCIC data about Abe. But Brewer, who has since retired, also acknowledged that he is now in the private consultant business. Among his clients—whom he advices about the inner workings of NCIC—is the Japanese Buddhist faction headed by Abe.
© 2000 Newsweek, Inc.
"Abe" refers to High Priest Nikken Abe
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