I have occasionally posted the status of a person's request to the US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) for release of the investigation report ROI 8-9801-0002. The first FOIA request for disclosure of this was denied asserting FOIA exemptions (b)(7)(c) and (b)(3) in conjunction with I.R.C. Section 6103. An appeal was made per FOIA to TIGTA and the response was received just a few days ago by the Deputy Chief Counsel (DCC).

Somehow you will not be surprised to hear that he upheld the Disclosure Officer's determination.

There is too much material for me to type here, maybe I will be able to OCR it and get it out there at some point. But one thing I found humorous: the case law the DCC cited to justify the FOIA exemption (b) (3) was none other than Church of Scientology vs. I.R.S. 484 U.S. 9, 17-18 (1987). Briefly, the exemptions and IRS 6103 have enough loopholes and are broad enough that they can claim basically anything is "return information." The DCC says that the ROI contains information relating to "persons" so the 6103(b)(2) provisions apply. The FOIA (b)(7)(c) exemption is asserted since the DCC states that "releasing the withheld information would not shed any light into TIGTA's performance of its official function." Well, there's no way to tell whether that is true or not.

The writer also pointed out that I.R.C. Sect 6104 "provides that the application (together with any papers filed in support thereof)...and any letter or document issued by the IRS with respect to such application shall be open to public inspection at the national office of the IRS." The DCC says "it is clear from the statute that not every document pertaining to an exempt organization that the IRS has on file falls within the provision's scope."

In a nutshell, the result is: all these documents are available except the ones that we decide shall not be available. At this point the next step is to file a complaint in a U.S. District Court. Although I am not a lawyer, when I read all these papers I believe that there is room for an enlightened, courageous judge to rule that this investigation be made public. However, this is at another whole level of effort and the pessimist would look at Zenon Panoussis' efforts in Sweden and wonder whether an appellant would have any better luck in the U.S.

Well, the tobacco industry felt immune from exposure the same way for years, but one day an insider or someone else is going to blow a very big whistle and this whole peek-a-boo game will end.

Hopefully at some point these letters will be made available on www.xenu.net, a.b.s. or in other place.

So sayeth:

Pito Poquito pitito@newsguy.com

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