FITTON: And we were the only ones asking for it. Now, others may have been asking for it, to be fair. But you know it was released in response to our lawsuit, and in many ways I thought it would just put to rest some of these 9/11 conspiracy theories, but you know those conspiracy theories are never going to be put to rest no matter how much information's put out there.
LAMB: And you were the only ones asking for it.
FITTON: Five years to get this released, yes.
LAMB: So you're talking five years.
FITTON: I think it was 2006.
LAMB: And the year that they - you actually got it released, do you remember?
FITTON: Oh, probably a few thousand dollars in legal and staff time, and it's not a tremendous outlay. But obviously the impact is leveraged.
LAMB: How much money did you spend to get that released?
What year was Judicial Watch founded, and who founded it?
FITTON: Well, going back, you may actually have it in your papers better than I have it in my memory. It probably took about a year from the - from the time we asked about it to the time we obtained it. So I think we obtained it in 2005/2006. It's available on YouTube so you can see the exact date of when it was released. It's gotten over a million and a half hits on YouTube, and that was almost an immediate number of hits that it occurred. Our web servers were shut down. The Pentagon tried to put it up on its web servers, and they had difficulty managing the interest. But this was an example that the biggest historical event in our lifetime probably over the last 100 years, arguably, in terms of the United States history, in terms of even our history generally, and it was only Judicial Watch that asked the question to get this video out, and it was only Judicial Watch that seems to get the video. It's just incredible to me just how many important events happen in Washington, and there's initial reporting on it, substantially good newspaper reporting on it, obviously great public interests, but no one asked for the background info to find out more of the truth and get all of the details about important public events, and it's amazing to me just how few are out there and how clear the field is in terms of independent inquiry of our government, and so I think our role as a result is just terribly important, and (that) will be important to not only conservatives and liberals, but democrats and republicans.
LAMB: So give us the timeframe on it. When did you actually file the Freedom of Information?
FITTON: Well, it was founded in 1994. The founding chairman was Larry Klayman, and so we're 15 years this year. Fifteen years been around, and the big question was, because we were known as being aggressive in terms of going after anti-Clinton corruption, what would happen after that, and we prospered during the Bush years. The problem with George Bush is I think many of his supporters would acknowledge is that they were too secretive, and frankly too arrogant when it came to accounting itself to the American people. So as a result, we had many opportunities to highlight problems in the Bush Administration, not only in terms of transparency, but ethics, and it hit some major cases over the Bush Administration, and as a result of our willingness to hold both parties to account, we weren't a republican front group, we're nonpartisan, we don't pick and choose our battles based on party. We gained a lot of respect from the media and those - and those who frankly criticized us during the Clinton years as only being anti-Clinton as opposed to anti-corruption.
And of course, I was skeptical about it. I had already looked into the issue and I thought - and being a resident of Washington, and I knew exactly what happened on 9/11, and I think questions about it were frankly inappropriate and not based on fact. But the supporter raised a point, said, well, how come they're not releasing the video of the hit on the Pentagon, and I asked him more about it. He says, well, they're not releasing the video tape. There are video tapes that haven't been released. And I said we'll ask for the video tape then. So we asked for the video tape, and it resulted in the release of the video tape years after the fact, and you know we all like to remember 9/11 and acknowledge its importance, but even you know after - years after the fact, I couldn't believe the intense interest in the release of this video, and …
Well, this is a Pentagon video of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. It shows the American Airlines plane, I believe, hitting the Pentagon, and it was released several years after the fact that Judicial Watch, you have to file the Freedom of Information Act request and get a response, we had to file a lawsuit. The government said they didn't want to - they didn't want to release it until after a criminal trial was done. I think it was Zacarius Moussaoui's trial. I think what's interesting is I think your listeners and your viewers may be interested in how we go about figuring out what to ask for. You would have thought this would be a video that was clamored for by the media and just by other interested parties. A supporter of Judicial Watch came up to me at a meeting one day and was complaining that we needed to investigate whether 9/11 was some type of inside job, whether we were getting the full truth about it.
LAMB: We have some video that you were responsible for getting made public from September 11, 2001. We'll put it on the screen, people can see it. You can see it there. What is this?
FITTON: Well, we are a conservative side of the good government crowd, as I like to call it. I think you know some of our colleagues in the good government side of the aisle from the other side in terms of etiology I don't think they understand that the size of government has to a lot to do with the corruption, and when you have unlimited government in terms of size and scope, when you have a government you know spending was it $3.6 trillion as the proposed budget, I think corruption is going to flow to that like light into a black hole, and it's inescapable. And so we're a little bit more suspicious of government activity and understand that when the government's involved in all aspects of our lives, especially financial and economic, there's a tremendous temptation to evade the law and corruptly influence how that money's being spent and how that power's being distributed.
LAMB: Do you acknowledge you come from the conservative side, and if so, why?
FITTON: Sure.
LAMB: Last week, we talked with Melanie Sloan, who's the director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and acknowledged that they come from the liberal side of the spectrum.
FITTON: Well, Judicial Watch is a nonpartisan educational foundation that seeks greater accountability, transparency and better adherence to the rule of law for not only politicians but for judges as well, and we - you know we seek to expose and uncover what the government is up to, especially as it relates to corruption, and we use a variety of tools to do that. The chief among them is the Freedom of Information Act, which is a nearly 40-year-old - over 40-year-old federal law that allows government - that allows activists like Judicial Watch activists, reflected issue watch and regular citizens and the news media to gain access to information about government operations, and what Judicial Watch is willing to do in that process that others sometimes don't do and can't do is sue when the government doesn't follow the law and release the information as it's required to, and the media would love to sue virtually every time they're not given the documents they want in a timely fashion. But we often do, and as a result, we're able to extract a lot of information out about government operations that others really can't.
LAMB: Define Judicial Watch's mission.
TOM FITTON, JUDICIAL WATCH: Well, it was during the Clinton Administration. I thought the Clinton Administration was terribly corrupt. I was running my own Web site at the time by blogging before blogging was cool. It was called Opinion, Inc. And I thought it was just extraordinary that you had credible allegations that the Clinton Administration was doing illegal fundraising in the White House, raising money illegally from abroad, the target of a Chinese - Communist Chinese operation to influence our elections, and it really - there really being no accountability about that, and I thought it was important to highlight that, and you know I ran into Judicial Watch, which I thought was - you know back in the late 90s was alone in not only saying the right things but also doing the right things in terms of being hard charging and aggressive.
BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Tom Fitton, can you remember when you first got interested in corruption?
LAMB: When did you take over as the boss?
FITTON: Well, I was president - I've been a president for 11 years, and Klayman left six years ago now almost. So I've been around for a long time. So I've been at Judicial Watch and seen it's - pretty much all the highlights in the 11 years I've been there.
LAMB: How many people work there?
FITTON: We have about 25.
LAMB: Talked to Melanie Sloan last week and the crew operation she had 13 people and a budget of about $3 million. What's your budget?
FITTON: We have 25 people, a budget of about a little under $10 million these days.
LAMB: We ask her - well, we can - we can go into this later on the funding thing, because I want to show first, you said that you started because of Bill Clinton. Let's look at what Melanie Sloan says about the CREW and what their number one mission was.(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
MELANIE SLOAN: And I would talk to say my parents in Wilmington, Delaware only two hours away, educated people who read the papers and are up on current events. They wouldn't even know what Mr. Delay was doing, and when they did hear about it, they thought how can that be? That sounds illegal, and it was that understanding that people outside the Beltway just had no conception of what was going on here, and when they did hear about it and learn about it, they were shocked and wanted it to end. That was really why I thought wow, it's time for someone else to come in and say let's see if we can do something about this.
LAMB: So what was your reaction when he left Congress?
SLOAN: Oh, I was overjoyed. I danced a little jig. It was - it was the best moment. There is nothing we've done at CREW to my mind that is as important as helping getting rid of Congressman Tom Delay and having him out of - out of the Halls of Congress.(END AUDIO CLIP)
LAMB: Now, I've seen on your list one of the - you have a strong opinion about Tom Delay for other reasons, or the same reasons that she did?
FITTON: Oh, I think Tom Delay was a disaster in terms of government ethics, and we were virtually alone on the right in criticizing him early on in the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration came in, and then we saw information that Tom Delay's fundraising operation was making it clear to donors that you could come and give money to us, and then you get to talk about tax policy with Whitehouse officials, completely inappropriate and illegal, and we said as much. And some of our - well, friends on the right weren't too happy about it. You know but during the Clinton years, I know the democrats thought I was crying crocodile tears for them, but I thought Clinton corruption was a terrible thing for the Democratic Party, because any ideas they had got sidetracked by that, and electorially it did not turn out well. They lost the election in 2000 arguably because of Clinton corruption, and but then - and then the Republicans came in saying that they were going to clean things up, not only in Congress generally in 1994, but have a new era, and instead they were doing, and really perfected, the sort of influence pedaling and extortion and the willingness to accept bribes too often that the Clintons had done. And it was ironic.
We had complained to the Justice Department about the fundraising activities of Republicans on the Hill, and they wrote back to us a letter that said, you know as we told Henry Hide when he had similar complaints about Bill Clinton, we're not going to do anything, and I thought how (INAUDIBLE), that you know the one party that had criticized the corruption started to embody it. And sure enough, we were right, and many years later, even folks like Karl Rove admit that a key contributing factor to the downfall of the Republican Party nationally was the perception, appropriate in many respects, that it was corrupt, certainly at the congressional level.
LAMB: You also went after Vice President Cheney. For what reason?
FITTON: Well, for a variety of reasons. We saw that they had this Energy Taskforce, which as a conservative I thought was generally silly because of it's - a concern about energy. I guess there's a concern about energy every two years here in Washington. But in 2001, they had the brown outs in California, so the Bush Administration said we have to have an energy task force. And it looked like they were meeting with outsiders in a way that may trigger the open meetings law known as the Federal Advisory Committee act, and I thought, and my colleagues at Judicial Watch thought, this is just like Hillary. This is like Hillary's healthcare taskforce, which was similarly criticized for bringing in outside lobbyists. And this Federal Advisory Committee Act is important because it's only government officials meeting. They have some ability to talk and create policy without as much public scrutiny they would have if they brought in outside individuals to help make policy, and the law's designed to prevent outsiders from coming in and taking on the roles of government officials, but without the attendant accountability.
So we had a FOIA law suit and a law suit under the open meetings law. The FOIA law suit resulted in extracting tens of thousands of pages of documents, which critics of the Bush Administration used to criticize in terms of the formulation of energy policy, and we took the Open Meanings Law lawsuit all the way up to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we didn't win at the Supreme Court, but I think it was a pure victory for Dick Cheney because that really set the stage, I think, in terms of the public's perception of Bush secrecy. We also were critical of Cheney over Halliburton. Again, the left love us for that as well because you know Halliburton was getting these no good contracts in the run up to the Iraq war and during the initial phases of the Iraq war, and it looked to us like it may have been inappropriate, and it wasn't just us complaining, it was Halliburton and his competitors complaining, and the Bush Administration said, well, Cheney has nothing to do with it, blah, blah, blah, and it turned out documents we uncovered show that the Halliburton contracting was coordinated in some fashion with Vice President Cheney's office contrary to public protestations that Cheney and his people were putting out.
You know Cheney is - has many admirable leadership qualities, but there became this focus on secrecy that I don't think was terribly conservative. I mean it's one thing to be concerned about the release of torture memos and how that might impact our other national security information, you know but the Cheney crowd would say that we can't find out whether or not interior official is meeting with an oil lobbyist because it would impact on the ability of the President to get advice and the republic would fall. And you know they're crying wolf on everything related to openness. It makes you think that maybe you just don't like the idea of being held accountable to the American people generally.
LAMB: Let's go back and talk some about your own background. Where were you born?
FITTON: I was born in West Nyack, New York in Rockland County, New York, which is about 20 miles north of New York City.
LAMB: Your parents alive and …
FITTON: Parents are alive. My father was a supermarket manager, and my mother was a homemaker who became a nurse.
LAMB: Big family?
FITTON: Big family, huge family. One of 10.
LAMB: You're one of 10 children?
FITTON: I'm one of 10.
LAMB: Where do you fit in the 10?
FITTON: I'm number seven. I'm number seven on the scale. We have eight boys and two girls in that family, and it's a big ruckus family. Parents were active conservatives, my mother especially on the pro life side of the issue, and I came down to school, at George Washington University and was here during the Bork hearings, and I remember that quite succinctly as my thinking maybe the left isn't up to - isn't really up to snuff in terms of their being responsible and fair in the way they treated Judge Bork, and after that I started working with Wharton Blackwell who ran an international conservative group called International Policy Forum that took conservatives abroad to have them meet with fellow conservatives abroad and exchange ideas, and then his leadership institute, which helped train conservatives, and then I went on to work with Accuracy and Media, which is Reed Irvine's group, which you may know. Obviously, the anti-media bias, liberal media bias organization. And I was working with Paul Weyrich. I was doing TV with Weyrich's network at the time, the late great Paul Weyrich .
So I've worked for all of the great ones in that regard, and what I liked about Judicial Watch is that there were a lot of - there's a lot - there's an important role for think tanks in this town. But the American People want leadership, they want activism, and we just don't complain about government corruption, we try to do something about it, either through the courts or just generally in terms of educating the public and highlighting the bad actors in our nation's public life.
LAMB: I asked Melanie Sloan about the funding of CREW, and I want to come back and ask you the same questions about what she said about them.(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Who are some of the biggest donors you have, and is there a restriction on how much money they can give you?
SLOAN: We don't have any restriction, but I would say our biggest donors are, for example the Open Society Institute is a very big donor …
LAMB: And who's organization is that?
SLOAN: Well, it's a foundation, but it's well known to be - George Soros is the one who funds it, that Wallace Global Fund gives us money, the Arca Foundation gives us money. Those are some of the big foundations where we - Carnegie Corporation gives us money.
LAMB: You do see a thread through different sides in this where a big donor like George Soros will give to an awful lot of progressive organizations. Has he ever asked for anything directly?
SLOAN: No, he - and I have met him, and he's never asked for anything at all, and I meet with the program officer from the - from the Open Society Institute, and they're very happy with what we do, and they're very keen on transparency. We're part of their democracy program.(END AUDIO CLIP)
LAMB: What's your reaction to the Open Society Institute and George Soros?
FITTON: Well, I think it's interesting George Soros is an advocate for a particular set of values, and then I respect Melanie. I think her organization does some good work. What's interesting about CREW is that they were founded, frankly modeled after Judicial Watch, and folks like Hillary Clinton and George Soros and other leaders at the left wanted to highlight and support an organization to act as a counter-weight to our activities. So we're always flattered by CREW's work, and as I said, we do good - they do good work. We've worked with them in the past and probably will in the future.
LAMB: So money, your money.
FITTON: The bulk of it - the large bulk of it comes from small donors. We have about 150,000 active donors. Probably 800,000 have given us money over the years, and I can't emphasize how important it is that these - the role these small contributions play. We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing without it.
LAMB: But there is a huge donor, as you know, Mr. Scaife..
FITTON: Well, he provides - it's been publicly reported. I don't like to disclose the names of our donors to protect them from retaliation, especially the larger ones …
LAMB: But don't you have to legally, though?
FITTON: In part, yes. The IRS we report sometimes large donors, but that information generally is private. But it's been well publicized that Dick Scaife has supported us, and he's been generous. But it's only a small portion of our work, and so the 95 percent, 97 percent, 98 percent of our money comes from the small donor community.
LAMB: But just to make sure, I saw a figure that from 1985 - and of course you weren't founded until - I don't know why it says '85, but 2006 …
FITTON: Right.
LAMB: … that the Carthridge Foundation, which is one of those had given $4.4 million, obviously they couldn't have given that to you. So I figure that was inaccurate. But it's in the millions though, isn't it?
FITTON: It would be, yes.
LAMB: But just take Richard Mellon Scaife and George Soros for a moment, just the two of them. Explain what you think both of them are trying to do. I mean is it - is it a way for them to get around the politicians themselves to be influential?
FITTON: Well, I've never met George Soros, so I - though I've met Dick Scaife, and Dick Scaife is an intellectually curious person who likes learning about what's happening in our world, and he's curious and he gets excited about good people doing activist work in Washington, and he's interested in learning and meeting all types. I know it's been well reported about how he struck off a cordial relationship with the Clintons, of all people. So Dick Scaife is a philanthropist, and a generous one, and - who supports organizations, I think it's fair to say, that not only share his values but you know really help the country. And so a real - a real great man and a great patriot.
LAMB: Well, the figures on him, and I don't want to spend the hour on him, I mean for instance he's on one list that I'm looking at here, over that same period of time, he gave $23 million to the Heritage Foundation.
FITTON: Right.
LAMB: And your friend Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation $17 million, and to Judicial Watch $8.3 million. I saw that the figure that I gave actually was low. Are there enough of these organizations in town …
FITTON: In terms of …
LAMB: Yes, I mean in other words, you're sitting there, you have to raise money all the time. Are you finding it you're in competition with a lot of groups like CREW and others, or you get all the money you need?
FITTON: Well, CREW appeals to a different market than we appeal. We appeal to a more conservative American's concern about what our government is up to, and I think the pie is huge, and I always encourage conservatives to get out there and ask people for their support because I think the more people we find to support the conservative cause, the better off we all are.
LAMB: What's your biggest success?
FITTON: Well, I think our most significant success in the Freedom of Information Act area is our fight with the Clinton Administration over the trade missions, and we uncovered the fact that these trade missions, which were run out of the commerce department, where the government was bringing private businesses to foreign countries and advocating that the foreign governments there give them contracts was being sold frankly out of the back seat of their car. It gave money to the Democratic Party or the Clinton Reelection Committee or election monies. You got to see in these trade measures.
And we uncovered - and the Clinton Administration fought us tooth and nail on that. They shred documents, they uncovered - they lied to the court and they withheld documents and just played all sorts of games. It led to in part the exposure of China Gate, because in the - in that commerce department was John Wong, who was a suspected Chinese agent who had not only raised money for Clinton in huge sums, but also went on to be appointed to the Commerce Department, and also to other China Gate type figures. And as a result of our investigation, our FOIA litigation, which saw Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor proposed, Terrence McAuliffe proposed, other top officials of the Commerce Department as opposed - there was an FBI investigation, there were FEC investigations, there were congressional investigations, and the Commerce Department, even under the Clinton Administration, was forced to reform the way they selected participants for these trade missions.
And to this day, most recently I was out of town with a Bush appointee at the Commerce Department, this was last year. We're still known at the Commerce Department because we helped fix their trade mission policies in terms of making sure that people came on these trips before merit as opposed to who they were politically connected to, and of course I'm a little bit suspicious of that anyway. I just don't think the government ought to be advocating for contracts like that. If Boeing needs help getting money from - getting a contract from the Chinese government, let them do it themselves. We don't need tax dollars going to that. And it's because of that type of activity that companies see opportunities to gain in the system, and in launching of the government doing things it probably ought not to do, you're going to have these temptations for corruption that we expose. And the case lasted for 10 years, and we finally settled with the Congress Department for $900,000 plus in legal fees. So it was - it was a singular hallmark piece of FOIA litigation.
LAMB: Go back to the settlement on this. They paid you $900,000?
FITTON: Yes.
LAMB: Plus your legal expenses?
FITTON: It was to settle any claim we would have for legal expenses under the Freedom of Information Act. If you win a FOIA, put not too fine a point on it, you can obtain legal expenses for your - for your troubles from the government.
LAMB: Explain FOIA. Melanie's son talked about this as a tool that they use also. How old is FOIA?
FITTON: FOIA's about 40 years, 40 plus. I think it was passed in 1967, and Judicial Watch's innovation in FOIA, it's the Freedom of Information Act, and you can ask for documents from government agencies, not from Congress. Congress passed at the - on behalf of the executive branch, but you can't FOIA Congress and you can't FOIA the judiciary. But you can FOIA government agencies. You can't FOIA the White House directly, but you can FOIA the cabinet agencies, generally speaking, and if - they have a certain amount of time to respond, 20 days or so, and it's been reformed recently so it's even better in terms of openness. George Bush actually signed a reform of FOIA that made it better. If they don't respond, you have the ability to sue the agency in federal court, and that's a powerful tool that Judicial Watch innovated in making use of on behalf of the conservative cause, and in our case, our angle on the conservative cause was holding government accountable and honest in uncovering corruption. But FOIA's always been logged by the left, you know the - whether to expose CIA activities or nefarious national security activities they don't like. But Judicial Watch came on the scene and said, whoa, you know to - I think the establishment said, whoa, this is - this is not how we expected it to be used, and we've changed the landscape in that regard.
LAMB: Ask you the same question I asked Ms. Sloan; do any of your donors call you? You mentioned earlier that somebody said we ought to do something about this video and the conspiracy charges around 2011, but do they call you and say let's go after somebody?
FITTON: Well, you always hear back - you always hear back from your constituents or your donors or just people off the Internet you want to look at A, B or C, and you know we take that into account as we decide what to do. I mean if a - if a ton of donors are telling us for instance that they're concerned about ACORN, you know we're not going to ignore them. We're going to see what is out there on ACORN and see if there's anything that needs looking into. So I encourage our supporters to give me ideas for investigations. We can't come up with all the good ideas ourselves, so I'm not shy about that.
LAMB: Is there anything wrong with a big donor - let's say a big Scaife calls you on the telephone and says you know I've given you $8 million, I want you to do thus and so that you do that.
FITTON: Well, he's never done anything like that.
LAMB: But what about his staff or his …
FITTON: No, our communications with Scaife and his staff and the foundation generally is just reporting what we're doing and detailing how their money is being effectively used, and that's true with all of our donors.
LAMB: But is there anything wrong with them calling you up and asking you to do something?
FITTON: If it's a good idea, there's nothing wrong with them suggesting a good idea. Why - you know a small donor could do that and I would think nothing of it. Why could - why would a big donor be frozen out of the good idea process that we're always trying to get more of? It seems to me, if it's a good idea, it's a good idea no matter where it comes from.
LAMB: Go back to your FOIA requests. How many - since you've been in, how many have you made?
FITTON: Oh, well over 400. Well over 400.
LAMB: How does it work - I mean give us an example. Who decides inside your organization, and how does it start?
FITTON: Well, we have a small board. Our director of litigation, Paul Orfanedes, is our chief lawyer who's been there forever, since the beginning of the organization. Chris Farrell, who's our director of investigations, is a former counterintelligence official. He worked in the Army. He's our director of investigations, and they have a staff, and you know FOIA investigations are easy to generate. It means sending a letter. We have a general letter that we have to the agency about a topic of interest to us. Now, some topics we may just be personally interested in, you know that maybe people generally wouldn't be interested. Other topics have a broad range of public import, and as I said earlier, it's just fascinating to me just what occurs to us to ask about doesn't occur to everyone else to ask about.
And recently - well, actually, back in October, after the reported meeting that Henry Paulson, the former treasury secretary, had with the top banks in October, where the banks were complaining they were forced to take TARP funds. Well, you know I thought that was interesting. I'm sure everyone else might think it was interesting. It was an historic intervention in our economy and in our private sector by the government. We asked for the records of the meeting a few days later, and you know the Bush Administration stonewalled; they didn't give us a response. They had a few months. The Obama Administration came to us in early February and said they had no documents, which obviously was crazy. They obviously had to have documents about such an important meeting.
So we had filed a lawsuit, and sure enough we - our pressure resulted in the release of documents just earlier this month that show, at least if Paulson's talking points which we obtained are to be believed, that the banks were forced to take the money, that they were said if you didn't want the money, your regulators will require you to take it, and sitting at the table was Timothy Geithner, then New York Fed and now Treasury Secretary, then Bernanke, then - well, still fed chair, Sheila Blair, then and still FDIC chairman. So all of the top regulators of the government were sitting there, and it was a really, in my view, a buggish enterprise, that whole meeting. But again, a huge, huge story in terms of its impact on our nation's economic life, and it was only Judicial Watch who asked and litigated about it and just to find out what went on at the meeting, and I'm not sure we got everything that went on at the meeting, but certainly the press paid attention when we released the information.
LAMB: When you release one of your reports and you've accomplished something or you're going after somebody, how does the media treat you?
FITTON: I think they treat us with respect. I think the media likes groups that present news as opposed to spin and angles, and you know the documents are what they are. We can present them, we can analyze them, but because we have the primary documents and make them available to the media, you know they're going to - they're going to report on it independently. So I think the media really loves what we do because I can't tell you how many reporters I've talked to who have FOIA requests pending but they're not - they never get an answer from the government, and their media organizations don't have the resources to litigate. But we do because we get this sort of public support I've been talking about.
LAMB: Are there media organizations that won't cover you because you're a conservative organization?
FITTON: No. We have good relations with virtually every media operation. I mean I've had stories in the New York Times written about our work that has just been incredible. You know one important story we had done, piece of information we had uncovered, remember back in the day when there was a dispute about the bombing of the Al-Qaeda supposed aspirin factory in the Sudan, and we had asked for documents about that back in 2000, I guess is when it happened.
Five years later, we didn't over sue over it. The state department gave us a document, an intelligence document they had produced about Bin Laden in 1996 fleeing the Sudan to Afghanistan and suggesting he would be a threat to U.S. interests worldwide. He had been tied to prior terrorist incidents, and his financial and other networks were going to be a real significant problem. If it had been written on 9/12, it would have been seen as useful and prescient. But here, it was written in 1996, and we knew everything we needed to know about Bin laden and the threat and danger and crimes he's already committed and crimes of terror he had already committed, and it seemed to me the Clinton Administration didn't do anything about it despite given this information. This was not hindsight being 20/20. They knew in 1996 that Bin Laden was a bad actor and a murderess/terrorist, and they didn't do anything about it, and the New York Times story essentially pointed that out, which I thought was tremendous.
LAMB: Why did the state department release that to you? Was that a FYI …
FITTON: Because it was in response to this request we had about the bombing of the pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan and Bin Laden, and five years later it came across on our door.
LAMB: What is the difference - you've been here in the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush Administration. What is the difference between democratic administrations and republican administrations?
FITTON: In terms of transparency?
LAMB: Just as you work with them, and well, is there a way to define - is there a difference?
FITTON: Well, rhetorically, there's always a difference. Bill Clinton paid homage to transparency and said that you should err on the side of disclosure. But I pointed out this commerce case where they were shredding documents, and the court was very upset with their lawless approach to releasing information. The Bush Administration came, so we had fights with the Clinton Administration even though it was committed to transparency. The Bush Administration came in and said, well, we don't want to give you documents because we don't think we have to. So they were not committed to transparency. So the fights continued.
Now, the Obama Administration, it's early, but they say they're committed to transparency, but as I said earlier, they tried to cover up the fact these treasury documents existed. You know I'm concerned that all of these czars that are being created in the White House, whether it be the car czar, the climate czar or other czars, bring policymaking and decision making out of the agencies and into the White House; therefore protecting what they're doing from disclosure where it might otherwise be subject to disclosure, if for instance climate change is being run out of EPA versus Carol Browner and the White House.
So I think there's going to be a rhetorical - there's rhetorical vows given to transparency by the Obama Administration. But in the end, the government releases what it wants to release usually for its own reasons, and you know sometimes I wonder when we get individual documents like the state department document I talked about it earlier is was there was someone in the comment that thought this was an important document that needed to get out, and it was more directed at us than you might think.
We had that similar experience with the Cheney Energy Taskforce. Months after we've initiated litigation and long after a court deadline, we received a single document in the mail from the Commerce Department, and it was a map of oil fields in the Middle East and expected contracts with - associated with various countries and their oil resources, and among those countries listed was a list of contrasts, potential and otherwise, for Iraq. And I said whoa, I know how people are going to read this because this was in the - I think it came out to us after the Iraq war began. People who oppose the Iraq war are going to say, oh, Cheney's Energy Taskforce was scoping out of Iraq in terms of oil, so the war was for oil. You know others might have looked at it and said you know it was the Energy Taskforce they were calculating where in the Middle East we were getting our oil and who was running the contracts and who was the power players there. So - but that document is a big hit on our web site and the sites to that in terms of trying to advocate for their point that it was a war for oil. But I thought it was interesting we got the document by itself in a separate envelope in a way that highlighted it. So I wonder if there was an angel or someone with an agenda at the Commerce Department who wanted to get this out.
LAMB: What can you tell us about Larry Klayman, your founder, suing you?
FITTON: I can't. We're in a dispute, and my lawyers have told me not to talk about it, but you know hopefully it will end.
LAMB: Can you tell us where it is in the court system?
FITTON: I think it's at the end game, but we'll see. We'll see. The courts are considering - in the big case, the courts are considering summary judgment motions. So we'll see what happens.
LAMB: Can you, without commenting on what's right or wrong about this, tell us exactly what the suit's about?
FITTON: I can't. I can't.
LAMB: But Larry Klayman, your founder, has sued your organization and you. I don't know whether you're going to have a counter suit…
FITTON: .... counter suit.
LAMB: You have a counter suit.
FITTON: Right.
LAMB: And one of the things that I read that is he wanted his job back.
FITTON: That's right, but I can't - I can't comment about the litigation.
LAMB: But he left you when and ran for the senate in Florida?
FITTON: Larry Klayman left in 2003.
LAMB: And did he run for the Senate?
FITTON: He ran for the Senate. That's right.
LAMB: OK, and what party?
FITTON: He ran I think - he ran as a republican in their primary.
LAMB: And he hired you, by the way, originally?
FITTON: Yes.
LAMB: Other things on the list that you've been - you involved and then filed for are something to do with Eric Holder, the Attorney General's Nation of the Coward speech. What did you do there?
FITTON: Well, we complained about it. Where you have the Attorney General you know suggesting all Americas are cowards because they didn't speak about race, and I thought it was kind of a temperamental comment by an Attorney General, who's supposed to be neutral, and every American's supposed to have faith, but the Attorney General's going to fairly administer the law, and when he starts saying that we're a nation of cowards based on race, it just seems to me inappropriate. And my understanding was the Obama White House wasn't too pleased by his words either.
LAMB: Is this a case where you just put a press release out?
FITTON: Yes. But Holder's nomination we opposed generally.
LAMB: Because?
FITTON: Because we think he acted inappropriately in a variety of matters during his tenure at the Clinton Administration, and I can list them. He acted inappropriately with the pardons …
LAMB: Mark Rich …
FITTON: … Mark Rich and others. He acted inappropriately with the violent raid on the peaceful protestors in the home of Elian Gonzalez's family that took Elian Gonzalez out at the - at gunpoint and brought him back to Fidel Castro's Cuba. He acted inappropriately, I believe, in helping to tamp down any investigations of the Clinton fundraising abuses we had talked about earlier, where you had credible information that the president and the vice president had acted illegally, and Janet Reno and Eric Holder did their darnedest to make sure, and successfully so, that independent counsel would be appointed despite what the law required.
LAMB: Let me ask you the same thing I asked Melanie Sloan. Is this a way that your contributors can still play in the political game without having a limit on the number of dollars they can spend by giving you a lot of money and having you front for them in doing this thing. By opposing Eric Holder and his confirmation, you're basically involved in the political system, and they don't have to contribute - they don't have the limit on how much money they give.
FITTON: Well, I hadn't thought about it that way, and we see ourselves as you know neutral participants in the public policy arena on topics that we care about. And there are - we can't endorse or oppose candidates. We don't. We generally don't even take positions on most legislations unless it's tremendously important or there's a highly significant nomination. So you know I think our donors see us as a watchdog and their watchdog in Washington.
LAMB: Has the IRS ever questioned your …
FITTON: Yes, we were audited by the IRS during the Clinton years, and we believe it was because Clinton White House sent a note over to the IRS, a complaint over to the IRS, and we got audited.
LAMB: You believe that, but you don't know that.
FITTON: We do because we have the documents.
LAMB: How did you get the documents?
FITTON: Through the Freedom of Information Act. We were audited, and we used the Freedom of Information Act to find out about the genesis of the audit.
LAMB: What do you do when a government agency stalls on a Freedom of Information Act request? Just keeps putting it at the back of the file?
FITTON: It depends on - it depends on what our priorities and resources are and what the nature of the request is. In the end, after a month or two, we can - we can file suit. We can file suit relatively quickly if we so choose, but there are administrative appeals one needs to take.
LAMB: Is there a court here in the district that always takes these cases?
FITTON: Yes, you generally sue in the - in the District of Columbia here, the circuit - the District Court here, the Federal District Court.
LAMB: And are there judges that like the FOIA Act and others that don't, and do you - do you - can you find the judge that you want in these cases?
FITTON: The judge - when one files a case, it's randomly assigned an individual judge, so we can't pick and choose and form shop in that …
LAMB: But do they make a difference, which judge you get?
FITTON: Sometimes. Sometimes. The - I find generally speaking there's this - there's this myth in many respects in Washington about the separation of powers and how a judge - how the judiciary is a check on the executive branch. Too often in FOIA litigation it seems to me it's one wall we're facing …
LAMB: The government.
FITTON: … Yes, and the courts are by and large very differential to the government and FOIA. So when we beat the government back on FOIA, and we do that often, it just shows you how egregious the misconduct of the government is, because, generally speaking, the courts will defer to the government in terms of accepting their explanations as to where things stand and …
LAMB: Why is that?
FITTON: It's - well, it's precedent they are deferential to government, so as a non-lawyer, I should just warn you it's my understanding that they - it's the nature of the law. But you know in many ways they just assume the government is acting in good faith at times where I don't think that they ought to.
LAMB: Also on the list here is Evan Byah's financial disclosure statements. What's that about?
FITTON: Well, that was a two-for because that was Evan Byah and Hillary Clinton. They had family foundations that they had not disclosed as required by law on their financial center disclosure forms, and we complained to the Center of Ethics Committee about this. We pointed out it was a - not only a violation of the rules to not fill these out completely and truthfully, but also a violation of federal law, and of course, the Center of Ethics Committee gave both senator - both senators a pass on it. It was a mistake. You know it shows you what the difference is between those of us that may fill out government forms wrong and be held to account and get fined and all of that versus senators who fill out forms core to the ethics enforcement in our city, and as they get a pass form the Ethics Committee in the Senate charged with making sure they do the right thing.
LAMB: What was your reaction to the contempt citation and the dropping of the charges against Ted Stevens?
FITTON: I was disappointed. I was disappointed. I believe that it would have been appropriate to give Senator Stevens another trial, but I think he needed to be held to account. I think there was a lot of evidence not impacted by the allegations of misconduct that would have led a jury to presume that he was guilty or to find him guilty. And not only did that decision by Eric Holder not only help that politician Ted Stevens, but it helps other politicians under the gun like Murtha and Chris Dodd, who is also - we have allegations about false financial disclosure statements because the key development in the Stevens prosecution was the government didn't prosecute him for bribery or extortion but for filing these false financial disclosure statements, and I think the ending of the Stevens prosecution took the wind out of the sales of any other pending investigations along those lines.
LAMB: What is your reaction to the coverage and the attention Chris Dodd has gotten for several allegations that involve - in your case, you went after him for Ireland. But what's you're take on the way the newspapers have approached him and the way people like you have approached him? Are they making any headway, or should they?
FITTON: Well, Chris Dodd needs to worry about how he's being perceived in Connecticut. I mean Washington is its own world. I mean what may be important or unimportant in Washington has - really has nothing to do with what everyday Americans think about, and I was - I was actually a little bit surprised about how poorly politically Dodd is evidently doing in Connecticut. But my understanding is this whole Countrywide scandal, where he obtained sweetheart mortgages it looks like from Countrywide, a company very depended on the government action, in many ways, really hit people in their pocketbooks. Everyone gets mortgages. They know how difficult it is to get good rates, and they resent when politicians get good rates seemingly because they're politicians, and it's not only unlawful, but people think it's not fair, and Americans are fair, and they don't want peers, and Dodd is perceived to be a cheater. So that's why he's doing poorly in Connecticut. We'll see what happens.
But in Washington, you know Washington just doesn't seem to care about it, and you know the issue of corruption, it seems to me politicians only talk about it at election time and then forget it about it the rest of the year, and I - and include members of both parties on there.
LAMB: Melanie Sloan suggested that there's been an agreement over in the commerce for the last 15 years that the republicans and the democrats will not go after each other on ethics. Is that your perception?
FITTON: That's right. That's right, and we partnered on that issue during the last administration. The House of Representatives, they have this mutually shared disruption tack that the leadership won't file. The leadership will make sure that key leaders of the opposite party won't have ethics complaints filed against them. And it's been taking place, it's at least - republicans have been in office. It took over in '94, and it continues to this day. I mean I think you know you hear, for instance, this is an interesting take on it. You hear republicans complain about why the ethics committee has not filed - not commenced the investigation that's apparent against congressman Murtha, and they've asked the democrats to vote - or sought votes refer it to the ethics committee. There's nothing preventing a republican congressman from filing on ethics and plan against Murtha, but that would break the truce. So instead, you have this political posturing that just makes democrats look bad, gives republicans a - you know something to crow about saying how they're covering up ethics violations when in fact republicans are covering it up too by refusing to initiate on their own an investigation of senator - of Congressman Murtha.
LAMB: So what's your take then on the new Office of Congressional Ethics …
FITTON: I …
LAMB: … and by Congressman - ex-Congressmen David Skaggs and Porter Goss …
FITTON: Well, in the end, the politicians still control the process, and they don't allow outside groups and citizens to file ethics complaints. The process is still not transparent enough, and we - I testified to Congress about this under - once the Democrats took over, you know suggesting ways to do it, and it just seems like it's the leadership's views that the ethics committee and the ethics process be toothless, and it is.
LAMB: How much does the public care about all of this?
FITTON: Well, every time this raises an issue, the political party on the wrong end of it always loses, so I think they care a lot about it.
LAMB: And what is your situation over the years when it comes to fundraising? Are you doing better this year than before or you been hit by this overall economic situation in the country?
FITTON: We're doing - we're doing pretty well. We want to do better, but there's an intense interest in what's going on here in Washington, and I think there's a sense out there among many Americans, or at least Americans who are likely to support us, that the government's out of control, that it's acting capriciously and lawlessly and that the Republican Party is out to lunch in terms of presenting any real opposition and real check. The Democrats, obviously, are - have their political chips in with the administration, and so they see that the value of an independent interest group, and independent group like Judicial Watch, trying to hold members of both parties to account, and with our government doing things that are right with corruption in terms of the size and scope and lack of control, I think people perceive our role as more important than ever, and our contributions are beginning to reflect that, and I keep my fingers crossed on that.
LAMB: So you earlier mentioned the late great Paul Weyrich who has been in that chair, by the way, three or four years ago. Why do you say great? What was great about Paul Weyrich ? FITTON: Oh, Paul was the founding father of the conservative movement. He founded it in a number of organizations. He helped numerous people get involved in politics and the public policy process. He was unafraid to criticize politicians who supposedly were on his side, and you know as a result, you know he told truth to power, and it wasn't just for political read so they're based on principle.
Can you remember a moment behind the scenes, where you saw Paul Weyrich tell off a politician?
FITTON: Well, I don't - oh, yes, every time he …
LAMB: Give us an example on here.
FITTON: Well, you know I have a better example because it talked about his insights. It was back when I first met him, and I met him - he was affiliated with the organization I first worked for, so he did help me get my start.
LAMB: Which one?
FITTON: International Policy Forum, and we were overseas at a meeting, and news came down that the - I forget who Justice Souter replaced, who's seat he filled at the Supreme Court. Oh, anyway, that opening …
LAMB: No, I don't remember either.
FITTON: And I don't remember either.
LAMB: But the guessing game brought us to the end of the show, so …
FITTON: So the Supreme Court nomination, it was Bush's opportunity, and I asked Paul Weyrich, I said, well, who do you think President Bush is going to appoint, and he said a Yankee just like himself, a New England Yankee just like himself, and he said as direct and without much respect, and sure enough, it was Souter, and he was right on the money. So I remember that story, and that always stuck with me. It's like, well, this guy is someone to pay attention to because he knows what's up, and everyone's famous for making predications, but few are - few in Washington - or people bank on making predictions in Washington, but you know when Paul spoke and predicted the outcome of certain political conflicts and public policy to dates, it struck me that he had credibility.
LAMB: So as you look back on your own life, are there people that you would credit with sending you in this direction?
FITTON: Oh, sure. My parents, their public policy activism. They brought me down here many times for the pro life marches, and so I became attuned …
LAMB: Is that a part of the church?
FITTON: No, it was just a part of the Right to Life Movement up in New York, which was - New York was one of the first states that had abortion on demand. So you know my folks were active and mother active also from the early 70s on. So you know I grew up in that. And so as a result, I am sensitive to politics, and I went to George Washington, in the winning days of the Reagan Administration, and I saw how Judge Bork was treated and I fell in with the conservative movement and Mort Blackwell and Reed Irvine and Paul Weyrich and now Judicial Watch. So I think concerters would do well to focus on those folks who are active in the movement who get things done and understand that the politicians are often not as important as they may think they are. They're - I see them as tools, and sometimes they're bad tools, and sometimes they're good tools, but - and it doesn't mean they're not good people and they don't have strong views, but it's - in my view, it's the everyday citizen, it's the activists, it's the people who spend time thinking about public policy all the time without wondering about running for office that can have the greatest impact and I think are the most important.
LAMB: How long do you plan to keep in this?
FITTON: For as long as they'll let me at Judicial Watch. I think everyday presents new opportunities. There isn't a day that goes by where there isn't an issue worth looking into or worth thinking about. You know as long as the government - as long as we have a government, we're going to have corruption, and as long as we have a huge government like we do now, the corruption's even worse. And as I said, I don't think anyone else is doing what we're doing as consistently, as methodically and as - in terms of sheer volume of work in terms of combating government corruption, and I meant hat on the left and the right. It doesn't mean that other groups aren't doing good work along those lines, but we're number 1 as long as there's - Americans see the need to combat government corruption, we're going to be around, and I'll have to be around as well.
LAMB: What can people find on your web site, and what's the address?
FITTON: It's - the Web site is judicialwatch.org, and people can find our press releases which analyze the documents that we uncover, the FOIA documents themselves, the links to the 9/11 video that we talked about, links to the bank documents we talked about, links to all sorts of interesting FOIA documents that we uncover. I encourage people to sign up for my weekly update which I try to give a weekly play-by-play about what we're doing and what issues are important at the web site, and we also have a blog I have to put a blog for. It's Corruption Chronicles Blog, our writer Arine Garcia a former reporter with the LA Times monitors corruption going ons and reports on them. We don't necessarily do investigations of everything that's going on out there, but we do try to track it through the blog and get people a way of, again, finding out what their governor's up to for - in many in ways for ill.
LAMB: Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, we're out of time. And thank you very much.
FITTON: Hey, thank you, Brian.END