Silly me, I thought the independent investigator looking into Henry Cisneros had wrapped up his probe a long time ago. I wasn’t even close.
Nearly a decade after he was appointed to investigate then-Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, independent counsel David M. Barrett spent more than $1.26 million of federal money in the last six months of fiscal 2004, the Government Accountability Office reported yesterday.
Since its inception, the Cisneros investigation has cost nearly $21 million, a total rivaling some of the largest independent counsel investigations in history. Much of the money has gone for pay and benefits, travel, rent and contractors.
Cisneros made a terrible mistake, got caught, and paid a price. Having said that, the fact that this investigation is still ongoing, and that we’re still paying for it, is sheer lunacy.
In case you don’t recall all the details, Cisneros, as mayor of San Antonio in the 1980s, had an extramarital relationship with a woman named Linda Medlar, with whom he worked in city government. After the public learned of the affair in 1988, Cisneros didn’t run for re-election.
Cisneros started to rehabilitate his career in 1992 when Bill Clinton asked him to serve in his cabinet as Secretary of Housing Urban Development. Like all cabinet nominees, Cisneros was given an FBI background check before he was confirmed by the Senate. He acknowledged the affair and even admitted that he had paid Medlar in exchange for her silence during their relationship, but misled investigators about how much he paid the woman.
An independent investigator, David Barrett, began a relentless inquiry, leading a full-time staff of 30 federal investigators and spending three years (and $9 million) to unveil the truth — that Cisneros low-balled the FBI about the size of the payments. Cisneros plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and paid a fine of $10,000. He left Clinton’s cabinet and returned to San Antonio.
That was seven years ago. Captain Ahab is still on the job.
Apparently, Barrett isn’t even looking into Cisneros anymore; now the investigation deals with whether anyone at the Clinton White House conspired to interfere with his inquisition. Barrett apparently hasn’t found any proof to bolster his suspicions, but he’s spending about $2 million a year (of our money) checking anyway, just in case something turns up.
Putting Barrett’s spending in context, Patrick Fitzgerald, who’s heading up an ongoing White House criminal investigation about events that took place in 2003, is spending less than half of what Barrett is spending to investigate an incident that occurred more than a decade ago before the accused even served in a presidential administration.
And who is this grand inquisitor, who doesn’t know when to pack up and go home? Barrett was a HUD employee in the Reagan administration who — get this — was questioned by prosecutors as part of a criminal investigation into influence peddling at the agency. Why this man was chosen to head up an “independent” investigation of Cisneros remains a mystery.
Barrett “would not seem to most people to be an ‘A’ choice,” said Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity. “Why he was chosen is frankly mystifying.” Barrett’s history of being “deeply enmeshed in the housing contract culture,” Lewis said, makes for a “peculiar juxtaposition” with his current role.
When Barrett was tapped for the Cisneros investigation, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) compared the selection to “appointing the well-fed fox to investigate the missing hens at the chicken coop.” Lantos probably had no idea at the time how very right he was.