|
 t
the request of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy,
the FBI has begun an investigation of allegations made by former
conservative writer David Brock against Terry Wooten, a Bush White
House nominee to the United States District Court in South Carolina.
Last August,
Brock sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee accusing Wooten of
illegally giving out secret FBI files in the early 1990s, when Wooten
was a top aide to Republicans on the committee. At the time, Brock
was writing a book that was highly critical of Anita Hill, the woman
who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
Brock, who has disavowed much of his old work and has admitted to
knowingly publishing false information about the Thomas case, said
Wooten gave him FBI material on Angela Wright, a woman who has said
she was harassed by Thomas but did not testify at Thomas's confirmation
hearings.
In his letter
to the committee, Brock said, "Mr. Wooten handed me copies
of several pages of Ms. Wright's raw FBI file....I removed the FBI
material from his office and took it to my house in Northwest Washington,
where I was writing the book."
At his confirmation
hearing in late August, Wooten denied Brock's charge. "There
is not one scintilla or one iota of truth to that allegation,"
he told the committee. A Washington Post account of the hearing
reported that Leahy "indicated that he believed Wooten would
be confirmed."
But on September
17, when much of the committee was deeply involved in antiterrorism
legislation, Leahy sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft
requesting an FBI investigation of Brock's story. "This is
a serious allegation requiring further investigation," Leahy
wrote, adding that "the committee cannot continue to process
[Wooten's] nomination without further investigation..."
One of the
issues apparently involved in the probe is whether Brock has any
documentary evidence to back up his accusations. It is not clear
whether Brock has provided anything to the committee, but FBI agents
have contacted R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the editor-in-chief of the
Spectator, as well as Terry Eastland, the magazine's former
publisher, to ask them if they know the whereabouts of Brock's notes.
When Brock
and the magazine parted ways in late 1997, he left several boxes
of materials at the Spectator's offices in Arlington, Virginia.
The magazine's management sent him a number of written requests
to pick up the materials. After several months, when Brock had not
responded to the inquiries, the management threw the materials away.
The FBI has asked Tyrrell and Eastland if they knew what was in
the boxes, but it appears that neither they nor anyone else at the
magazine knew the boxes' contents. Also, it is not known whether
any of Brock's materials were sent to the Hoover Institution, which
is handling much of the Spectator's archives.
Finally, it
is not clear how extensive the FBI investigation will be —
and how long Wooten's confirmation will be delayed. Leahy's letter
to the Justice Department asks only that the FBI interview Brock,
Wooten, and "any other individuals as the Bureau deems necessary."
Byron
York was a writer for The American Spectator from 1996 to
2000.
|
