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.
Barrett was appointed in May 1995 to investigate allegations that Cisneros lied to the FBI about money he paid to a former mistress. Cisneros pleaded guilty in September 1999 and paid a $10,000 fine and a $25 court assessment. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton. By then, Barrett had spent $10.3 million on his investigation, and Congress had allowed the independent counsel law to lapse.
But Barrett stayed in business to investigate whether anyone in the Clinton administration had attempted to obstruct justice during the probe. In July 2001, the three-judge panel gave Barrett permission to continue, but Judge Richard D. Cudahy questioned the expense.
"Whether a cost-benefit analysis at this point would support Mr. Barrett's effort is a question to which I have no answer," Cudahy wrote, noting that Barrett had been spending about $1 million every six months.
The routine audit, conducted every six months, shined a fresh light on a controversy that dominated the latter years of the Clinton administration. During the Clinton years, seven separate independent counsels were empaneled, costing tens of millions of dollars.
Most are out of business, although the investigation once led by Kenneth W. Starr lingers on. According to the GAO, Julie F. Thomas, the third independent counsel to lead the Starr probe, spent $137,700 from April to September 2004, mainly archiving material from the sprawling inquiry into the Whitewater land deal, firings at the White House travel office, Vince Foster's suicide and the Monica S. Lewinsky affair.
Barrett's expenditures are continuing at a pace that surprised even the GAO auditors.
"There can't be a more graphic example of just burning money," said Phil Schiliro, chief of staff of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. "It's indefensible."
Barrett said in an interview yesterday that he could not comment because of a judicial order that has barred him from speaking publicly until he completes his investigation and releases a final report. A source close to the investigation said the 400-page report was finished in August and should be released soon.
In the final six months of fiscal 2003, Barrett spent $839,085. In the first half of 2004, he spent $871,204, and in the most recent six-month span, he was at $1.26 million, a level he had not reached since early 2001.
"There is a trend, and it's not a decline," said Hodge Herry, assistant director of financial management and assurance at the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.
In contrast, the GAO reported, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is conducting an investigation of the leak of an intelligence officer's name, spent $584,899, less than half of Barrett's expenditures. In all of fiscal 2004, Fitzgerald spent $611,491. Barrett spent $2.13 million.
"They're, quote-unquote, writing the final report," Herry said. "That's what we were told."
Last year, Waxman asked the GAO for a month-by-month breakdown of Barrett's $1.77 million of expenditures for fiscal 2003, and demanded that the Justice Department shut down the investigation.
Still, the spending pace has not slackened.
"If this doesn't prove [the independent counsel's] worthlessness as a governmental entity, I don't know what does," said Joseph DiGenova, a Republican lawyer and former independent counsel, who noted that Cisneros has recently taken small steps back into politics.
In March 2003, Barrett's judicial overseers ordered him to close shop and prepare his final report. Herry said Barrett's office told the GAO the current expenditures are associated with the preparation of that report.
But total expenses in the last half of 2004 were not much less than the $1.58 million spent in the final months of 1999, when Cisneros was in court. In the six months ending Sept. 30, 2004, Barrett's office spent $452,888 on pay and benefits, $51,102 on travel, $262,743 on rent and bills, $346,829 on contractors and other experts in areas related to the investigation, and $142,610 on administrative services.
