BOOK REVIEW: ‘Clean House: Exposing our Government’s Secrets and Lies’

OPINION:

CLEAN HOUSE: EXPOSING OUR GOVERNMENT’S SECRETS AND LIES

By Tom Fitton

Threshold Editions, $27, 304 pages

If you have any doubt that our current federal government is so treacherously corrupt that our country is teetering at a tipping point where survival of the liberty of the American people is at peril, read “Clean House” by Tom Fitton.

This is a scary book. Frightening in what it reveals about our government. Upsetting. Alarming. The American people are dozing at dangerous times — and this powerful work is precisely the sort of wake-up call that we must hear to shake us out of our slumber.

So often in recent years when news breaks revealing scandalous corrupt conduct in government, woven into the reporting is the fact that it had been exposed because a group called Judicial Watch had filed a Freedom of Information request, utilizing a post-Watergate law intended to make government more transparent and accountable and to foster integrity.

Seldom mentioned has been how our government had defied the law’s essence with ridiculously lengthy stonewalling. Still less seldom mentioned has been how Judicial Watch had been forced to incur such great expense to fight back against government obstruction by having to file lawsuits that the government deliberately dragged out until, in some cases, a judge eventually had enough with government chicaneries.

Time and time again it was only because Tom Fitton and the Judicial Watch government watchdogs team he leads persisted until they eventually prevailed that we the people were able to learn the truth about outrageous government wrongdoings that corrupt, sleazy schemers had desperately attempted to thwart our ever discovering.

When seeing some truths revealed that demolished what persons in power had sworn to was absolutely not true, you may have wondered why it was neither the news media nor Congress that seemed to be battling so hard to protect us against these corruptions and abuses of government powers instead of Judicial Watch.

Perhaps with the media it’s often because it’s no fun to cause embarrassment to the side for which they’re rooting and terrifying to think they might actually help cause it to suffer a setback.

And Congress? Many of its members confessed to Judicial Watch, Mr. Fitton reports, that they were “embarrassed that its committees and oversight had become a joke under former Speaker John Boehner.” He writes: “Congress is like a fire department that shows up after your house burns down and shouts ’fire.’ “

In battle after battle against government corruption and abuse of power rarely has it been either the media or Congress, both of which have responsibility to the people to perform this vital duty, that led the fight, but rather this staunchly conservative — and just as staunchly nonpartisan — private citizen-run and citizen-funded government watchdog group. Which begs the question: What if Judicial Watch were not standing watch for us?

It was because of Judicial Watch’s relentless investigation and litigation in pursuit of the truth about the Islamic terrorist attack in Benghazi that we learned in such great detail just how brazenly the Obama administration conspired to deliberately lie to the American people. Great credit for knowing that such details documenting the deceptions were buried, awaiting discovery, belongs to Fox News, especially to its Catherine Herridge, who deserves a Pulitzer Prize for her outstanding investigative journalism.

As it was challenging lawless government secrecy surrounding the Obama administration’s Benghazi fiasco, Judicial Watch also uncovered the intimately related scandal that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had recklessly endangered U.S. national security by illegally conducting official business using a secret, unsecure email and server system in an obvious scam to conceal evidence.

Any American who cherishes truth and liberty will be appalled and incensed by what Mr. Fitton exposes in “Clean House” about Benghazi and Mrs. Clinton’s reckless disregard for U.S. national security.

He also just as comprehensively and devastatingly documents why the Obama administration’s terrorism policies are dangerously irresponsible; how current immigration and border enforcement policies have failed miserably and are tantamount to a gateway pass for terrorists to flood into the country (we’ll need troops guarding our border); why Fast and Furious was such a debacle, and why Attorney General Eric Holder clearly committed the crime of perjury; how Congress engaged in out-and-out fraud in covering itself under Obamacare; and how the IRS has become a political campaign adjunct and how the Department of Justice often obstructs justice. What he reveals about the politicalizing of the FBI and U.S. military is frightening.

“Clean House” is well-written, easy-to-follow and packed with a staggering amount of stunning facts — an important work every adult American should read and ponder. It may be full to bursting with truths that are depressing for Americans to discover about our country, but it would be disastrous for us to ignore what it warns — that our country is slipping away from being of, by and for the people.

Tom Fitton and the Judicial Watch team he leads are true American heroes who deserve our gratitude, encouragement and assistance.

• Fred J. Eckert, a former Republican congressman from New York who served as U.S ambassador to Fiji and to the Rome-based U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture, is a published novelist.