Rep. Darrel lssa, chairman of powerful House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, made that startling announcement on CNN Sunday morning.
'As late as last week,' he said, 'the [Obama] administration was still trying to say the [IRS targeting scandal] was from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington.'
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Issa told CNN's Candy Crowley that his staff has
interviewed IRS agents from the agency's Cincinnati office who say
Washington, DC headquarters was calling the shots
Tea party activists demonstrated nationwide
against the Internal Revenue Service on May 21. These protesters were in
West Palm Beach, Florida
One of those interviewees said it was 'impossible' for a few IRS agents to have orchestrated such widespread partisan targeting on their own.
'Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for the search [for tea party groups], any more context?' one IRS witness was asked in a closed-door interview.
'He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,' came the reply.
The employee, who said he or she was evaluating 40 such applications for tax-exempt status from conservative organizations at the time, said 'some went to Washington. D.C. ... I sent seven.'
CNN's Crowley heard new information about
interviews that Issa's spokesman explained to MailOnline, along with
helpful portions of transcripts
House Committee On Oversight and Government
Reform Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa has become the lead bulldog on the IRS
matter, holding hearings and supervising interviews of a reported 88
different employees from the agency's Cincinnati, Ohio office where
tax-exempt applications are generally handled
The employee told those congressional investigators that IRS headquarters had also requested two specific cases for review.
Another employee, that witness said, 'wanted to have two cases that she couldn't -- Washington, D.C. wanted them, but she couldn't find the paper. So she requested me, through an email, to find these cases for her and to send them to Washington, D.C.'
'[The] allegation has been made, I think as you have seen in lots of press reports, that there were two rogue agents in Cincinnati that are sort of responsible for all of the issues that we have been talking about today.,' the investigator noted. 'What do you think about those allegations?'
'It's impossible.,' the employee replied. 'As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen.'
Asked whether the problem 'was originated in and contained in the Cincinnati office,' as some Obama administration officials in Washington have claimed, the agent replied that 'I still hear people saying we were low level employees, so we were lower than dirt, according to people in D.C. So, take it for what it is.'
'They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.'
Flummoxed: White House Press Secretary Jay
Carney has foudn himself behind the eight-ball as the Obama
administration struggles to explain how it could possibly have been in
the dark about IRS abuses. On Sunday Issa called him the WHite House's
'paid liar'
Did those directions came from Washington, D.C.? the investigator wanted to know.
'I believe so,' was the answer.
Another Cincinnati IRS employee, whom the oversight committee described Sunday as 'more senior,' told the investigators that he or she applied for another job in July 2010 out of a desire to avoid connections with a program that targeted certain Americans because of their political beliefs.
'It was the whole tea party. It was the whole picture,' the senior agent said.
'I mean, it was the micromanagement. The fact that the subject area was extremely sensitive and it was something that I didn't want to be associated with.'
The IRS dream team: Ousted acting commissioner
Steven Miller (L) and former commissioner Douglas Shulman (R) testified
on Capitol Hill on May 21 about the agency's years-long practice of
targeting applicants for tax-exempt status based on their political
philosophies
'I mean, rogue agent? Even though I was taking all my direction from EO Technical [the Exempt Organizations technical office in Washington, D.C], I didn't want my name in the paper for being this rogue agent for a project I had no control over.'
Three separate congressional committees will hold hearings in the coming week about the IRS scandal, including a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing Monday about the agency's problematic pending of more than $60,000 to produce two comedic videos for employees to watch during a 2010 training conference.
One was a spoof on Star Trek. The other, which the Obama IRS provided to the committee just Friday, consisted of a group line-dancing session peppered with accounting jokes.
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