For the first time in its inglorious history, Planned Parenthood is facing criminal charges. These originated with a case former Johnson County, Kan., District Attorney Phill Kline filed in 2007, charging Planned Parenthood’s suburban Kansas City clinic with, among other things, 23 felonies for falsifying copies of abortion reports.The pre-trial hearing on this case, now being managed by current Johnson County DA Steve Howe, was to have taken place this past Monday. That was not to be.
Last Friday, Howe’s office asked for – and was granted – a postponement after learning that the key records had been shredded years ago by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE).
This shredding took place in 2005 when the KDHE was under the aegis of then-governor and now Obama Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. At the time, Kansas reigned unchallenged as the nation’s late-term abortion capital.
The Kansas City Star has rushed to the defense of Planned Parenthood. This has surprised no one. In 2006, Planned Parenthood had honored the Star with its top editorial honor, the “Maggie,” for its work in defeating Kline’s bid to be re-elected Kansas attorney general.
In one single paragraph, Star apologist Barbara Shelly managed to make more mistakes than some columnists make in a lifetime. Writes Shelly, the editorial page editor: “It turns out the documents being sought, which Planned Parenthood submitted to the clinic in 2003, were shredded in 2005 as part of an approved protocol used by the department for years. The records were long gone when Kline filed charges in 2007.”
For starters, Planned Parenthood did not submit these records to “the clinic.” Rather, its clinic submitted these records as required to the KDHE, which reported to Sebelius.
Yes, these records were shredded in 2005, but by this time they were already key evidence in a criminal investigation against Planned Parenthood. The Sebelius administration knew this.
In 2003, Kline, then attorney general, sought to obtain records from two Sebelius-controlled agencies, Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS), which receives reports of child sexual abuse, and KDHE, which receives compliance reports regarding abortions.
According to Kline, Sebelius closely monitored his investigation into the enforcement of Kansas laws regarding child rape and late-term abortion violations as these were major campaign issues in 2002 and would likely be again in 2006.
When Kline’s attorneys approached SRS for help in its investigation, the agency balked. When a judge reviewed Kline’s case, he found reasonable cause to believe SRS records contained evidence of criminal activity, and he subpoenaed the records. The Sebelius administration fought the subpoenas.
By the summer of 2004, Kline finally received what he needed from SRS. The records showed that during a time when 166 abortions were performed on children under 14 in Kansas, only two of the cases had been reported to SRS as evidence of child sexual abuse. All 166 of them should have been.
To verify that Planned Parenthood performed some or all of these abortions, Kline needed the information in the KDHE reports. These were created by statute for the purpose of aiding law enforcement.
The reports are not medical records. Nor do they contain patient names. They are, however, coded in such a way that, with KDHE’s assistance, investigators could identify the clinic that performed a given abortion.
In late May 2004, District Court Judge Richard Anderson, a Democrat, subpoenaed the KDHE compliance reports, and KDHE resisted vigorously. In June, Anderson denied KDHE’s motion to quash the subpoena and ordered that copies of the records be produced.
In late June 2004, KDHE produced copies of the subpoenaed records. Only a Star reporter could believe that these same records were innocently and routinely shredded in 2005.
In July 2004, Kline received an unwelcome surprise when the Washington-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) sued him as a way of challenging Kansas’s mandatory reporting laws.
Kline has long wondered how CRR knew enough to file suit. The subpoenas ordered by the court were to be kept secret. He believes that Sebelius, in violation of court order, tipped CRR off. The timing of the suit certainly raises that possibility.
Encouraged by the CRR lawsuit, KDHE quickly filed a new motion for a stay of the subpoenas and a return of the file copies that Kline had secured. Judge Anderson denied KDHE’s motion.
At this point, the Sebelius administration had to be worried. The evidence Kline had gathered could potentially cost Planned Parenthood, a key political ally, $350 million a year in federal funding if convicted of failure to report child rape.
Kline’s investigators isolated the codes of the two abortion clinic that were performing abortions on girls 14 and under. When they requested the coding information to identify the clinics, KDHE again refused to cooperate.
And again Judge Anderson had to intervene to force KDHE to do its job. The clinics in question, to no one’s great surprise, proved to be George Tiller’s in Wichita and Planned Parenthood’s in Johnson County.
In October 2004, Anderson found probable cause that the records at both clinics contained evidence of crimes and promptly subpoenaed individual case files. Predictably, the clinics filed a motion to quash, which was denied.
Now the clinics and the Sebelius administration knew Kline’s office was zeroing in on some inconvenient truths. And so the clinics took their fight to the Sebelius-friendly Kansas Supreme Court. This move initiated some of the most bizarre legal shenanigans of any criminal case ever, but that is a story for another day.
It was at the height of this tense legal battle that the KDHE under Sebelius started to destroy the original documents, and it did so without any notification to the court or to investigators.
This would not have been a problem in itself if the copies KDHE had originally produced for Kline, already validated for court use, were available, but they are not.
When Kline left office in January 2007, he gave those copies to Judge Anderson for safekeeping. Paul Morrison, Kline’s successor as AG, promptly requested the copies from Anderson.
Sebelius had persuaded Morrison, the Republican Johnson County DA, to switch parties and run against Kline. With nearly 2 million in indirect backing from Tiller and the enthusiastic support of the Star, Morrison won. (NOlathe note: Within one year Morrison resigned following a number of documented ethical and legal charges including the illegal use of FBI data files to investigate political foes and an adulterous affair with a staff member in Johnson County.)
What Sebelius did not expect was that the Republican precinct captains of Johnson County would elect Kline to complete Morrison’s term as DA in Planned Parenthood’s home. As DA, Kline was able to make his own copies of the KDHE records and take them back to Johnson County.
No sooner did Kline do that than Morrison asked Judge Anderson to order Kline to return those copies. Anderson refused, telling Morrison that Kline’s evidence against Planned Parenthood was strong.
Morrison responded by holding an improbable press conference at which he announced that Planned Parenthood had done nothing wrong. He then joined Planned Parenthood in secret lawsuits suing both Kline and Anderson.
In May 2007 – a month after Judge Anderson told Morrison’s office, “There is evidence of crimes in the records that need to be evaluated” – Planned Parenthood held a gala fundraiser in Kansas City to celebrate Sebelius’s birthday.
Now back in Johnson County, Kline had the opportunity to review the KDHE records. In doing so, he realized that Planned Parenthood had apparently falsified copies of the records it sent to KDHE.
Prior to filing the charges, Kline had to show the evidence to Anderson. Anderson had the Topeka PD document expert check the records and promptly found probable cause. In October 2007, Kline charged Planned Parenthood with committing 107 criminal acts, including the 23 felonies of manufacturing documents.
The question the Star should be asking now is this: Where are the validated KDHE records Morrison received from Judge Anderson? Right now, no one is saying. Were they, too, “routinely” shredded?
The copies of the copies that Kline kept in the Johnson County DA’s office can be used in court, but establishing their chain of custody is difficult and time-consuming. This is what Johnson County DA Howe must do to move the case forward.
Planned Parenthood is sitting on this $350 million Shreddergate powder keg. It remains to be seen what Sebelius and friends can do other than duck for cover.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=360517
23 comments
Patricia Biancaniello
Yesterday, 10:58 a.m.
This is another step in the undermining of democracy in our country. We are rapidly becoming the nations we condemned. The past few years have brought us closer to the standards set by the Soviet Union than any standards envisioned by founders of this nation.
John
Yesterday, 11:22 a.m.
I’m sure it’s a huge coincidence that this happens at the same time the FBI is rolling out it’s new “next generation” database that’s designed to “track people’s movements.” And just as the “Arab Spring” is winding down. And just as people are starting to push for openness on the economy. And…
Wow.
If the system isn’t open to inspection, there’s no accountability.
The White House, meanwhile, is ahead of this possibility, by calling for higher security in a “fast-tracked” Executive Order:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/07/executive-order-structural-reforms-improve-security-classified-networks-
Why? Well, draw your own conclusions, but it’s referred to as “The WikiLeaks Order.”
Interesting, though, that when any of us demands privacy, we’re informed that only the guilty have anything to hide…
Sauer Kraut
Yesterday, 12:22 p.m.
FOIA has long been abused by government bureaucrats who are unwilling to abide by its provisions. A person submitting a request should have absolutely no expectation of anything but a rote response within the mandated response period; any responsive documents can take 2 or more years to arrive.
Responses may state that certain categories of requested documents cannot be found or the they are included, only to be respectively included or not included. And no one polices FOIA.
The entire FOIA statute needs to be reworked as the current critter simply does not work.
Rick
Yesterday, 3 p.m.
It should be called the Freedom of No-Information Act.
Scott Bartz
Yesterday, 3:07 p.m.
The Department of Justice, the organization responsible for enforcing the FOIA, is the biggest violator of the Act.
While researching the 1982 Tylenol murders, I sent FOIA requests to local, state, and federal law enforcement FOIA officers who clearly had no intention of honoring my requests.
http://americanfraud.com/FOIARequests.aspx
The FOIA requires documents of historical significance to be declassified after 25 years. But my FOIA requests, coming 28 years after the the Tylenol murders, were denied. The reasons given for these denials consisted of bureaucratic rhetoric intended to meet the legal technicalities required to deny the requests. The denials did not stem from any common sense analysis of the effect that the release of the requested documents would have on solving the crimes.
Barbara Flores
Yesterday, 3:11 p.m.
Amazing that the media constantly attributes Obama’s low approval ratings to the economy when in fact he and his dept of justice have disappointed and disregarded so many rights we thought we had.
Add up a few disappointed voters about this issue, a few disappointed Hispanics, a few LG.. people who saw promises to them go unfulfilled, drone attacks, murdering our enemies when he condemns torture, hiring Wall Street wizards who didn’t see or care about what was imminent to advise him and on and on. His record is dismal on so many fronts and now this from an administration that trumpeted transparency. It’s crazy – the man is a megalomaniac and still frustrated Democrats will come to his defense.
Mary
Yesterday, 3:45 p.m.
So all the information about and evidence of Administrative crimes can be buried, not just classified. And if there’s no acknowledgment it ever existed, like the torture tapes and all those pictures of crimes that were never prosecuted that Obama is sitting on, you can re-write history any way you want. In many ways – he’s been a much more disturbingly bad man than Bush. I know it’s too much to ask for – a good man or a basically good man or even a *not evil* man, but can’t we at least get a *evil, but not disturbingly evil* option?
*sigh*
Sgt. Barefoot
Yesterday, 4:55 p.m.
Ask no questions and you get no lies. Seek the truth by knowing it can often be stranger than fiction. Dealing with the Government could be described as like “kissing a cobra” when pied piper finishes his song its time to run for the hills!
Giborah
Yesterday, 5:17 p.m.
I am so scared. I might be gone before the worst of this kicks in—but maybe not; it is happening so fast. But my children and their children will be living in the nightmare world of “l984” unless we can get our country back.
Many of us voted for Obama because of the unbelievable alternative, but also because we believed his soaring rhetoric. And we may be stuck with another four years, because the alternative is so much worse this time. The nominees consist of certifiable nut cases, political whores, and Jesus freaks. Rank and file Republicans are fleeing the far-Right caucuses within the Congress because they are justifiably afraid of losing their seats if they remain identified with these Mad Dogs.
What’s even worse, is that some Democrats have actually voted for such quintessentially far-Right Republican bills as the recent one that forbids hospitals to perform an abortion on a woman admitted to the emergency ward—effectively condemning her to death. This is really hard to understand. I assume they think THEIR woman would not be allowed to die? So they are an elite, better than the rest of us?
The Founders must be spinning in their graves. What can stop the destruction of the magnificent structure they left to us? Yes, I am scared.
Connie Sloan
Yesterday, 6:13 p.m.
A FOIA was made to the FBI for some records. It took the FBI over four (4) years to respond to the FOIA request. Amazingly, we got the records (over 2,000 pages) two weeks AFTER the requester’s death. AND, looking at the dates the FBI made the copies, those records could have been returned within two months!
The records, except for two pages, were redacted in their entirety! All that was received were pages with “To”, “From”, “Subject”, etc., and a whole bunch of initials from different people.
Jeff Brodhead
Yesterday, 6:25 p.m.
Hey Commie idiots at the “ACLU”, “government integrity” Is an oxymoron!
While I agree this is a bad thing – so is the “ACLU”!
Dear America, aren’t you tired of your MIS-REPRESENTATIVES IN DC?
Time to flush ‘em all, including the “judicial branch”.
chandler
Yesterday, 7:05 p.m.
and now julian assanges postings are unfunded so we will know less.
Walter D. Shutter, Jr.
Yesterday, 7:31 p.m.
So much for the “transparent” Admistration of the 44th POTUS. Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss.
The more things change, the more they remain the same…Etc.
Seriously, though, I read a lot of comments on various political and news sites like ProPublica(and worse) and it appears to me that the one thing that is common to almost all of the comments is that the commentators would like the government to DO SOMETHING to make things “better”, and if that means a bigger, more powerful government, then so be it. They fail to see the obvious: The government large enough and powerful enough to help you is large enough and powerful enough to hurt you. And government, if left to its own devices, will always grow larger and more powerful…and more arrogant with its new power.
We the governed, sometimes AKA the electorate, are expected to elect representatives to control this leviathan. Those folks aspiring to be representatives are called candidates for public office. They solicit our votes thusly: ” Elect me and together we will do SOMETHING to make things better” But it never works out.
If you are outraged about the abuse of government power, consider this: A smaller, less powerful government would necessarily have less power to abuse and would consequently abuse the people less. My proof? I have had both large and small dogs over my lifetime and I have observed that large dogs tend to discharge turds which are larger than those discharged by small dogs. Am I comparing dogs to governments? Sadly, only with respect to their excrement. Dogs are loyal to their masters all the time, while governments are rarely loyal to their citizens, and then only when it suits them.
So then, are there there any candidates for public office out there who are in favor of smaller, less powerful government? I can think of only one for sure.
RON PAUL IN 2012!
Eric Forat
Yesterday, 9:22 p.m.
Kafka is baaaaack! and he comes wih big brother…
Dana
Yesterday, 9:38 p.m.
Some of you should really read the FOIA statute; there is already a provision in the FOIA which allows this, it’s called an Exclusion and there are three of them. Exclusions C1, C2 and C3.
Peter Aleff
Today, 8 a.m.
For an example of blatant lying by the FOIA office at the National Institutes of Health, see http://retinopathyofprematurity.org/bioethicsconsent.htm for a letter in which their Director of News Services tries to tell me that the “informed consent forms” for a recent medical child suffocation experiment cannot be found and “are not required to be provided to the NIH as part of the grant application or management process” although the Federal Regulations forbid funding any experiment unless the regulations for informed consent have been complied with. In the case at hand, no parent of the children so suffocated could have consented to their intentional asphyxiation which was not in the interest of these children.
For the callous cruelty of this illegal experiment worthy of Nazi doctors that killed 23 premature babies and that the NIH is trying to cover up, see http://www.retinopathyofprematurity.org/BioethicsOwnViolations.htm.
Ron
Today, 8:53 a.m.
FOIALAINCA: Freedom Of Information As Long As It’s Not Condemning Act.
John
Today, 10:09 a.m.
I only buy that argument to a point, Walter, because the government (such as it is) is pretty much the only thing preventing the banks from confiscating the land, the energy companies from deciding who is allowed to survive the winter, and the media companies from rewriting history. The megacorporations not only have no reason to protect us, but are obligated by design to exploit us.
The problem is that government (especially our government, founded specifically on such principles) needs to serve the people and fear the consequences of ignoring their duties. The people in government need to realize that (or be forced into a position where) their employment depends on our prosperity.
Ron Paul is a useful man to have around, because I think he understands a lot of the problems. But I don’t think he’s the man to go to for solutions. His proposed solutions recall the events leading to Coxey’s March, the exodus from Europe to the Americas, and the rise of the worst dictatorships around the world.
The country needs a banking and money system that’s beholden to the people, not to profit. We need a job policy that favors jobs on American soil. We need to drive medical costs down to where only the deathly ill require insurance. We need companies to stop selling surveillance and suppression technology to oppressive governments, presumably as trial runs to be used against us. And, much as it pains me to say so, only a government has the resources to make it happen and no profit motivation to avoid it.
bryan
Today, 1:01 p.m.
Why didn’t you publish my comments?
Barbara Flores
Today, 1:27 p.m.
Why do so many of us refer to “the government” as if it is a monolithic creature that sprang up out of nowhere. It is the individuals who are charged with, and have promised to, reform the government with whom we should be upset. It is the chiefs who set the tone of any organization. Something about where the buck stops. I’m sure it is difficult for those who adored Obama to face up to it, he isn’t what we thought he was. The posted comments are all fulminnating against the executive branch (not that there isn’t plenty to say about the legislative and judicial). I hope this deep discontent lasts til election day because if this promise breaker is re-elected, I think it will forever end any faith in elected officials and any belief, however, tenuous, among those running for office that they have to be true to their promises.
max
Today, 2:53 p.m.
Does anyone know why the DOJ sought these changes in a final rule? When I was a fed the rule was simple: a request had to be honored within a reasonable amount of time provided the information was available, it was releasable in some form, and the requestor was willing to pay the copying costs, if applicable; or, the request was denied if the records were actually lost or not releasable for national security reasons. Information that was deemed to be “pre-decisional,” e.g., e-mails or paper exchanges that led to a final determination were not releasable. Having a rule that allows officials to lie by saying records do not exist when they do is ridiculous and probably illegal.
MIKE HICKEY
Today, 6:26 p.m.
Obama’s Justice Department is as much interested in “justice” as Bush’s criminal SEC.
MIKE HICKEY
Today, 6:28 p.m.
Obama’s Justice Department is as much interested in “justice” as Bush’s lame SEC.