President Kennedy Urges “Aggressive” IRS Investigation of Political Groups
In the summer and fall of 1963, President John Kennedy publicly attacked right-wing political groups that had criticized his administration, and he raised questions about the tax-exempt status of these groups. On this day, he communicated privately with the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service IRS) and urged him to be “aggressive” in investigating political groups, adding that they should be on both sides of the political spectrum.
Within the IRS, the effort became known as the Ideological Organizations Project. The Kennedy administration’s investigations of political groups by the IRS was exposed by the Senate Church Committee investigations in 1975-1976. (See the report on the IRA in report, Book III, below.)
Kennedy’s efforts in this regard are important because similar abuses of government agencies by President Richard Nixon were part of the Articles of Impeachment against Nixon, on July 27, 1974. Democratic Party presidents, in this case Kennedy, also misused the intelligence agencies and other federal agencies. President Lyndon Johnson, for example, issued two orders limiting wiretapping, but secretly received information based on FBI wiretaps had the FBI investigate and/or wiretap opponents.
Learn more from the Senate Church Committee report on the misuse of the IRS (pp. 835–920): http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_book3.htm
For more on President Kennedy’s Civil Liberties record: Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama (2012)