Arnold Burns
Arnold Burns served as Deputy Attorney General under Edwin Meese and was the senior DOJ official whose private admission to investigators that INSLAW's proprietary rights claim was legitimate became a central finding of the House Judiciary Committee's 1992 INSLAW investigation.
Arnold Burns served as Deputy Attorney General and Edwin Meese's second in command at the DOJ during the Reagan administration. He became a significant figure in two distinct controversies: his admission to DOJ investigators regarding INSLAW's legitimate ownership claims, and his public break with Meese over DOJ's broader conduct.
Role in the INSLAW Case
Burns was among the senior DOJ officials interviewed by the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigators in 1986 in connection with the INSLAW contract dispute. He told OPR that INSLAW's proprietary rights claim to the enhanced version of PROMIS was "legitimate" and that the DOJ "would probably lose the case in court on this issue." His statement was made during a period when DOJ was continuing to litigate aggressively against INSLAW despite internal recognition of the weakness of its legal position.1
The House Judiciary Committee's September 1992 report (House Report 102-857) cited Burns's admission as pivotal evidence. The committee found it "incredible that the Department, having made this determination, would continue to pursue its litigation of these matters." The committee concluded that DOJ attorneys had "proceeded to challenge INSLAW's claims in court even though it knew that these claims were valid and that the Department would most likely lose in court on this issue."1
The Bua Report (1993) interpreted Burns's OPR statement differently, arguing that his comments reflected concern about the difficulty of litigating the proprietary rights issue rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The Bua Report concluded that Burns's statements had been "entirely unwarranted" in the interpretation placed on them by the House Judiciary Committee.2
Resignation from DOJ
Burns and William F. Weld, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, submitted their resignations to President Ronald Reagan on March 29, 1988, after separately meeting with White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker to raise concerns about Edwin Meese's conduct. Both men had reportedly grown frustrated by being sidestepped in Meese's office and by DOJ decisions made without their knowledge regarding investigations into Meese's associates. Their simultaneous resignations were characterized as an unprecedented vote of no confidence in a sitting Attorney General. Senator Robert Byrd called Meese "the crown jewel of Reagan's sleaze factor" and demanded his resignation.3
Sources
- U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report. House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992. ↩
- U.S. Department of Justice. Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc. March 1993. ↩
- Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. TrineDay, 2010. ↩
Local network
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