Davis,S. Unbridled Power. 1998

Davis, Shelley L. Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS. New York: HarperBusiness (HarperCollins), 1998. 284 pages.

Shelley Davis was only 12 years old in 1968, which explains why she ended up as a yuppie civil servant, working in the Pentagon with a security clearance. Perhaps she was rebelling against her father, an antiwar college professor in Nebraska who had tied black armbands on her. Davis actually claims the Pentagon is not so bad, but that's after comparing it with the Internal Revenue Service. Upon leaving her Pentagon job in 1988, Davis spent seven years at the IRS as its first (and last) historian.

This book is a humorous and well-written study of bureaucratic lunacy and self-serving duplicity, and should be read by anyone considering a career in government. More interestingly, Davis had access to IRS files from the COINTELPRO days, when Nixon put pressure on the IRS to go after his enemies. By 1972 an IRS strike force had files on 11,000 organizations and individuals. These targets, according to IRS thug Paul Wright, "through insidious methods have collaborated to form a revolutionary force." An FBI agent blew the whistle in 1970, but few noticed. Then John Dean mentioned it in his 1973 testimony, and said something about Nixon's "enemies list." The media went ape over these two words, and missed the real story. Davis points out that the IRS hit list was ten times larger than Nixon's list. Moreover, the IRS is supposed to be a nonpartisan agency.
ISBN 0-06-097743-4