Tammany was a triumvirate between the mayor’s office, the Democratic Party and a club that took its name from an Indian. They did things that became the hallmark of corrupt government.

While Tammany Hall may have died in New York City, its principles are alive and well in many other levels of government. What they did is worth remembering since much of it can still be found in today’s political arena.

Besides getting the dead to vote, just one of the many other tricks pulled by Tammany was to give a “pass” to immigrants, pushing them through citizenship just prior to an election. The idea here was that most of the migrants studying to pass citizenship tests and requirements, particularly those right off the boat at Ellis Island, would become democrats if they got immediate help from the party. Tammany not only expedited their citizenship but set up booths with party registration forms right outside the courtrooms where these new citizens had just been sworn in.

Today

David Schippers, Chief Investigative Counsel for the Clinton Impeachment, in his book “Sell Out,” points out how his investigative staff found instances of this same sort of recruitment in the 1996 election year. While organizing and awaiting the Kenneth Starr report, his staff investigated instances of this corruption by the Clinton Administration and probably would have also brought charges on this matter had they been given more time. He claims that the same thing is probably going on in front of the 2000 elections.

“My staff and I agreed that we needed to focus on the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which appeared to be running out of control.

By the time we came to the subject, investigations by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and congressional committees had already indicated that the White House used the INS to further its political agenda. A blatant politicization of the agency took place during the 1996 presidential campaign when the White House pressured the INS into expediting its ‘Citizenship USA’ (CUSA) program to grant citizenship to thousands of aliens that the White House counted as likely Democratic voters. To ensure maximum impact, the INS concentrated on aliens in key states—California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Texas—that hold a combined 181 electoral votes, just 89 short of the total needed to win the election.”

Mr. Schippers, a civilian attorney from Chicago and a democrat himself, goes on to detail exactly how the INS was coerced into bypassing its own rules for citizenship. Investigations into the background of applicants by the FBI were set aside. A result was the very real possibility that thousand of immigrants with criminal records were given citizenship simply because backgrounds and even their fingerprints were never checked.

And guess who was in charge of this 1996 operation. Vice President Al Gore.