The New York Times notes the death at age 100 in Atlanta of Randolph Thrower, “a Republican lawyer who headed the IRS under President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1971 before losing his job for resisting White House efforts to punish its enemies through tax audits.” When White House staffers began pressuring Mr. Thrower to apply hostile tax scrutiny to the Administration’s critics, including journalists and Senators, he assumed President Nixon had no knowledge of what was happening and requested a meeting with the chief executive so as to warn him. Instead he was summarily fired, with the White House putting out the story that Thrower had departed “for personal reasons.”

In White House tapes and memos released in later years, Nixon described the situation differently. “May I simply reiterate for the record that I wish Randolph Thrower, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, removed at the earliest feasible opportunity,” he wrote on Jan. 21, 1971, five days before the White House announced that Mr. Thrower was stepping down.


That May, as the administration continued to look for a successor to Mr. Thrower, Nixon made clear what kind of IRS commissioner he wanted. “I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch,” he was recorded as saying, “that he will do what he is told, that every income tax return I want to see I see” and “that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends.”

It’s a good thing Nixon isn’t in power any more.