Filegate unshredded - Bill Clinton White House FBI files scandal - Capital Scene - Column

National Review, July 15, 1996 by Rich Lowry

FROM his perch high on the third tier of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee's stacked hearing room, Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.) is waving his arms and talking of a GOP effort to smear the Clintons. "Isn't it true [that] in conducting an FBI investigation of you," he asks a Republican witness whose FBI file has been obtained by the White House, "you initially granted your consent?" Therefore, Lantos reasons, "these were not files that were obtained without your consent." When the witness tries to reply -- he never, obviously, consented to having a Democratic operative rifle through his FBI file -- Lantos cuts him off, maintaining that he hadn't asked a question. Other Democrats pipe up on Lantos's behalf and he is able to continue uninterrupted. For committee Democrats, it is one of the highlights of the day.

Defending the latest, burgeoning Clinton scandal -- hundreds of Republican FBI files in the hands of the White House security office -- is becoming a barely sustainable exercise in bluff and sophistry for even the best of Clinton partisans. Consider Ann Lewis, one of the Administration's more adroit spinners. In a June 13 memo to "friends," she explained that the FBI-file scandal resulted from a "career civilian employee of the Army" (obfuscation #1) updating White House files with "a computer-generated list from the Secret Service" (#2) that, "we have since learned, included previous Reagan and Bush appointees as well as current employees" (#3). Moreover, Mrs. Lewis suggests, the White House never tried to keep secret the fact that it had the files (#4), and it was Rep. Bill Clinger (R., Pa.) who created the illusion that it had by "demand[ing] a formal assertion of executive privilege that would cover all [Travelgate] documents" (#5).

Just a week later, it had become clear that the Army employee, Tony Marceca, was also a career Democratic hack, who, in league with his supervisor, Craig Livingstone, had a history of ham-handed political skulduggery. The Secret Service explained, meanwhile, that it would have been impossible for it to produce the list of 407 Republican names then in question. A White House spokesman even denied that the Administration had ever invoked the idea of an outdated Secret Service list: "We have never claimed to know where the list came from" (sorry, Mrs. Lewis). The White House, in its negotiations with Mr. Clinger over releasing documents, had never said anything about having confidential FBI files. And the scandal came to light only when, on the day a House vote to hold it in contempt of Congress was scheduled, the White House grudgingly released a thousand pages of Travelgate documents while withholding two thousand more.

The White House handling of the FBI-files controversy is the latest indication that President Clinton's casual mendacity has seeped into the bloodstream of his Administration, defining both its tone and its modus operandi. The fate of any Clinton partisan is to become (witness Ann Lewis) a disseminator of half-truths and evasions, as the latest explanation for the latest foul-up is hauled out for the latest news cycle. In the files scandal, the Clinton cover story was discredited so quickly that the media have been less protective than usual, while congressional Republicans have managed to press their advantage nicely. The controversy promises, if not to bring down the Administration, at least to illustrate its ethical deficiencies dramatically enough that they may finally begin to exact a political price.

At first, Filegate got yawns from the press. On Thursday, June 6, after it was revealed that the White House had obtained the file of former Travel Office head Billy Dale, only the Washington Times led with the story on its front page. The story appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times on pages 4 and 24 respectively. The next day the Washington Times followed up with another front-page story, while Filegate disappeared from the Post and the New York Times entirely. The scandal wouldn't hit the front page of the New York Times for another four days. The TV coverage had a similar lag. According to the Media Research Center, after all the networks (except ABC) covered the initial Dale-file revelation on June 5 they didn't run another story until Saturday, June 8, when Bob Dole attacked Bill Clinton over the issue. Only NBC News ran a story on June 7 when the White House revealed that it had the FBI files of more than three hundred Republicans.

In the second full week of Filegate, the coverage picked up. On the Charlie Rose Show June 18, Meet the Press host Tim Russert explained that "the press feels that they had been manipulated on this whole character, corruption, Whitewater issue." Understandably. On Filegate, the White House at first retailed Marceca's story that he was given an outdated list in August 1993 by departing 24-year security-office employee Nancy Gemmell, who explained the office procedures to him. Livingstone's lawyer talked to her briefly on the phone when the scandal broke and suggested to the press that she would support the White House account. But Nancy Gemmell, a small, soft-spoken, entirely credible woman, testified before Rep. Clinger's committee that she never gave Marceca a list and didn't even know who would be taking over her duties. Instead, she left in a vault a list of active White House passholders that could not possibly have contained the Republican names requested by Marceca.