Do you want to know a secret?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 23, 1998 | by Timothy W. Maier

The charges, which Insight could not confirm, likely will be art of intelligence probe and be included in a similar investigation conducted by the GAO, which began Feb. 13 at the request of House Rules Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon of New York. According to records obtained by Insight, the GAO win study policies and standards for granting White House personnel access to and for the control and dissemination of classified information.

The standard for security clearances has been established by the CIA. In the White House, for example, a candidate fills out an FBI form. Then the FBI conducts a background investigation on the candidate in a file called "raw intelligence." The raw file, which could contain unsubstantiated charges from neighbors, friends or employers, then is evaluated by the White House director of personnel security and is granted a favorable or an unfavorable evaluation.

The GAO is bound to revisit some controversial hires, such as former bartender and bouncer Craig Livingstone, who resigned as White House director of personnel security after it was revealed that he had obtained 900 FBI files on Ronald Reagan and George Bush appointees, and Patsy Thomasson, the former director of White House administration, who proved to have been an associate of convicted drug dealer Dan Lasater.

The FBI urged the White House counsel's office not to hire Livingstone because of what it regarded as his history of illegal drug use, lying about his school record and being fired twice for dishonesty. However, then-white House associate counsel William H. Kennedy III overruled the FBI because, he said, Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted Livingstone on board. In 1993, the CIA granted Livingstone a security clearance -- at a level higher than top secret -- for "special compartmented information," or SCI, which allows access to CIA code-word documents.

Life after Livingstone remains the same, say security insiders. Ex-Commerce Department executive turned Democratic National Committee, or DNC, fund-raiser John Huang, who may have committed economic espionage between January 1994 and December 1995, was granted top-secret clearance six months before he even reported to his Commerce job. According to Solomon, Huang used his clearance to access classified information that he allegedly shared with the Indonesia-based Lippo Group. Not surprisingly, Huang chose not to pursue SCI clearance. A more thorough background check would have been required. Besides, Huang already was being briefed by CIA agents. Shortly after those meetings he was talking to Beijing-connected Lippo, which he had served as vice president.

Then there's former Commerce attorney Ira Sockowitz, who walked out of his office last year with 2,800 pages of intelligence documents so sensitive that the security breech threatened to put the National Security Agency out of business because the files included information about encryption chips that safeguarded computers. Sockowitz transferred the papers to his new office at the Small Business Administration, which he eventually left to pursue an international-consulting business. The contents of those classified records certainly could be an asset to Sockowitz's new line of work.