Do you want to know a secret?

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

The lapse here? Sockowitz failed to sign out or go through a debriefing at Commerce before moving on to his new post. If he had, he probably would have had to surrender his SCI clearance, and then he could not have moved those files.

More recently, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky's SCI and top-secret clearance at the Pentagon continues to raise questions. The White House portrays her as "silly, inappropriate and immature," someone who "ignored her professional duties." If true, how could those conducting a background check miss it? Those charges alone certainly would prevent her from obtaining an SCI clearance, which the Pentagon requested for Lewinsky in April 1996. It was approved Oct. 5, 1996.

That puts the Pentagon on the bubble. Pentagon officials had to give Lewinsky high marks because, if not, what would it say about about security clearances there? Pentagon spokesman Col. Dick Bridges tells Insight, "They did not waive her background check." This means, he says, that investigators interviewed neighbors, White House employees and the whole gamut of people who knew the most intimate details about her. So does the paperwork say they found nothing?

Bridges declines to disclose any paperwork on Lewinsky's background check, which Insight formally requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Some of those records were subpoenaed by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Bridges says simply, "Monica is a highly capable young lady. She was intelligent, articulate and a hard worker. She cleared $13,000 in overtime, working 60 hours a week, including Saturday and Sundays."

Bridges also makes light of the SCI clearanre, noting that about 290,000 Pentagon employees out of 550,000 have secured that grade of clearance. "Her need to know was far less than the access she had"' Bridges says. "Besides, if rumors are true, it would not be a fault of the process" because questions of adultery apparently no longer are part of the process.

A former U.S. Army intelligence officer who conducted hundreds of White House background checks under President Johnson says Lewinsky's apparent lifestyle should have sent "warning lights" out to investigators. The argue that the Lewinsky issue is just about sex is misguided "because it could be something the Russians could use for blackmail to compromise security," the officer says.

But times are changing. Chairman Solomon sees lax security checks as a dangerous road that has led the way for foreign operatives to penetrate national secrets. The New York co recently asked the State Department how four foreigners suspected of drug trafficking were granted visas to enter the United States and subsequently obtained access to Clinton or other senior-ranking officials. One of Solomon's concerns is whether drug money has been laundered into political campaigns. Some of the answers still are to be determined, but evidence recently released from the State Department and obtained by Insight raises still more questions about which Solomon wants answers. These concern: