Money worries led to meltdown in White House

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 21, 1997 | by Gary Aldrich

The 1996 presidential election cycle had neither beginning nor end for President Clinton. In his recent autobiography, Democratic political consultant and maven Dick Morris tells us why.

The Morris Plan, as I call it, demanded an unprecedented strategy -- tens of millions of dollars had to be raised to pay for an 18-month television campaign blitz. Using the same ruthless standards of ethical expediency applied in the early years of the administration, Clinton's team set about the task of raising enough money to rescue the president from political oblivion.

The Clinton White House, always less-than-rigorous about national security issues, became even more reckless when the Morris Plan took effect in 1995. Despite Clinton's vow in August 1995 that there would be "no more money for access" to the president, and despite clear warnings from the FBI and Justice Department officials to National Security Council staff and members of Congress about attempts by the People's Republic of China, or PRC, to buy influence at the White House and on Capitol Hill, the cavalcade of national-security disasters continues to unfold. Consider some recent developments:

Former Democratic National Committee cochairman Don Fowler publicly apologized several days after the 1996 presidential election for "serious mistakes" made in DNC fund-raising from foreign sources. "No one intended to break the law; the process simply allowed mistakes to happen," he said. The "process" followed by the DNC and Clinton White House consisted of a total failure to conduct background checks on foreign contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh have asserted that NSC staffers were briefed on PRC political influence-peddling. Reno told the Wall Street Journal that the matter was important enough for her to place a direct phone call to then-National Security Adviser Tony Lake. Both Clinton and Lake deny receiving any intelligence information on the matter, Clinton admitting only that the FBI briefed his national-security aides on condition they not report the information to their superiors.

That the FBI would instruct lower-level White House employees to keep quiet about sensitive matters is absurd. FBI notification procedures, as well as the specific methods of operation used by trained FBI investigators, are very nearly set in stone.

Freeh recently told the Senate Foreign Operations subcommittee that the Justice Department is expanding its ongoing investigation into alleged PRC political activities during the 1996 elections. Freeh told the subcommittee that the allegations involving the PRC were not the first time critical intelligence information failed to reach top policymakers in the White House, despite FBI briefings. For Clinton and Lake, not knowing or appearing to not know critical information affords the luxury of plausible deniability. Either way, the Morris Plan demanded fund-raising first and questions later.

So great was the Clinton White House emphasis on maximizing fundraising that all other matters were considered secondary. In a recently uncovered White House memo by Deputy Chief of Staff Evelyn Lieberman on Jan. 19, 1996, outlining fund-raising activities, she writes, "[S]taff who routinely brief the president will be asked to be flexible during this period and accept that their briefings may be considerably truncated or eliminated."

The message to the White House staff, presumably including NSC staff, was simple -- don't bother the president while he's fund-raising.

Based on FBI and Justice Department information regarding PRC political activities, did the NSC have good reason to take action in the summer of 1996? If senators and congressmen had been warned, how is it that the president and his senior national security adviser did not know? Either Clinton and Lake have covered up their knowledge or truly did not know, which is unacceptable, dangerous and probably illegal.

The coming months will bring congressional and Justice Department investigations into foreign contributions to the DNC and Clinton campaign. The so-called "smoking gun" will be evidence of the direct connection of such contributions, particularly those linked to interests tied to the PRC (see column by Rep. Duncan Humter, p.28) with official actions by the Clinton administration. The "why" of the apparent White House meltdown is simple -- the Clinton administration needed too much money for too much politicking. With White House security procedures dismantled and the FBI, Secret Service and NSC seemingly in political check, such demands were not a problem -- until now.

Gary Aldrich is a retired FBI special agent and author of Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House. He is an investigative writer and consultant in Northern Virginia.