As Senate Republicans accused the White House of lying about its handling of FBI background files, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Thursday reversed an earlier order and asked Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to take over the investigation of the matter.
Reno, an appointee of President Clinton, concluded it would be a conflict of interest for the Justice Department to investigate. On Tuesday she had announced that the FBI, an arm of her department, would be put in charge.
She will now ask the special three-judge court that oversees independent counsels to allow the expansion of Starr’s jurisdiction. In a statement, Reno said Starr is willing to inspect how and why 408 files, mostly of Republicans in the Reagan and Bush administrations, improperly ended up in the White House in late 1993 and early 1994.
An internal FBI investigation already has found the sensitive files were collected improperly and that the agency had been too lax in deferring to White House requests for documents.
“This is a deliberate, contrived thing by the White House, and they’ve been caught at it,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), underscoring the GOP portrayal of the Clinton administration as untrustworthy.
Even some Democrats are chagrined. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) said there is evidence of an “abuse of power” by the White House in the matter and urged administration officials to answer all questions.
“I am not suggesting (the abuse of power) is by the president, but it is in the White House,” Simon said. “The history of nations is (that) governments find one way or another to abuse political power.”
He advised the White House to “be completely forthcoming. Don’t reluctantly put out the information.”
A key question involves the list used by Craig Livingstone, former head of the White House Office of Personnel Security, in collecting the files.
Republicans said that determining whether Livingstone created his own list–or had been provided a flawed one from the Secret Service– will help them assess whether he had political motives in collecting the information.
Administration officials had indicated the problem stemmed from Livingstone’s use of an out-of-date list of people needing White House security clearances.
The files that were collected and returned this month to the FBI ran from the letters “A” to “G.” The names appeared to have been chosen selectively because not all staffers from past administrations whose names fell in that category were on the list.
In the Judiciary Committee hearing, Secret Service Assistant Director Robert Miller said his agency’s databases were not capable of producing such a list. “I’m almost sure that would have had to have been a customized list,” Miller said.
Miller said the Secret Service’s computerized list contained 24,000 names going back as far as eight years. He said the list clearly indicated those who have access to the White House and those who don’t.
White House attorney Mark Fabiani said the administration had never said Livingstone was working from a Secret Service list, only that it was outdated.
Although GOP senators focused at the hearing on a handful of well-known Republicans on the list, such as former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, FBI general counsel Howard Shapiro said most of the names were those that only “a devoted political junkie might recognize.”
Two days of congressional hearings have done little to clear up the mystery. That may change next week with the expected testimony of former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, who worked at the White House for five years and has written an unpublished book critical of White House security procedures.
Starr is working under a broad charge to investigate Whitewater, the failed Arkansas land deal in which President and Mrs. Clinton were investors. He also is investigating alleged impropriety in the firing of White House travel office employees.
The independent counsel’s office has limited jurisdiction and cannot investigate matters beyond its original charge without authorization. Starr concluded initially that he could not investigate the FBI file matter and told Reno so Tuesday.
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Reno will now submit a written request to the special judicial panel, asking that it expand Starr’s jurisdiction.
Legal observers said they could recall no instance in which the panel had refused an attorney general’s request.
Reno “understands the political volatility of this issue and the clear need for an independent assessment of the issues,” said Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney and independent counsel who investigated Bush administration officials’ possession of Clinton’s passport file during the 1992 campaign.
In fact, it was through a parallel House investigation of the travel office firings that news of the improperly collected FBI files came to light.
The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee had pressed a reluctant Clinton administration to hand over 3,000 pages of documents relating to the travel office employees, whose head, Billy Dale, was accused of financial improprieties but cleared at trial.
The administration, claiming executive privilege, has so far kept 2,000 pages. But among the 1,000 it handed over was a request for Dale’s FBI file. The request came seven months after Dale was fired.
On Thursday, Dale told the Judiciary Committee he believes the White House was trying to dig up dirt on him.
“I truly feel that if they had found anything in my file that was derogatory towards me, that it would have been used,” he said.
White House press secretary Mike McCurry said the administration would “welcome and encourage an outside investigation.”
Of Republican critics, who have already dubbed the matter “Filegate” and compared it to President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” compiled during the Watergate years, McCurry said, “Hopefully, it will shut them up.”