White House Sorry For Obtaining Secret Files

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House chief of staff admitted Sunday that the Clinton administration made an "inexcusable" mistake when it obtained confidential FBI files on about 300 people in 1993, and he apologized.

"A mistake has been made here. It is inexcusable and I think an apology is owed to those that were involved," Leon Panetta said on the NBC program "Meet the Press."

He said he agreed with GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole that an apology was necessary.

"I can assure you that nothing like that has happened in the last two years," Panetta said. "There was no improper use made of those files. As far as we can determine, nothing was done with that information."

FBI Director Louis Freeh tightened the rules for viewing secret FBI files after the disclosure that hundreds of them had been improperly obtained by a White House aide, The New York Times reported Sunday.

On Saturday, White House officials said the classified files, some of them on prominent Republicans, were mistakenly obtained during a routine review of people with White House access and were returned to the FBI without being examined.

But that explanation was ridiculed by GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole who said it appeared the Clinton administration was compiling an "enemies list," a reference to an actual list once kept by aides of former Republican President Richard Nixon.

Most of the files sought by the Clinton administration appeared to cover low-level White House workers. White House Associate Counsel Mark Fabiani said the files were collected by an Army detailee to the White House who was using an outdated Secret Service list of White House personnel that included some Bush officials who already had left their jobs.

"While many of the requests are simple name checks, others involve sensitive personal information from background investigations," the paper quotes the FBI director as saying in a letter to Rep. William Clinger Jr., R-Pennsylvania.

Disclosure grows from travel office probe

Clinger spoke to Freeh on Friday about possible abuses by the White House in obtaining confidential files. During an investigation into the 1993 firing of seven employees of the White House travel office -- including director Billy Dale -- Clinger said he discovered the White House had obtained Dale's FBI file seven months after the dismissal.

It was Clinger who first disclosed and expressed outrage that Dale's records were sent to the White House after his firing. On Friday, White House officials said Dale's file was sought with as many as 340 others as part of a broader but innocent bureaucratic mistake.

White House Senior Policy Adviser George Stephanopoulos, who blamed the Secret Service for providing "the wrong list," (192K WAV sound) also accused Dole of "negative" campaigning. (192K WAV sound)

Doing his job

The White House aide who requested the information -- Anthony Marceca of the Army Criminal Investigation Division -- said he was assigned to the Clinton White House in 1993 and that he did what he was told to do: send for FBI background files from names on a list that landed on his desk once a week from the Secret Service.

The Bush administration had removed all background records when it left office, and part of Marceca's job was to reassemble them. The names were often those of prominent Republicans who had long since left government service. Nevertheless, their names were still in Secret Service computers as still having access to the White House.

The man Marceca answered to -- Craig Livingstone -- was a Clinton political appointee who had access to the vault where the FBI files were kept, but Marceca said there was no misuse of the FBI material.

Related stories:

• AllPolitics: Dole blisters Clinton over alleged 'enemies' list - June 8, 1996
• AllPolitics: Dale's FBI file was one of many obtained, lawyer says - June 7, 1996
• CNNfn: Dale speaks out on FBI background file - June 6, 1996
• AllPolitics: White House requested travel worker's FBI file - June 6, 1996

Related site:

• FBI