AllPolitics - Pundits & Prose


Washington Notebook

'File' is a Four-Letter Word!

[Bierbauer]

From Senior Washington Correspondent Charles Bierbauer:

Washington (AllPolitics, June 22)-- Wouldn't you like to know what's in your FBI file? And wouldn't you like even more to know who's been reading it?

Maybe you wouldn't. Republicans don't like the idea that Democrats working for the Clinton White House had access to their FBI files. The Republicans, of course, are not convinced it was an honest mistake. Their outrage is partisan and predictable.

But Democrats may be even more upset.

"It was more than stupid, it was wrong." -- Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland

"I can't conceive of the president in any way having condoned or known that, but it is a very serious error." -- Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Georgia

"Egregious violations of privacy." -- FBI Director Louis Freeh

"It just doesn't make any sense." -- President Clinton

A lot that happens at the White House does not necessarily make any sense.

"Filegate" -- as it's been dubbed in this scandal-loving town just to remind folks of the nature of presidencies to shoot themselves in the foot -- does not make a whole lot of sense.

Watergate -- covering up a bungled burglary -- did not make sense. But it brought down the presidency.

Iran-Contra -- no "gate" -- did not make a lot of sense to many beyond Ollie North. But the illegal diversion of funds and arms to both the Iranians and the Nicaraguan contras discredited the Reagan presidency.

Filegate -- requisitioning the files of some 400 people who no longer worked at the White House -- did not make sense. But it's tainting a Clinton presidency that already has a patina of recurring bad judgment.

"It's inconsistent with clear instructions that I've given and the way we've operated this White House," Clinton said, denying the charge of abuse.

Then how do these things happen? And who does them?

White Houses are staffed with an eclectic mixture of people. Some may be the best and the brightest. Many are there because they are more loyal and ambitious. All are eager. A White House job -- even better if it includes an actual White House office -- is the capstone to many illustrious careers and the launchpad for others.

It takes skilled policy makers and professional bureaucrats to run a White House. Campaign troops are rewarded for the miles logged and meals missed in helping a candidate get there. But skills that get things done on the campaign trail -- don't tell me how you did it, just do it -- don't always transfer to administration. Many positions go to political junkies, hangers-on and wannabes.

Is that how the Clinton White House fouled up? It's hard to say. I remember Craig Livingstone as a low-level advance man on Gary Hart's campaign -- garrulous, hooked on politics, enamored of the perceived glamour. Competent? Hard to judge.

Anthony Merceca, Livingstone's cohort, was even more anonymous. He was burrowed in an Army investigator's job, though he cuts no military figure. Merceca, too, was apparently a political junkie happy to be borrowed from the Pentagon for the White House job.

What's a Defense Department employee doing working in the White House personnel office? It happens all the time. Bureaucrats are seconded from one department to another. Many on the White House staff are on the payrolls of other departments. It helps keep down the costs directly attributed to the White House.

It's laughable that Livingstone and Merceca were putting together a personnel security list in an office tenanted by interns and volunteers with no security clearances. But security is often more pretentious than real.

It's not laughable that White House procedures are handled so cavalierly. The public tends to expect more of the highest office of the land. The press is more demanding of those in the White House, who demand higher respect for their office.

This all appears so slapdash. Even if the intent of gathering the FBI files was benign, it is not without consequence.

"I think most people like me have tuned out of Whitewater. But I think the new charges about the FBI files being in the White House, those have to be taken seriously," Nunn told me this week.

Both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee are taking it seriously, though the political motives of these Republican-run investigations are apparent.

The Senate Whitewater Committee wrapped up its work early this week with a scathing attack on first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Republicans concluded there were "serious questions with respect to Mrs. Clinton's state of knowledge of the deceptive aspects of the transaction" in regard to deals she was in a position to know about in her lawyerly capacity.

Democrats fired back in dissent.

"The venom with which the majority focuses its attack on Hillary Rodham Clinton is surprising," the minority report says.

Democrats suggest there will be a public backlash on behalf of the first lady. "Too personal," says longtime Democratic operative Lynn Cutler.

But Cutler acknowledges that the latest drop in the Whitewater torture process the Clintons are enduring -- the naming of the president's close confidant Bruce Lindsey as an unindicted co-conspirator -- brings the eddy of controversy one step closer to the Oval Office. Lindsey's office is just down the hall. Lindsey's actions as the money manager for Clinton's races for governor of Arkansas, whether he is indicted or unindicted, are now more in question in the context of a second Whitewater-related trial in Little Rock.

The lesson here is that a president or candidate can be undone by those closest to him, those devoted to him, those married to him. These can be the best, brightest, smartest, most clever individuals at his side or the klutziest underling way down on the White House flow chart.

Bob Dole may not make much of this publicly. He won't have to. He has plenty of surrogates willing to do so -- his own coterie of political aides and hangers-on. The media will not have to seek them out. They'll find us. And the media will not ignore them.

No singular incident in itself seems of significant proportion. Not the bad investments of Whitewater. Not the first lady's accountability on banking and billing records. Not even the mishandling of FBI files by a couple of slow- handed White House sleuths, perhaps.

But Democrats are beginning to worry about the cumulative drip-drip, especially now that the water torture is not something that happened a decade ago in Arkansas, but something that took place during the Clinton presidency under the White House roof.

[Back To: The Bierbauer Index | Pundits & Prose Main Page]


AllPolitics home page

http://Pathfinder.com
Copyright © 1996 AllPolitics
All Rights Reserved
Terms under which this information is provided to you
http://CNN.com