FileGATE and the BIG LIE

(This an UPDATE of a work in progress. Some ideas and concepts mentioned are defined in the MEDIA pages THE WATCH DOG THAT DID NOT BARK and BLIP News and DRIP News, so you may want to read those first.)

From the Republican National Committee Magazine, The Rising Tide, issue of September 10, 1996:

Sometime this past year, I was watching a panel discussion on the Newshour PBS program. I cannot recall the topic of the discussion, only that it was political, and the only panel participant I can remember is former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who had served in the Bush administration.

If Thornburgh had said the Clinton White House, through STUPIDITY and INCOMPETENCE had acquired the FBI background investigation reports on a small number of prominent Republicans who had previously worked at the White House or had frequently visited there, his statement would have been true. The claim the Clinton White House had done this to construct an "Enemies List" has never been substantiated. Where is the proof?

How could the Clinton White House have been so stupid and incompetent? Let me count the ways.

The following is a reconstruction of the story of FileGATE (as Bob Dole named it). It is based upon material from the Washington Post and the Republican National Committee.

(1) A civilian employee from the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Army, Anthony Marceca, was detailed to the White House Personnel Security Office from mid-August 1993 to March 1994. When Marceca arrived at the PSO, the security office was struggling with a number of security problems, among them the responsibility for providing permanent White House complex access badges to the all of the people working in the complex. This task was all the more difficult because permanent access badges were also to be given to a large number of frequent visitors and to the members of the White House press corps. Someone in the PSO had made the decision not to grant a permanent access badge to all White House employees and frequent visitors without a current background investigation.

(2) In addition, the Clinton administration had arrived at the White House seven months before, and all of the people it brought with it had to be cleared for access to the complex. Each of these people had to fill out a personal history statement and was required to have a full background investigation based upon the material in the statements. This involved hundreds, and perhaps over a thousand people (this is an estimate on my part). To handle this huge administrative load, the security office worked with an FBI background investigation unit located in the White House complex.

(3) In addition to all of the newcomers, there were perhaps as many as two thousand long-term White House employees working in the complex when Clinton took office. (This is another estimate on my part.) A number of these people had been at the White House for years, and were members of both political parties, or were non-political. Because the Republicans had occupied the White House for the past twelve years, there was probably a much larger number of Republicans than Democrats in this group. All of these people had to have had a security clearance to work in the White House complex and all had had a background investigation conducted on them in the past.

(4) However, when a President leaves office, the security files on all White House personnel in the PSO are considered presidential papers and are transferred to the National Archives for cataloging and other processing. Subsequently, they were moved on to the particular presidential library. Thus the security files of all long-term White House employees had been stripped from their folders in the PSO.

(5) I cannot speak for the security practices in the White House complex, but in the environment from which I recently retired, we were required to submit a new personal history statement every two years, and a full background investigation was required every five years. For this or for some other reason, the PSO decided on a large program to recreate the security files on all long-term White House personnel and on all frequent visitors to the White House, a program called Project Update. The purpose of this project, as I understand it from the news coverage of FileGATE , was to have a personal history statement and a completed background investigation for all persons working in the White House complex (long-term and the new Clinton arrivals) plus the frequent visitors to the complex. To run this project, Craig Livingstone, the head of the PSO, selected Nancy Gemmell, a twelve-year veteran of the PSO, who had been in the PSO since the first year of the first Reagan administration.

(6) There was some urgency for the PSO to update its security files as soon as possible because the media had been severely criticizing the White House for several months. I do not know this for sure, but this criticism may have been due to the long delays in the issuance of permanent White House access passes, and this included the members of the White House press corps.

(7) The normal procedure, and one that had been in effect since the mid-1960's, was for the incoming administration to reconstruct the security files in the Security Office by requesting that copies of the FBI background investigation reports be furnished to the Security Office where they would be reviewed for adverse information. If no such information was found, the covered employee (or frequent visitor) would be issued a permanent entry pass to the White House complex. This the poorly-managed Clinton White House had failed to do in an expeditious manner, and for this it was being criticized with increasing fervor by the White House press corps.

(8) For some reason, Gemmell was not getting the job done and wanted to retire from the White House in August, hence the assignment of Marceca to the PSO for Operation Update

We need to pause here a moment, and to consider what appears to be major violation of the law and of FBI regulations that occurred over two years before the first FileGATE allegations were made. On March 14, 1994, the Washington Times published an article I later found in the May/June 1994 issue of the magazine The Rising Tide, published by the Republican National Committee. (This can be viewed on the RNC Web site if the article has not been pulled from the site.)

January 1993--March 1994 - Of the 1,040 FBI background checks of White House personnel, more than 500 revealed derogatory information, such as previous drug use and drug convictions, years of unpaid taxes, unpaid debts and financial irregularities. As of mid-March, 1994, more than l00 White House staffers have failed to obtain government security clearances and, therefore, permanent White House passes. (Washington Times, 3/14/94)

As might be expected, the FBI was conducting hundreds of background checks on all of the Clinton newcomers to the White House. My guess is that the paper flowed from the PSO to the FBI unit and from there to FBI headquarters. FBI field agents then conducted the investigation and returned the personal history statement and the completed background investigation to the White House FBI unit. Either the FBI unit or the PSO evaluated the results of the background investigation determined if the person was suitable for access to the White House complex. Once the PSO received the personal history statement and the completed background investigation and evaluated it for adverse information, it was filed in the PSO's vault.

The information in the Washington Times article could only have come from FBI headquarters, the FBI unit in the White House or the PSO. It is doubtful that the PSO was the source of a HIGHLY ILLEGAL leak of over 1,000 FBI background investigations. Although there may be questions about Filegate, the leaking of this information to the Washington Times, one of the more virulent anti-Clinton newspapers in the United States is clearly a major violation of the law and of FBI regulations. Yet the FBI had never investigated this violation of the law and neither has Kenneth Starr. I guess right wing leaks are given a superior form of protection by the FBI and by Starr. (So what's new about this?) The leaker also knew about the status of the permanent White House passes as of March 1994. One of the things that bothers me about this article is the number of the FBI background investigations that were leaked. Frankly, the number of 1,040 Clinton newcomers seems to me to be on the high side and I wonder if the number did not also include a number of long term White House employees.

Let us now return to the reconstruction of FileGATE.

(9) Marceca's job was so large he had to break it into two parts. He had to deal with the records of over two thousand long-term White House personnel and the frequent visitors to the White House complex. The bulk of these people, possibly as many as nineteen hundred people, included the frequent visitors and the long-term employees not working in specific White House elements. According to the notes Marceca made to himself on his computer, and which were later made public, he decided to begin Project Update with the three or four hundred people in the smaller elements of the White House staff. This included the ushers, servants and kitchen personnel in the White House proper, the extensive staff of groundskeepers, the staff members of the National Security Council, and the employees of the General Service Administration and private contractors working in the White House complex. He sent memos to the head of these staffs and asked for an alphabetized list of the names of people CURRENTLY working in each element. According to press accounts, Marceca then prepared a standard form requesting that a copy of the completed background investigations on file at the FBI be furnished the PSO. These requests and the copies of the background investigations most likely also went through the White House FBI unit.

(10) First he would check a name on the alphabetized list from each of the smaller White House elements and determine if the person had an FBI background investigation in that person's security file folder. If the file did not contain the background investigation, and almost all did not, he would request it from the FBI. When received, he would "read" the background investigation for adverse information. If there was none, the person would receive a permanent badge to enter the White House complex. The entire security file, including the background investigation, then went to the vault of the PSO. If there was adverse information, the entire file would be forwarded to the head of the PSO, Craig Livingstone for review and a determination to award a permanent access badge (or to deny it, and probable employment in the White House complex).

(11) In later press accounts, Marceca claimed that only three files were sent forward to Livingstone because of adverse material. They were the files of a General Service Administration employee assigned to the White House, an employee of the telephone company working at the White House, and a White House groundskeeper. There was no indication in the press accounts of what action was taken on these three people.

(12) It evidently took Marceca about three and one-half months to work the three or four hundred files from the smaller elements of the White House. By early December, he was ready to work on the big task, the seccurity files of the long-term White House employees and the hundreds of frequent visitors to the White House complex. It turns out that as of 1993, the Secret Service data base on access badges to the White House complex contained 48,000 names either marked I (inactive) or A (active).

(13) In the early press coverage of FileGATE, Marceca claimed he had inherited his new job "from a longtime White House employee who had done similar work for the Reagan and Bush administrations. When he first arrived in the PSO, he obtained what he later said he thought were up-to-date Secret Service pass lists from Nancy Gemmell who then retired from the White House staff. These lists, in fact, were out-of-date lists going back into the Bush administration, or so the White House says. However, one of Gemmell's former co-workers was puzzled about the claim by Marceca that Gemmell would have compiled a list that was as out-of-date as the one he claimed he received. According to a news report, the co-worker was quoted as saying "She would have known that nine-tenths of the people on that list were gone. Nancy was a detail person from day one." And in fact, Gemmell denied this at a congressional hearing on June 20, 1996. But here was the beginning of the thing which is now known as FileGATE.

(14) In statements and in later testimony, Secret Service officials claimed there was no way they could have provided a current pass list that was out of date, and therefore included people on the list who were no longer at the White House. This claim and Gemmell's claim that she knew nothing about out-of-date Secret Service pass lists was contradicted by Liza Wetzl in an interview by the Washington Post published on June 21, 1996. A former employee of the PSO and now working for the Secretary of the Army, Wetzl claims she picked up on Marceca's error when she saw a background investigation on President Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater and realized a mistake had been made. This occurred after she took over the assignment of updating the files on long-term White House employees. She had also seen the list Gemmell was using when Gemmell started Project Update in 1993. She was not sure what list or lists Marceca actually used, but was sure the Gemmell list "contained many names of people who were no longer at the White House." Evidently after the discovery of the Fitzwater file she went to Gemmell's old work station, retrieved the out-of-date pass list and destroyed it before it could do any more damage. Wetzl also said it was not uncommon to see Secret Service pass lists that were apparently in error and "not up to date." As far as I can determine, Wetzl has never been called to testify before a congressional committee.

(15) In her column of June 30, 1996, Elizabeth Drew cites another example of an out-of-date list from the Secret Service containing the names of people who had served in previous administrations and were no longer at the White House. It seems that just before Easter in mid-April 1993, some "Clinton White House aides tried to draw up what they called the "Bunny Base," a list of current White House employees to be given an Easter Egg . . . ." Requesting a current list of employees, they instead "received a Secret Service list that included the names of people who had been in previous administrations."

(16) According to his later deposition and testimony before congressional committees, Marceca was systematically working through the alphabet from "Aa" and had reached the beginning of the letter "G" by the time he left the job. The initial FBI count on the files he requisitioned from early December 1993 to early February 1994 was 407. Having just acquired a copy of what is evidently the final FBI list, I can tell you the list now contains 475 names, in alphabetical order from Aarhus to Goldberg, Catherine. A list of names from the letter "A" to the beginning of the letter "G" probably contains about a fourth of the names in a complete alphabetized list. This indicates that the total list must have numbered about nineteen hundred to two thousand names.

(17) During the screening process, Marceca later deposed and testified that he did notice the names of prominent Republicans among the background investigations he screened. He also testified that he did not think this strange as he believed that prominent Republicans were still serving on White House panels and required permanent access badges to get into the complex.

Synergy in Action - The Chronology of the News Coverage and GOP/WH Spin

June 6, 1996 -- The FileGATE story first hit the news in an article by Susan Schmidt and Ann Devroy of the Washington Post on June 6, 1996. The information to Schmidt came from William Clinger's committee in the House who had received thousands of pages of material from the White House on the operations of the Travel Office before and after Billy Dale and his six co-workers were fired. The Clinger committee was conducting hearings into these firings to determine if there had been criminal conduct on the part of Clinton White House personnel in the firings. Each page of every document provided by the White House was closely scrutinized by a large investigative staff in an effort to discover any information that could be used to discredit the White House. In this case there was a file showing that the background investigation of Billy Dale had been requested from the FBI on December 20, 1993, a number of months after Dale had been fired. (This also tells us Marceca had reached the beginning of the "Ds" by mid-December.)

June 10, 1996 - Washington Post story by George Lardner, Jr. and Harris containing the Marceca claim he had inherited the job from a long-time employee.

June 11, 1996 - Washington Post story by Lardner and Harris - Congressman Clinger tells Post that FBI director Louie Freeh had informed him that Marceca had requested a file on another Travel Office person by the name of Brasseaux, whose name had not been on the original list of 341 names.

Later that day at a GOP party for Bob Dole, the presumptive GOP candidate for president, Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory writes: "No one can figure out why the new crowd would want to assemble dossiers on 330 people from Republican administrations."

COMMENT: The list of 341 people, including some prominent Republicans, had now been transformed into a list of over 300 Republicans from previous administrations.

COMMENT: About this time, six days into the furor, we need to step back from the hurley-burley and think for a moment about the two possible explanations for what has gone on.

As I mentioned above, it should be possible to approximately date the lists Marceca used by determining the date on which an employee no longer working for the White House had left the White House. In the list of 341 people mentioned just above, two names were crossed out. Who were these people? Did the crossed-out names mean they had left the White House, or was there some other reason? To someone with an analytic mind, the original list of 341 names and the complete FBI list of 475 names both contain information other than the names on the list.

A reporter with an analytic mind would have taken the first list of 341 names, identified every person on the list, and sorted the names into three groups:

(a) How many were prominent Republicans? (5 out of 330 have been identified)

(b) How many were current employees of the White House?

(c )How many were past employees of the White House?

If there were no current employees of the White House in the 341 names, then clearly, the White House was guilty of wrong-doing. The Washington Post made no attempt to do such an analysis.

June 13, 1996 - Washington Post column by Richard Cohen. In his column, Richard Cohen approached the same problem in a different way. Cohen noted that the misuse of FBI files, "even inadvertently," is a serious matter. Cohen then went on to examine the list of 330 names. "Having read the list of files requisitioned by the White House, I can recognize only a few names -- Baker, Duberstein, Fitzwater. As for the others they seem to be the sort of anonymous people who work day in and day out for the federal government and whom New Gingrich occasionally puts on on the street. The list, which stopped at the letter "G, could have been taken from a phone book. In contrast, Nixon's enemies list contained names that were easily identifiable. They were political figures and journalists, Democratic contributors, political active entertainers and dangerous radicals of the sort who believed in racial integration."

In the same Washington Post, Lardner writes that the White House had "improperly collected FBI background reports on some 330 former White House pass-holders who no longer worked there, on grounds that the information was needed for them to have continued access to the White House complex. Lardner continues: "Two former White House councels, C.Boyden Gray and Fred F. Fielding, said security files need to be re-created for only a limited number of White House holdovers from one administration to the next." Was this an honest mistake on the part of Gray and Fielding or was there a deliberate attempt to deceive the Washington Post?

COMMENT: In the space of eight days, and with only a slight assistance from GOP partisans, the Post has taken a list containing the names of FIVE prominent Republicans (so far), and transformed it into a list containing the names of HUNDREDS of Reagan and Bush White House officials.

June 15, 1996 - Washington Post story by Lardner and Harris. FBI Director Louie Freeh reports to the Washington Post that his inquiry into the records show that more than 400 files on the employees of previous administrations -- "dozens more than previously suspected" had been obtained by the White House from December 1993 to early February 1994. According to Freeh, "Most of the requests served no official purpose."

COMMENT: About this time, one begins to detect a strong smell of fish from the Washington Post and the FBI, that is, if Freeh had been correctly quoted. If it was a correct quote, there seems to be two possibilities: (1) Is Freeh trying to say that all 407 (and later 475) files requisitioned by Marceca were of past White House employees who were not working there in late 1993 and early 1994? Even if the list was from early in 1992, the last year of the Bush administration, there is no way in the world that all of the long-term White House employees whose last names began with the letters Aa to Go would have left the White House by late 1993. Or is he trying to say the White House PSO had no right to request files on long term White House employees still working at the White House so that their background investigations could be screened, possibly for the purpose of requesting updates for outdated background investigations? To say that most of the requests served no official purpose suggests that many (most?) of the Aa to Go people had left the White House by the end of 1993. If this is the case, it should have been made clear to the media. On the other hand, if the White House PSO was attempting to update its files and the background investigations, then we again encounter the question -- do long-term White House personnel have up-to-date background investigations?

What the Washington Post story does not ask and does not answer is how many of 407 and then 475 employees were prominent Republicans and how many were low-level support people? How many were still at the White House and how many were not? Here again is where even a brand new investigative reporter would have acquired the Freeh list and have started the process of checking out each name on the list. If all 407 people were no longer at the White House, even Anthony Marceca would have become suspicious when an attempt was made to issue a permanent White House pass and it came back marked "departed."

So far the count on prominent Republicans is five: Baker, Blankley, Brady, Duberstein and Fitzwater. If we add in Brent Scowcroft from the National Security Council and Joseph Whitehouse Hagin, or Agin (take your choice), we are up to seven. I would appreciate it if the readers of this would examine the list of 475 names to determine if there are more prominent Republicans listed? If so, let me know and I will update the list.

With the names of the seven prominent Republicans, we still 400 names to get to 407 and 468 names to get the list up to 475. But when last seen, the RNC was claiming the White House had obtained files on 800 or 900 prominent Republicans. Where did all of the other names came from? My guess, and that is all it is, is that an additional 300 to 400 people were from Marceca's original group -- the servants, the ushers and the kitchen staff in the White House proper, the GSA employees, the phone company employees, and those all important groundskeepers who fertilize the lawns and keep them nice and green. I am sure that if some of these people are brought before a congressional committee and sternly interrogated, more than one will be cowed into admitting they were card-carrying Republicans or would claim the Fifth Amendment.

But notice, other than the name of Brent Scrowcroft, the Bush National Security Advisor, there were no complaints by the Republicans of the first 300 or 400 people Marceca processed. For those people, he had asked the administrators in the various White House elements to provide him alphabetized list of all of the people CURRENTLY working in those elements, and he worked from those lists. Sure, they had worked for prior Republican administrations -- they were long term White House employees. Were they Republicans, many probably were in late 1993 and remain Republicans today.

Thus, the additional three or four hundred to bring the number of names on the list is simply an amplification of the original BIG LIE. The last 100 names were added because if the figure of 800 in a BIG LIE is good, a number of 900 is even better. When no one in the Mainstream Media is holding you accountable for your actions and you words, you can say anything or do anything in the confident hope the Mainstream Media will be looking the other way.

So much for the media watch dog!